My three leadership lessons in 2020

HRTales asked me my top three leadership lessons during 2020 and I responded as follows. 

Year 2020 was a learning year for everybody. VUCA was the most abused and used jargon in the corporate world.  However, we all learnt the actual meaning of VUCA in 2020. In fact, it was a great leadership lesson.

My first lesson is 

In a crisis situation, leaders are in the line of fire from various key people in the ecosystem, customers, government, employees, stakeholders, society and political leaders. These all people may have unrealistic expectations from the leaders. This brings tremendous stress and possibly the leader may make mistakes. In such a situation, leaders need to be courageous and confident. When your employees and customers are watching you, you need to demonstrate the behaviour where they should feel comfortable working with you. By demonstrating courage and confidence, you drive the right behaviours in your team too. This includes taking a calculated risk, saying no at appropriate time, taking care of employees and simultaneously focusing on the business continuity.

Second Learning is

Leaders too have their weaknesses and blind spots. The maturity is when we recognise those weaknesses and blind spots and be vulnerable. During the pandemic we all were struggling to find the solutions to different aspects like, converting the office into home offices, motivating employees, handling infections and health issues of family and teams, customers not honouring the contracts, loss of revenue and poor cash flows. The situation was so unique that there was not one fit all solutions. In this process, i learnt that as a leader, we also have vulnerability and it is okay to admit our blind spots and lack of knowledge in certain areas.

My third leadership lesson is

Purpose, values and creating the trust capital is crucial. We understood the value of relations, human interactions, social life and also understood that we have very little needs, if we manage it properly as we did during the pandemic. Such feeling takes you to the purpose in life. As a leader, one of the imperative is to give the larger “purpose” to the team, work on the values essential for survival in business or in personal life and create the trust capital in the organization. Build the trust during good times, so that you are not alone during a crisis situation. As a leader continuously invest in building meaningful relations with employees, customers and other stakeholders in the ecosystem. You can use this trust capital to set the directions, get the alignment and commitment from employees and other stakeholders. 

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Leadership Behaviours during Covid19

Excellence in Leadership

You can debate that we need different skills while handling the situation like Covid19. Such situations are extraordinary situations. Such an event happens once in a century. VUCA is one of the words which we always use in management jargon. We always thought that we were living in the VUCA world. If you believe this, then you should be able to handle the Covid19 situation also. Has anybody applied for the course to learn how to manage the situation during Covid19? Perhaps not, but there are a lot of webinars and online sessions conducted by different organizations and forums for professionals. When you listen to all this, you don’t get much new idea how to handle the situation. The wisdom shared is about the consequences, impact etc. However, the wisdom shared about behaviours is still we always speak about. This is the same which we are learning from decades.

One of the problems with such events is people's behaviour. This is called “amygdala hijack”. “Amygdala hijack” is a personal, emotional response that is immediate, overwhelming, and may be out of measure with the actual event because it has triggered a much more emotional threat. In this condition our reasoning, problem-solving and even our ability to “hear” things can be impaired. This creates uncertainty & triggers emotional threat. Further there is a lot of information shared and such information may not necessarily be authentic and true. Fake news spreads like the fire. With social media controlling such news is a bigger issue. This creates further emotional tension and people start behaving weird.    

What are those skills leaders need to have during such times? I personally feel that it is not rocket science. This is a time now to execute and implement what we have learnt over a time. This is a combination of management and leadership. During such periods we need tough leadership where people need to make some tough decisions. It doesn’t mean that you should not consider the human element. During such periods, you don’t need to learn new skills but work on those skills you learned over a period and wait to implement in those.  

Do you think the following skills are new?

• Clarity of thought,
• Courage,
• Analytical skills,
• Strong Networking and influencing skills,
• Communicating difficult messages,
• Empathy,
• Strategic and tactical skills,
• Agility and
• Strong change management skills.

The approach to implement may be different. Only difference is, now it is the time to exhibit behaviours. You have to figure out those behaviours which should be visible. 

Following is the leadership guide which speaks about what you do during normal and abnormal situations. Homework for you is to identify those behaviours and work on that. 

In view of Covid19 situation, it is also a time to reflect that we need to exhibit our leadership qualities (which everybody has) to bring back the business. Please watch the presentation below.

