Leadership Skills for Legislators

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Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

I was very happy and it is good to see our legislators sitting in the classrooms of IIMB the elite management institute, trying to learn the new way of social management. Yes, ofcourse they need it.

Who else can make this happen other than our great Indian Inspiration Dr.Abdul Kalam sir. He is an amazing Indian who deeply energies and inspires the youth of this nation to a greater level. I don't think there is anyother leader who could create this inspiration and passion throughout the nation. I am sure every school going children knows who he is and what's his dream 2020 is all about.

When Karnataka Legislators decided to take up a 3 days management class from our former president and some senior professors of IIMB, there is a hope that they would have at least picked up some basic managment lessons to implement in their constituencies.

Acording to Kalam, a leader must have the following eight qualities:

1. Vision
2. Passion to bring true the vision
3. Ability to travel on unexplored path
4. Know how to manage success and failure
5. Courage to take decisions
6. Nobility in management
7. Transparency in management
8. Work with integrity

The main problem I see is , as a country we have labeled politics as service to the society. During the days of independence people entering into politics were considered to be sacrificing their personal and family priorities for the sake of National priorities. Now even after 60 years of independence our politicians still think that they are doing a great service to the people and the society, while actually doing all possible things to keep their personal and family priorities on the top. I believe that this irony of thought and action should be fundamentally changed.

Why can't we consider at least our elected representatives as an executive of a company, who is accountable, perform, deliver his promises, fold his sleeves and get into action.

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With Love,
Anbusivam

Becoming a Motivational Leader

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Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

When I was browsing through my older folders this evening, I just came across this very interesting piece of information from Brain Tracy on Becoming a Motivational Leader.

Create a Big Vision:

To become a motivational leader, you start with motivating yourself. You motivate yourself with a big vision, and as you move progressively toward its realization, you motivate and enthuse others to work with you to fulfill that vision.

Set High Standards:

You exhibit absolute honesty and integrity with everyone in everything you do. You are the kind of person others admire and respect and want to be like. You set a standard that others aspire to. You live in truth with yourself and others so that they feel confident giving you their support and their commitment.

Face Your Fears:

You demonstrate courage in everything you do by facing doubts and uncertainties and moving forward regardless. You put up a good front even when you feel anxious about the outcome. You don't burden others with your fears and misgivings. You keep them to yourself. You constantly push yourself out of your comfort zone and in the direction of your goals. And no matter how bleak the situation might appear, you keep on keeping on with a smile.

Be Realistic About Your Situation:

You are intensely realistic. You refuse to engage in mental games or self-delusion. You encourage others to be realistic and objective about their situations as well. You encourage them to realize and appreciate that there is a price to pay for everything they want. They have weaknesses that they will have to overcome, and they have standards that they will have to meet, if they want to survive and thrive in a competitive market.

Motivating people properly will bring out their best:

Since you have built self-esteem and self-confidence in your employees, sales and output have been on the rise. When I started unlocking the full potential in all of my employees, performance and output have increased.

Motivating People to Peak Performance:

By learning my techniques you can get extraordinary performance out of ordinary people. With this video you will learn the 21 best methods ever discovered to manage and motivate other.

Accept Responsibility:

You accept complete responsibility for results. You refuse to make excuses or blame others or hold grudges against people who you feel may have wronged you. You say, "If it's to be, it's up to me." You repeat over and over the words, "I am responsible. I am responsible. I am responsible."

Take Vigorous Action:

Finally, you take action. You know that all mental preparation and character building is merely a prelude to action. It's not what you say but what you do that counts. The mark of the true leader is that he or she leads the action. He or she is willing to go first. He or she sets the example and acts as the role model. He or she does what he or she expects others to do.

