Leadership may mean different things in different contexts. In corporate context , in simple terms it means attaining corporate objectives with social responsibility. That would translate into different benefits to different stakeholders: healthy ROI for investors, fulfilment of customer needs cost effectively & competitively with high standards of service and job satisfaction & growth of employees. Along with all this, leadership involves taking the organisation to greater heights in all spheres despite myriad challenges on the way; and this requires extraordinary leadership vision.
Indeed, it is the most challenging of modern day tasks!
When one takes stock of one’s repertoire of leadership skills,
in a sense one is assessing the sum total of a lifetime of
learning
Modern Behavioural Science developments have clearly demonstrated that leadership can be
developed through variety of behavioral interventions. Various themes can be developed
during training of leadership competencies such as
★ Primary competencies of leadership like Vision, bringing the team with the Vision and
Execution
★ What is the leadership pattern and style?
★ What are the processes of decision making, communication patterns, conflict
management, reward-punishment and authority relations?
★ EQ
★ What is the dominant orientation of person in terms of performance, affiliation or
power? and so on.
All of these dimensions influence the achievement and morale of the team, commitment of
members towards their jobs, sense of belonging and acceptance and therefore the
performance and productivity of the team and their job satisfaction levels.
The basic assumption behind this programme is that anyone who
has the will and the motivation can better at leading once he
understands the steps.
Research in Indian context (Dr Ishwar Dayal) points to
following three critical processes in leadership development:
★
Gaining orientation towards achievement, setting life goals
for oneself;
★ Maturing or crystallisation of ˮWhat I want in Lifeˮ
★ Achieving wisdom derived from one’s experiences. This
enlarges the scope of one’s own thinking, feeling and
behaving: Becoming One Self.
All the above processes have management of feelings at their
base. The functional coping with variety of feelings within
and without oneself strengthen these processes.
1. My ideal self discovery;
2. My real self discovery;
3. My Learning agenda based on above;
4. Experimenting and practising new behaviours, thoughts, and
feelings to the point of mastery;
5. Developing support network; for that makes the above change
programme effective and even possible.