Tag: Leadership

Leadership, transformation

Turning Status Quo into Your Ally

I recently read a blog post by Seth Godin titled, “The four cohorts of the status quo“. It reminded of the fact that as leaders, we need to understand the concept of status quo, how to leverage it and deal with it, as appropriate. This ability to not allow status quo to hinder our pursuits is a high leverage or impact skill for any leader. In the post, Seth talks about the four kinds of people and their relationship with Status quo – those who actively benefit from it, those who care about the stability that it provides, those who […]

Leadership

Imposter Syndrome

Premise: One of the things that I have experienced myself and heard from many other leaders is the feeling of being an imposter. Everyone of us at some point in time, have felt the feeling of being an imposter. Sometimes it could be because, we don’t see what someone else sees in us, as capability and/or potential. Other times, it could be that we are not sure if we deserve the leadership position that we currently occupy, specially when we see some really good people on the team. This is self-doubt. In my opinion, any good leader, worth their salt, […]

Leadership

Foundation for a High Performance Culture

One of the most fundamental foundations of a culture that enables high performance is a sense of belonging amongst the people who are part of that culture. This sense of belonging takes root when we trust our colleagues enough to show up as who we are, with all our strengths and faults. This sense of belonging takes root when the arguments and debates are about ideas and their merits and not about people and their beliefs. This sense of belonging takes root when the people know and trust their leaders to have their best interest in mind. This sense of […]

Leadership

Leaders Worth Following have High Levels of Self Awareness

Premise: I saw this short video about how to master your emotions and was reminded about one of the foundational qualities that leaders worth following need to master – their level of self awareness. I believe that self awareness can be thought as consisting of at least three layers. Intellectual Self Awareness: The outer most layer is the intellectual self awareness. What this means is that they are aware about what they want, why they want it, what are they prepared to do for it and what is a line they will not cross in pursuit of this goal. Psychological […]

Leadership

Blindspots

Premise: Yesterday, I stumbled onto a French advertisement, that shows, in a very impactful way, blindspots of truck drivers. Shot from a first person perspective, the ad has no music, no voice over, no gimmicks, just simple yet powerful visuals. Before we move ahead, please do take the 47 seconds to watch the advertisement here. As I watched this advertisement, the question that was going on in my mind was about my blindspots as a leader. The question is not if we have a blindspots but where are those blindspots. The next question to ask then is – how does […]