Strive For Excellence:

You become a motivational leader by motivating yourself. And you motivate yourself by striving toward excellence, by committing yourself to becoming everything you are capable of becoming. You motivate yourself by throwing your whole heart into doing your job in an excellent fashion. You motivate yourself and others by continually looking for ways to help others to improve their lives and achieve their goals. You become a motivational leader by becoming the kind of person others want to get behind and support in every way.

Your main job is to take complete control of your personal evolution and become a leader in every area of your life. You could ask for nothing more, and you should settle for nothing less.

"It's not what you say but what you do that counts" is my favorite thought provoking statement in this article, which I think is the essence of a being a Leader.

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love,
Anbusivam

Great Leaders Wallpapers.

Hello Friends,

Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.

Came across some nice wall papers from www.leadershipnow.com.

"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we have gone." - Winston Churchill

"No man is good enough to govern another man, without that others consent." - Abraham Lincoln

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King Jr.

Find here the Great Leaders Series

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With Love
Anbusivam

A Meditation on Winning Habits

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Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.

A very interesting and though provoking article I came across in SiliconIndia Magazine by Dr. Santanu Paul Vice President, Global Delivery Operations.

The last decade has seen engineers of all dispositions gravitating towards IT - like bees towards fresh blossom. Everyone knows that the profession pays remarkably well, and people are buzzing about the chances to catch a piece of the action. Interactions with aspiring IT professionals indicate that many do not have a clear view of what capabilities are expected of them, and which character traits are likely to accelerate careers and unlock growth opportunities. This article is an attempt to shed some light on the ‘winning traits’ that separate good IT professionals from ordinary ones.

First and foremost, a genuine passion and aptitude for software as a technology is an absolute must. A burning desire to become a master craftsperson is the hallmark of great software professionals. Couple that with high ability to learn and you have a winning combination. Regrettably, as the profession has become more lucrative, it has attracted mediocre dabblers and mercenaries who care little about the profession itself, except for the financial opportunity it represents. This must stop, or else over time we will have to witness the dilution our position as an IT-savvy nation.

If aptitude is a must, attitude is paramount. A ‘can-do’ mindset works wonders. The knowledge economy needs people who are self-directed and self-motivated. Most IT companies are moving too fast to have the time to baby-sit those that need excessive supervision and maintenance, are overly defensive or cautious, or for whom the glass is always half-empty. Because time to result is key, the industry disproportionately rewards the positive-minded; people who see opportunities in problems, not problems in opportunities.

Effective communication is just as critical. People who listen, speak, write, and present clearly and meaningfully in English have an unfair advantage over those that do not. Effective communication is not about imbibing Western accents – it is about clarity of thought, articulation, and purpose. It is also about the ability to listen to others with respect and learn from their viewpoints and opinions.

In his classic book ‘Emotional Intelligence’, Daniel Goleman writes about the importance of EQ, or emotional quotient. In no industry is EQ more valuable than in IT; after all, the lifeblood of the industry is effective collaboration between bright, capable, and sensitive people across service providers, customers, and customers’ customers. If you are blessed with a high degree of empathy and self-awareness, the IT industry is for you. For this reason alone, one can conjecture that women have an edge over men in the IT profession.

The next winning trait is teamwork. Every great achievement in the IT profession is a direct result of exquisite teamwork. In fact, nothing is more detrimental to an IT project than a self-absorbed IT professional bent on being a hero and engaging in one-upmanship. If you have ever watched a pit crew in action during a Formula One race, or admired the harmonious muscularity of a professional rowing team, you have a very good idea of what high performance IT teams look like.

Natural leadership skills are always at a premium. The ability to inspire and motivate fellow team members propels young IT professionals very quickly towards higher levels of responsibility. The ability to ascribe success to teammates and the willingness to take responsibility for failures is the hallmark of a natural leader. An IT professional with strong technical competency, natural leadership skills, and a desire to serve team members selflessly is guaranteed a glorious career in the profession.

