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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Hope and Purpose

One of the biggest challenges that we face as a generation is extreme polarisation, leading to a feeling of cynicism, despair and loneliness. Social media and an always on commentary about what we are missing out on (based on what people on social media are doing) only exacerbates these feelings. Add to that the current trend of business leaders mandating their employees to come back to office, albeit only for a few days in a week, is only adding fuel to the cynicism. On top of that is the layoffs that we see all around us is not helping. And […]

Great Leaders Do This

One of the meta skills that differentiate great leaders from average one’s is their ability to communicate. Through their own personal communication styles, they are able to simplify and present complexity in a way that becomes accessible to their teams and do so in a way that eliminates any kind of confusion! A rare trait indeed. I have written a lot about how leaders could communicate on my blog. You can check them out here.