BS 702: LEADERSHIP & MANAGING

EXCELLENCE

MODULE I: LEADERSHIP EXCELLENCE

Moumita Mukherjee
 LEADERSHIP: Searching a Definition
Step 1: What Leadership is NOT!
• Leadership has nothing to do with seniority or one’s position in the
hierarchy of a company. Too many talk about a company’s leadership
referring to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that,
senior executives. Leadership doesn’t automatically happen when you reach a
certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.
• Leadership has nothing to do with titles. Similar to the point above, just
because you have a high-level title, doesn’t automatically make you a “leader.”
You don’t need a title to lead. In fact, you can be a leader in your place of
worship, your neighbourhood, in your family, all without having a title.
• Leadership has nothing to do with personal attributes. Say the word
“leader” and most people think of a domineering, take-charge charismatic
individual. We often think of icons from history like Prime Ministers or Presidents.
But leadership isn’t an adjective. We don’t need extroverted charismatic traits to
practice leadership. And those with charisma don’t automatically lead.
• Leadership isn’t management.  This is the big one. Leadership and
management are not synonymous.  Good management is needed. Managers
need to plan, measure, monitor, coordinate, solve, hire, fire, and so many other
things. Typically, managers manage things. Leaders lead people.
 LEADERSHIP: Searching a Definition
Step 2: Successful Business-Thinkers’ view of
• Leadership
Peter Drucker: “The only definition of a leader is someone who has
followers.” - Really? This instance of tautology is so simplistic as to be
dangerous. A new Army Captain is put in the command of 200 soldiers. He
never leaves his room, or utters a word to the men and women in his unit.
Perhaps routine orders are given through a subordinate. By default his troops
have to “follow” orders. Is the Captain really a leader? Commander yes,
leader no. Drucker is of course a brilliant thinker of modern business but his
definition of leader is too simple.
• Warren Bennis: “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into
reality.” - Every spring you have a vision for a garden, and with lots of work
carrots and tomatoes become a reality. Are you a leader? No, you’re a
gardener. Bennis’ definition seems to have forgotten “others.”
• Bill Gates: “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be
those who empower others.” - This definition includes “others” and
empowerment is a good thing. But to what end? I’ve seen many empowered
“others” in my life, from rioting hooligans to Google workers who were so
misaligned with the rest of the company they found themselves unemployed.
Gates’ definition lacks the parts about goal or vision.
 LEADERSHIP: Searching a Definition
Step 3: What Leadership is!
• DEFINITION (Forbes): Leadership is a process of social influence,
which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement
of a goal. Notice key elements of this definition:
1. Leadership stems from social influence, not authority or power
2. Leadership requires others, and that implies they don’t need to
be “direct reports”
3. No mention of personality traits, attributes, or even a title;
there are many styles, many paths, to effective leadership
4. It includes a goal, not influence with no intended outcome
SELF LEADERSHIP
• Self-leadership is having a developed sense of who you
are, what you can do, where you are going coupled with
the ability to influence your communication, emotions and
behaviors on the way to getting there.
• Self-leaders have a drive for autonomy, can make decisions, are
more creative and persist, even in the face of adversity.
• Some of the intentional behaviors that characterize Self-
leadership are; self-awareness, self-goal setting, self-
motivation, positive self-talk, assertive communication and the
ability to receive and act on feedback.
 SELF LEADERSHIP VIDEOS
Links to Self Leadership Videos
• Generic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGbvFkDhJXg
• Ted Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlpKyLklDDY
 WHAT IS SELF-LEADERSHIP?
There are four different aspects to self-leadership.
1. Self-awareness: The ability to acknowledge, understand and be conscious of
one’s own values, perspectives, strengths, weaknesses, leadership propensity
and emotional needs.
2. Self-management: The ability to nurture and harness one’s own passion,
abilities, emotions and leadership capacity in decision- making.
3. Other-awareness: The ability to acknowledge and recognize the passion,
gifting, strengths, weaknesses, potential and needs of others.
4. Other-management: The ability to grow and motivate other people to
develop their potential and/or fulfill the organization’s objectives.
• Great leaders begin with self-awareness and move to self-management, then
proceed to other-awareness culminating in other-management. It is not a
linear but an interactive effect among all four factors.
 STRATEGIES OF SELF LEADERS
• Reflecting on intention to achieve focus
• Clarifying what they are responsible ‘for’ and what we are
accountable to?
• Becoming the author of the inner narrative to tell an empowering
story
• Confidently taking action and seeking feedback
• Communicating authentically to achieve win/win
• Being mindful and managing emotions
• Influencing through understanding the intentions of others
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
• Leadership competencies are leadership skills and behaviours that
contribute to superior performance. By using a competency-based
approach to leadership, organizations can better identify and develop their
next generation of leaders. Essential leadership competencies and global
competencies have been defined by researchers. However, future business
trends and strategy should drive the development of new leadership
competencies. While some leadership competencies are essential to all
firms, an organization should also define what leadership attributes are
distinctive to the particular organization to create competitive advantage.
• Managers, aspiring managers, and top-level leaders are all concerned
with developing the competencies they need to become more effective
leaders.
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