Last but not the least, a commitment to global citizenship and pluralism is a must. The IT industry is truly global, and professionals that are comfortable with cross-cultural dialog have a major advantage. This usually means an appreciation for diversity, a willingness to welcome and even celebrate differences between cultures and individuals, and a ready acceptance of the fact that both the East and the West must learn from each other. There is no such thing as a Bangalore-class or India-class professional. Either you are a world-class professional, or you are irrelevant.

Here is the original link.
http://www.siliconindia.com/guestcontributor/guestdesc.php?69

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With Love
Anbusivam

PepsiCo's Leadership Philosophy of Performance with Purpose

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Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, PepsiCo's CEO, named frequently as one of the most powerful business leaders in the world, listed as fifth most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine, named among Time's most influential people in 2007 - 2008, spoke about the key roles that PepsiCo's employees play in realizing the vision of "Performance with Purpose".

Nooyi says, she believes that each one of PepsiCo’s 185,000 employees is a leader. There are two reasons for this. First, PepsiCo is a meritocracy. Hard work gets recognized. Second, PepsiCo has an entrepreneurial culture, so people have the ability to take the initiative to develop good ideas.

These are some skills that Nooyi believes to be the hallmarks of a good leader:

1. Competence:
You must be an expert in your function or area of expertise. You will become known for that.

2. Take a stand:
You must be known for your courage and confidence to act and say what you believe is right.

3. Communication skills:
Communication skills are critical. You can never over-invest in them.

4. Coaching:
Surround yourself with good mentors. Listen. Learn. Your mentor is a major force.

5. Your moral compass:
Have the strength and courage to do what’s morally right, not what’s expedient. Your moral compass must be your true north.

She also says that, Companies that want to grow and prosper must attract the best people to come to work for them. That means having a work environment that inspires people, motivates them, and brings out their best.

According to her, it’s important to create an inclusive culture: a place where people can “bring their whole selves to work.” A place where diverse values, beliefs, and practices are treated with respect. It’s also vital that people are shown respect by speaking to them with truth and candor. Give people honest feedback. Let them know where they stand. Be clear about what they need to do to improve or to reach their career goals.

Find below her interview for ASTD's training and development magazine T+D. --> Performance with Purpose

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With Love
Anbusivam

Taking Ownership of What We Do.

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Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.

I am writing this after a sleepless night....!!! Phew, Last evening, I found out a major mistake I've made in my work.....that's going to end up in some serious issues. So, I've a lot of fun and learnings awaiting next week. The best part of it is, I got an interesting thread to write here this morning.

Now, these kinds of situations could happen to all of us, but the important point I want to highlight here is, how do we handle them..??? Yes, of course one gets upset, panicked, irked with so many other nervous feelings. The moment you drain into them, situations becomes more and more complex to handle. Any common man will go through all these, what will make us different is how are we equipped to quickly come out of these situations to think for an objective solution or a corrective action at the earliest.

When we talk about Leadership, Taking Ownership is the most essential quality of any leader. Most of the time I’ve seen people start finding faults on others, blame on the situations and circumstances. How easy is it for us to just kick the ball out of our court..? Taking owner ship is all about accountability of both good and bad including our mistakes, excuses and failures. Taking ownership is just to point ourselves whether things go right or wrong. Yes, we all know this and we’ve read a lot on taking ownership. Though we are aware of what it means to take ownership, we are panicked when put into a real situation. In spite of all our knowledge on sailing in life, especially at times of rough weather we tend to loose control of our ship.

Simple, the possibility of looking at ourselves and correcting our course of journey becomes only possible when we stop the ball in our court. Although moving it onto others may give us a quick relief as it might take of some pressure on that moment, it really becomes tough to take further corrective actions as we become impotent to the situation. When we own our actions and attitude we can easily put right our mistakes and overcome failures, I am sure we experience a surge of potency and a sense of pride.

We can create a huge turn around in our life just by a small turn around to ourselves in taking ownership.

Affirmations we can use:
* I am accountable for all my actions.
* I take complete responsibility.
* I see what needs to be done, and do it.

