We respect people who speak their mind, especially when they do this tactfully. One is able to influence others when one’s ideas are understood and received well. Great leaders are crafty communicators. They do not hesitate to assert their views even if some of these are not the popular choice. How do they do this? […]

  Earlier this month, James Damore, a Software Engineer in Google’s Mountain View Headquarters wrote a soul-stirring piece on the topic and was fired soon for having crossed the line on stereotyping genders. I believe, Google mishandled the issue badly. But, that’s not the point. The question it raises, “Is gender diversity significant in an […]

Last week was momentous for many, particularly for professional CEOs and their Boards. Infosys, the iconic IT services company of India was in the news. The differences of opinion between the Board and its charismatic founder were out in the public. The shareholders as a whole became poorer by nearly 3 Billion USD on one […]

Our world has seen vigorous development in technology in the last couple of decades. New methods of doing work have evolved; Gen Y and Z have been ahead of the senior managers in any organization in terms of their understanding and application of these new practices. At home, the youth have taken charge of putting […]

Democracy is the largest form of governance in the world now… close to 60% of the world’s population live in democratic nations. Our societies value freedom of speech, majority view and the power of making choices. Organizations are microcosms of our societies and hence, we behave the same way at work. We expect our leader […]

We associate autocracy, dictatorship, authoritarian styles to tyrant leaders like Hitler, Stalin and Fidel Castro. But, there is a bright side of this unique style. Think of Henry Ford who created a great impact in the auto industry. He is known to have followed the autocratic style of leadership with his belief in economies of […]

Leaders evolve the strategy in an offsite of a day or two and keep executing them until the next offsite unless there is an unprecedented disruption that faces them in-between. So, it is execution all the way interlaced with relatively a very small time to develop the strategy. Why is there so much of hullabaloo […]

All of us revere charismatic leaders. We relate to the charisma of leaders like Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Jack Welch and so on. We get mesmerized with their words and inspired by their actions. We idolize them and do not need to examine their words with a lens of rationality. […]

As businesses are operating in an increasingly interconnected world, they find their stakeholders coming from different backgrounds of religious practices, cultural norms, language nativities, social do’s and don’ts. For a leader, it is not easy to deal with such a large diversity. Given an opportunity, most people tend to build an ecosystem that draws upon […]

Every leader wishes to leave his mark behind in the minds of the people he works with and the journey of the institution decades after he has stepped down. This is not only applicable in an organization but also for a teacher, a parent, a doctor, a caretaker, a gardener, practically everybody. A teacher imparts […]

In our world today, a significant part of our workforce values freedom, demonstrates self-confidence and sets high ambitions. This phenomenon is not restricted to the white-collar workforce, rather all-pervasive. Leaders having the experience of directed people and having seen their managers directing teams in a certain way, find the changing environment discomforting. They are trying […]

Every leader is invested with some authority, given the command over a set of resources and asked upon to deliver predefined results. Leaders make decisions each day how to marshal their resources. Some of them arrive at the decisions themselves and make announcements to their team. Some of them involve others in the team and […]