1. Demonstrates strong ethics and provides a sense of safety.

2. Empowers others to self-organize.
3. Fosters a sense of connection and belonging.
4. Shows openness to new ideas and fosters organizational
learning.
5. Nurtures growth.
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
Demonstrates strong ethics and provides a sense of safety.
• A leader with high ethical standards conveys a commitment to fairness,
instilling confidence that both they and their employees will honor the rules
of the game. Similarly, when leaders clearly communicate their expectations,
they avoid blindsiding people and ensure that everyone is on the same page.
In a safe environment employees can relax, invoking the brain’s higher
capacity for social engagement, innovation, creativity, and ambition.
• To increase feelings of safety, work on communicating with the specific intent
of making people feel safe. One way to accomplish this is to acknowledge and
neutralize feared results or consequences from the outset. It may be clarified
as “clearing the air.” For example, you might approach a conversation about a
project gone wrong by saying, “I’m not trying to blame you. I just want to
understand what happened.”
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
Empowers others to self-organize.
• Providing clear direction while allowing employees to organize their own time and work is
identified as the next most important leadership competency.
• No leader can do everything themselves. Therefore, it’s critical to distribute power throughout the
organization and to rely on decision making from those who are closest to the action.
• Research has repeatedly shown that empowered teams are more productive and proactive,
provide better customer service, and show higher levels of job satisfaction and commitment to
their team and organization. And yet many leaders struggle to let people self-organize. They resist
because they believe that power is a zero-sum game, they are reluctant to allow others to make
mistakes, and they fear facing negative consequences from subordinates’ decisions.
• To overcome the fear of relinquishing power, start by increasing awareness of physical tension that
arises when you feel your position is being challenged. As discussed above, perceived threats
activate a fight, flight, or freeze response in the amygdala. The good news is that we can train our
bodies to experience relaxation instead of defensiveness when stress runs high. Try to separate
the current situation from the past, share the outcome you fear most with others instead of trying
to hold on to control, and remember that giving power up is a great way to increase influence —
which builds power over time.
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
Fosters a sense of connection and belonging.
• Leaders who “communicate often and openly” and “create a feeling of succeeding
and failing together as a pack” build a strong foundation for connection.
• We are a social species — we want to connect and feel a sense of belonging. From
an evolutionary perspective, attachment is important because it improves
our chances of survival in a world full of predators. Research suggests that a sense of
connection could also impact productivity and emotional well-being. For example,
scientists have found that emotions are contagious in the workplace: Employees feel
emotionally depleted just by watching unpleasant interactions between coworkers.
• There are some simple ways to promote belonging among employees: Smile at
people, call them by name, and remember their interests and family members’
names. Pay focused attention when speaking to them, and clearly set the tone
of the members of your team having each other’s backs. Using a song, motto,
symbol, chant, or ritual that uniquely identifies your team can also strengthen this
sense of connection.
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
Shows openness to new ideas and fosters organizational learning.
• To encourage learning among employees, leaders must first ensure that they
are open to learning (and changing course) themselves. Try to approach
problem-solving discussions without a specific agenda or outcome.
Withhold judgment until everyone has spoken, and let people know that all
ideas will be considered. A greater diversity of ideas will emerge.
• Failure is required for learning, but our relentless pursuit of results can also
discourage employees from taking chances. To resolve this conflict, leaders
must create a culture that supports risk-taking. One way of doing this is to
use controlled experiments — think A/B testing — that allow for small
failures and require rapid feedback and correction. This provides a platform
for building collective intelligence so that employees learn from each other’s
mistakes, too.
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
Nurtures growth.
• All living organisms have an innate need to leave copies of their genes. They
maximize their offspring’s chances of success by nurturing and teaching them.
In turn, those on the receiving end feel a sense of gratitude and loyalty. Think
of the people to whom you’re most grateful — parents, teachers, friends,
mentors. Chances are, they’ve cared for you or taught you something
important.
• When leaders show a commitment to our growth, the same primal emotions
are tapped. Employees are motivated to reciprocate, expressing their
gratitude or loyalty by going the extra mile. While managing through fear
generates stress, which impairs higher brain function, the quality of work is
vastly different when we are compelled by appreciation. If you want to
inspire the best from your team, advocate for them, support their training
and promotion, and go to bat to sponsor their important projects.
LEADERSHIP STYLES