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle; Vitality in Human Resource

Excellence in leadership from Vinod Bidwaik

Fluidity in leadership

Most of the times, we have some assumptions about leadership. This is based on our understanding and observations. We follow somebody in our life, and we assume that the person to whom we are following has great leadership style. We get inspired by their traits; however, we ignore some detrimental traits. They may have some great leadership traits but there may be fluidity in few values. There are some fall out stories in Indian and international corporate world.   

Over a period, I realized that leadership is about insight and character of the person. Leaders are also human beings but then as a leader they have more responsibilities to have the right insight. They need to understand that they are observed by the people. People who are projected great leaders in media are not necessarily a great leader. They may be great business managers. Most of the times, leaders ignore the insight about self and insight about others. I have observed few flaws in managers which restricts them to be role model leaders.

Bringing “own” people: Few managers, when take the charge of the business, try to bring “their” own people. Identifying the right talent and bringing them in the organization is always good. And it is the job of leadership. But sometimes managers have their own biases and they try to bring their people to whom they are comfortable with. It is very sad that they don’t think that internal people have capabilities without doing any assessment. Working with the existing team which you have got and getting the results from them is the top leadership trait.  

Allowing short circuits in decision making: Organizations have their own governance model. While working in such governance models, it is crucial to follow the proper system while making decisions. But sometimes, such governance structure is bypassed. If somebody doesn't like the way of working and decisions taken, such decisions are reverse favourably only to accommodate somebody. I think such behaviour is utter nonsense. Managers forget that their such behaviour is observed by all people. It has an adverse impact on the culture.    

If you are a leader, just get insight and check that you are doing the right things. Creating the culture is the accountability of top management and it starts with the leaders. If as a leader you are not doing right, your employees will follow you. Don’t blame them.   

Reality behind Leadership Charisma

Leadership is about stories. They make stories and they tell stories. But do you know how they create stories to create their personal brand in the organization and outside the organization? With social media, it is very easy now a days. There are consultants who manage your social media profiles and postings to create a positive image in the market. When you read LinkedIn postings of leaders and users, it is also evident that every person now a days is storyteller. 99% stories are philosophical and perhaps for others. I don’t know how much they follow what they read. Few people are so obsessed with social media fame that they post by every hour. It is also too much for readers. If there are learning from such stories, we should read and appreciate such stories. After all making storytelling is a great skill and it is relevant now a days. Every professional need to be storyteller. We need to learn that skill to be relevant in the changing market situation where span of attention of readers and audience is decreasing.

There are few leaders who create their own charisma through such stories. We always appreciate simplicity of Mr. Ratan Tata & Narayan Murti, Presentation skill of Steve Jobs, Presence of Mind & Oratory skills of Mr. Narendra Modi etc. These leaders are great leaders and they earned that respect by their work. However, there are few leaders who have the big followers who are mainly cheerleaders. When Cheerleaders make stories, then there are problems. 

Cheerleaders have their own agenda and they have their own purpose of spreading stories of some leaders. Such stories may not be real. We have a lot of examples where some corporate leaders (you know them very well) are in trouble because of some ethical issues. Leadership is being fair and ethical when you enjoy the absolute power. There is always a fluidity in the behaviour of leaders whose stories are created and spread by cheerleaders. Sometimes these cheerleaders are their own employees and sometimes they are paid communication & PR agents.

If some leader is known for his/her connect with shop floor workmen and stories of sipping a cup of tea during night shifts are discussed every time, then context behind that story may be different. First things in mind comes, is that why people make stories of such behaviours. Such leaders create their own aura in the organization; they create boundaries. Meeting them is very difficult and when meet and sip the tea along with workmen, it creates the impression. You will not hear any stories of that leader who is always accessible.

Creating and telling stories are good but when character becomes larger than the process of that success story, then such stories are not good. I am always concerned about leaders who are media savvy. From Ramalinga Raju to Chanda Kocher has the great legacy of stories, but we know the end.

You should be worried when your leader is trying to create the image larger than life.

PS: Just during this week we read about Yes Bank news and CEO of Rana Kapoor. Another fallout.    

Don't go by the face value of media darling corporate leaders.