About leadership priorities

About Communication

About Simplicity

Connerstone of Leadership

The cornerstone of leadership is contained in three words: character, competence and humility. Character is first followed by the commitment to the highest level of performance excellence. One’s competency must always be balanced with a sincere and abiding sense of humility. Leadership is about creating followers to your cause. One leads with their energy first and foremost. Energy is contagious for better or for worst. To develop leadership skills: First, understand that leadership, like human energy is multi – dimensional. You lead physically by taking care of yourself, by eating right , exercising regularly, solid nutrition, rest etc., You lead emotionally by understanding that positive emotions should be the primary driver of your operating style; but that is clearly the exception and should never represent business as normal. You lead mentally keeping your focuses on what’s relevant and critical to mission success, and ensure that the stories you tell do not undermine employee engagement. You lead spiritually by ensuring that your energy investments are fully aligned with your deepest values and sense of purpose. Secondly never underestimate the power of human energy .Leaders are stewards of human energy and must become highly skilled in getting followers to invest extraordinary energy in whatever cause is deemed important. Thirdly character trumps out every time. Nothing is more important in the consideration of leadership than one’s personal character. Those character traits that define our relationships with others always assume the highest priority. Examples include integrity, trustworthiness, respect for others, gratefulness, humility and caring..........( Dr. Jim Loehr, Performance Psychologist)

Source: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B00AR83C5K/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Leadership lessons of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson:

·         Focus; “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

·         Simplify; “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

·         Take responsibility end to end.

·         When behind, leap frog; “If we don’t cannibalize ourselves, someone else will.

·        Put products before profits; “Don’t compromise, focus on making the product great and the profits will follow”

·         Don’t be a slave to focus groups; “Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

·       Intuition is a very powerful thing – more powerful than intellect; “The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do; they use their intuition instead.’

·         Bend reality; “Don’t be afraid, get your mind around it, you can do it.”

·         Impute; “People do judge a book by its cover”.

·      Push for perfection: “A great carpenter isn’t going to use a lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.”

·        Tolerate only ‘A’ players; “When you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them; by expecting them to do great things , you can get them to do great things.

·       Engage face to face; “I hate the way people use the slide presentation instead of thinking, people would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I want them to engage, to hash things out at a table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they are talking about don’t need PowerPoint.’

·      Know both the big picture and the details; “Some Ceo’s are great at vision, others are managers who know that God is in the details.”

·         Combine the humanities and the sciences; Connect humanities to the sciences; creativity to technology; arts to engineering.

·    Stay hungry and stay foolish; in every aspect of life Jobs behavior reflected the contradictions, confluence and eventual synthesis of all the varying strands. “Think different” “While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Source:  HBR South Asia 1 January, 2012