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With Love
Anbusivam

NextGenWomen's "Women 2.0 Summit"

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Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.

Starting from my beloved mother, dearest sister, admirable maths teacher till my current project leader, there were lot of women who made and are making my life wonderful. I take this great opportunity to express my thanks and gratitude to all those women out there.

Happy Women's Day to all you wonderful women out there!!!

The SmartTechie is organizing "Women 2.0 Summit" on March 10, 2008. International Women's Day celebrates the progress women have made economically, socially and politically. This unique one-day Summit is organized in the honour of International Women's day. Women 2.0 Summit provides a platform for like-minded women to learn, develop, connect, and network so that you can harness your inner qualities and bring out the best in you as an effective and authentic leader.

At this summit, nearly 1000 women technology professionals will come together to celebrate the great strides women are making in their companies and in the business world. It's obvious that diversity has an enormous, tangible meaning. Highly successful professional women from the technology industry will share their knowledge, experiences and insights to help empower more women to achieve their goals. At the Summit, there would be four panel discussions on: Ascending the Corporate Ladder, The Lady Entrepreneur, The NextGen Developers, The Intrapreneurs. This exciting summit will consist of lectures, skill building exercises, and group discussions. Highly interactive and engaging, we assure you that the one-day summit will be useful, insightful and lots of fun too.

When:
March 10, 2008
9.00AM to 6.00PM

Where:
Ambedkar Bhavan
Millers Road
Bangalore 560 001
Karnataka, India

Register Here:
NextGenWomen's "Women 2.0 Summit"

Speakers Include:
Anagha Gadgil, Technical Manager, Avaya India

Aparna Pujar, Director - Media Products, Yahoo! India

Bharati Jacob, Managing Partner, Seedfund

C Mahalingam (Mali), EVP & Chief People Officer, Symphony Services

Dr. Ramanujan Kashi, Senior Research Scientist, Avaya India

Jessie Paul, Chief Marketing Officer, Wipro Technologies

Mangala Gowri, Research Scientist - India Research Labs, IBM

Mrinalini Ingram,Senior Director, Finance, Globalization Center East, Cisco

Pamela Kumar, Director - India STG Engineering Labs, IBM

Sapna Maheswari,Developer, ThoughtWorks Technologies

Sharada Satrasala, Director, Strategic Supplier Management, TI

Vani Kola, Managing Director, India, NEA-IndoUS Ventures

Vasantha Erraguntla, Senior Engineering Manager, Intel

At this summit, nearly 1000 women technology professionals will come together to celebrate the great strides women are making in their companies and in the business world. An excellent opportunity especially for Women. Don't miss it.

With Love,
Anbusivam

To Be Successful Identify Your Weakness

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Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.

Yes, If we want to be successful we must be willing to objectively identify our weakness. But, not only identifying, the next important step is to sincerely work hard to overcome those weakness and come out stronger than ever.

The most common question asked in interviews is, “what are your strengths and weaknesses…?” and second part is always the most dreaded part of the question. Everyone has weaknesses, but who wants to admit them? Most of us would readily come up with a long list of our strengths and suddenly stumble when we have to list our weakness.

It’s all well and good to talk about our strengths, but every coin has two sides. The purpose of evaluating our weaknesses isn’t to induce misery or frustration. But it can prove to be a very eye-opening experience. And it opens the door for a great deal of awareness and improvement. We should be analyzing not only our strengths, most importantly our weakness very often, only to understand and take necessary corrective action.

I’ve seen people being diffident about their weakness, and drown into the mode of insecurity when someone asks about their weaknesses. If we are unaware of our weakness, where is the way to deal with it? Accepting our own weakness is not really a great aspect, its simply being honest to ourselves. The moment we acknowledge our weakness, then there is a possibility towards overcoming them and evolving as a stronger individual.

