Leadership – Best Practices

The art of leadership is not just leading a bunch of people through a task or a project, but helping them realise their own strengths and awaken them to live their dreams. The impact of the leader’s behaviour creates a bull whip effect on the follower’s performance. At times the act retains an indelible mark on the follower’s mind. In the words of Warren Buffett, “I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit-forming.”

There are different styles of leadership. Ideally every human being is unique, so are their leadership styles. There are different theories which have clubbed human behaviours to form different leadership styles. In practise, there may not be the exact prototype to what have been written, but several permutations to it. As explained by Daniel Goleman on Leadership that gets results, Coercive Style with compliance focused “Do what I tell you”, Authoritative Style in leaders who have a clear vision saying “Come with me”, Affilitative Style to build harmony and teamwork through “People come first” attitude, Democratic Style to build consensus i.e. “What do you think”, Pacesetting Style who leads by example “Do as I do, now”, Coaching Style develop people through coaching with “try this.” concept. Ideally the situation and environment contributes to behaviour, whereas the dominant part of the nature would remain. During the organizational change, when leaders take the eye of the storm, it stands imperative to identify their innate nature and predict whom would they vie for be it people, process or the client.
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Decoding Power

Strategist since ages have chosen to be the king maker and not the king. Sun Tzu , Chanakya , Aristotle have all chosen to be teachers to the powerful kings such as King Helu , Chandragupta Murya and Alexander . The point to ponder is what made the teachers powerful . These visionaries were aware of their strengths yet never choose to take the throne.
The route to gain power begins with taking early decision-making in order to push boundaries . At this point of time, the stakes are low, hence the losses would be low, incase the decision goes wrong . For eg : the best time to begin a business or invest is when the market indices are in the correction mode. Every business takes its own time to stabilise. Hence the low valuation of the market allows the entrepreneur to start with benefits of low real estates and talent cost. And bear rich profit by the time market swings back.
The next step is building the mental model which includes will and determination to succeed. Efforts are made endlessly till success is achieved. This further includes conflict tolerance. It is a skill which strengthens the individual to make decisions yet stay attuned with the environment. John Pickering explains this capability as maturity, as it enables an individual to select behaviour over the preferred one.

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