1. Autocratic
2. Democratic
3. Collaborative
4. Laissezfaire
5. Transformational
6. Transactional
LEADERSHIP STYLES
Autocratic
• Autocratic leadership style is centred on the boss. In this
leadership the leader holds all authority and responsibility. In
this leadership, leaders make decisions on their own without
consulting subordinates. They reach decisions, communicate
them to subordinates and expect prompt implementation.
Autocratic work environment does normally have little or no
flexibility.
• In this kind of leadership, guidelines, procedures and policies
are all natural additions of an autocratic leader. Statistically,
there are very few situations that can actually support
autocratic leadership.
• A famous personality who matches this kind of leadership
styles is: President Donald Trump (USA, Trump Organization).
LEADERSHIP STYLES
Democratic
• In this leadership style, subordinates are involved in
making decisions. Unlike autocratic, this headship is
centred on subordinates’ contributions. The democratic
leader holds final responsibility, but he or she is known
to delegate authority to other people, who determine
work projects.
• The most unique feature of this leadership is that
communication is active upward and downward. With
respect to statistics, democratic leadership is one of the
most preferred leadership, and it entails the following:
fairness, competence, creativity, courage, intelligence
and honesty.
LEADERSHIP STYLES
Collaborative
• A collaborative leader tries to involve everyone in the organization in
leadership. She is truly first among equals, in that she may initiate discussion,
pinpoint problems or issues that need to be addressed, and keep track of the
organization as a whole, rather than of one particular job. But decisions are
made through a collaborative process of discussion, and some form of either
majority or consensus agreement. Toward that end, a collaborative leader tries
to foster trust and teamwork among the staff as a whole.

• A collaborative leader has to let go of the need for control or power or status if
she is to be effective. Her goal is to foster the collaborative process, and to
empower the group - whether the staff and others involved in an organization,
or the individuals and organizations participating in a community initiative - to
control the vision and the workings of the organization. She must trust that, if
people have all the relevant information, they'll make good decisions...and she
must make sure that they have that information, and provide the facilitation
that assures those good decisions.

• Effects on the organization. Collaborative leadership comes as close as

possible to ensuring that members of the organization buy into its vision and
decisions, since they are directly involved in creating them. It comes closest to
the goal of servant leadership explored in the previous section, and it also
LEADERSHIP STYLES
Laissez-faire
• Laissez-faire leadership gives authority to
employees. According to azcentral, departments
or subordinates are allowed to work as they
choose with minimal or no interference. According
to research, this kind of leadership has been
consistently found to be the least satisfying and
least effective management style.
LEADERSHIP STYLES
Transformational
• Unlike other leadership styles, transformational
leadership is all about initiating change in
organizations, groups, oneself and others.
• Transformational leaders motivate others to do more
than they originally intended and often even more than
they thought possible. They set more challenging
expectations and typically achieve higher performance.
• Statistically, transformational leadership tends to have
more committed and satisfied followers. This is mainly
so because transformational leaders empower
followers.
LEADERSHIP STYLES
Transactional
• This is a leadership that maintains or continues the
status quo. It is also the leadership that involves an
exchange process, whereby followers get immediate,
tangible rewards for carrying out the leader’s orders.
Transactional leadership can sound rather basic, with its
focus on exchange.
• Being clear, focusing on expectations, giving feedback
are all important leadership skills. Transactional
leadership behaviours can include: clarifying what is
expected of followers’ performance; explaining how to
meet such expectations; and allocating rewards that are
contingent on meeting objectives.
LEADERSHIP STYLES
How do you determine what is an appropriate style?
• All that said, it is probably true that any leader, even a highly
collaborative one, uses a range of different styles at different times -
even, perhaps, in the course of a single day. Decisions have to be made,
major and minor crises have to be met, situations and conflicts have to
be resolved, often right at the moment. It is important to realize that
different styles may be appropriate at different times, and for different
purposes.
• In an emergency, no one would suggest sitting down and making a group
decision about what to do. There has to be decisive action, and one
person has to take it as soon as possible. As long as it's clear who that
person is, there should be no question about the philosophical issues
involved. By the same token, it's counter -productive to make decisions
about how people should do their jobs without at least consulting those
people about what might work best. Good leaders usually have a style
that they consciously use most of the time, but they're not rigid. They
change as necessary to deal with whatever comes up.
LEADERSHIP STYLES
How do you determine what is an appropriate style?
• There are at least two other factors that have to be considered when
choosing a leadership style. The first is that leadership style - at least at
the beginning - must, to at least some extent, be consistent with what
people in the organization expect. You can try to change their expectations
and perceptions of how an organization should be run - that's part of
leadership - but you have to start by meeting them at least halfway, or
you'll never get close enough to talk about it.
• If you're trying to turn a system that's been autocratic into a collaborative
one, you have to accept that most people in the system not only won't
welcome the change, and that some won't even understand what you're
suggesting. You also have to accept that they've probably developed their
own methods of getting around the rigidity of the system that they'll
continue to use, even if the system is no longer rigid. It can take a long
time just to get your ideas across, and longer to help people overcome
their suspicions and break old habits. A few may never be able to. You need
patience, and the willingness to act occasionally in ways you'd rather not.