Let’s look at things objectively, recognize and admit weaknesses, make conscious decisions on what to do about them. Until we are subjectively attached with our emotional insecure feelings, there is no way we can understand our weakness.

Let's be objective to identify, understand and fix our weaknesses to be successful.

With Love,
Anbusivam

Excerpts from SiliconIndia Leadership Summit

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Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.

Isn’t it great, to have leaders of top companies sharing their leadership wisdom on a single stage. Yes, SliconIndia magazine made true in its SiliconIndia Leadership Summit held on Friday, 31 August.

One could see CEO’s and managers of big corporate houses, starting from pioneers of technology to small startups striving to take technology into a new higher level. I must say I am one among very few participants below 30yrs old. Leaders from different walk of lives added additional appeal to the summit.

Here are few excerpts from the summit and my learning’s out of spending a day with great leaders and visionaries. And the best part was none of them proclaimed themselves as leaders, instead they were humane and humble. Humility was the most commonly used word and every one of them insisted Humility as a must have quality to become a successful leader.

Sharad Sharma, CEO, Yahoo! India R&D gave first keynote speech on “From Offshoring to Incubation”. He talked in detail about, the importance of moving up in the global value chain by stepping ahead in to product incubation in place of offering only services. He said emerging markets are highly fragmented, hence one should come with niche solutions with customer focused design and innovative marketing. Only way to sustain and succeed is to out innovate in respective core domains by quick accelerating innovation, transfer of ideas and technologies within companies across global design centres and creating new products in close proximity to the emerging markets. He also insisted Leaders should encourage in bringing up “Intrapreneurs” with in their company to move fast ahead.

Ramesh Srinivasan, EVP, Bally Technologies India gave his keynote address on “Identifying Great Leaders Early”. He said “What I am today is lot of impressions people left on me”. He insisted the importance of identifying early leaders in a organization and the need for grooming them into future leaders. Though I personally couldn’t agree with few of his points, he gave a totally different perspective about early leadership.

Here are few key qualities of an early leader:

Humble and paranoid (Again Humility took first place)
Excellent work ethics
Great at improving
Can do attitude
Customer pleasers and not boss pleasers
Striking common sense
Challenging attitude
Respect for others
Aggressive commitments (will honor most of them)
Will not win popularity contests among team members
Peers will complain
Very good teachers
Not great long term thinkers (keen in completing the task in hand)
Attention to details
….and so on.


Dr. Vivek Mansingh, Country Manager, Dell India R&D enthralled the audience with his keynote speech on “Leadership through success: The Ramayana Way!”. He said we in India always “over manage and under lead” and I personally feel the same, as that’s how we’ve been learning from early school days.

He started with Daniel Coleman’s research paper "Leadership That Gets Results" published in Harvard Business Review. He also emphasised “Emotional Intelligence” as a key quality of a leader. Then went on to Ramayana from which he took few verses, where in Rama explains to Vibhisahan, what leadership means in a metaphorical way.

Rama said,

Battle field - Have a Noble cause or worthy result for fighting the battle.
4 wheels of the chariot – character, courage, ethics and valor
Horses to drive – strength, energy, passion, discrimination and empathy
Reins that’ll control – forgiveness, compassion, equanimity and consistency
Flag on the top – integrity and righteousness
Armours to fight the battle – right skills and attitude

Of course, Vivek was surrounded with the usual controversial topics in Ramayana, and lot of heated discussion went on during the lunch as well.

Dr. Biswadip (Bobby) Mitra, Managing Director, Texas Instruments India gave his keynote speech on “Leadership traits for emerging markets”. Bobby said volatility and uncertainty are the main characteristics of any emerging market. One who can plan accordingly and play effectively to mitigate the risks involved around uncertainties will emerge as a market leader in his domain of expertise. He said anchoring on customers, making right judgments/decisions on time to market neither too early nor too late and quality of the product will alone decide leaders in an emerging markets. He went on to add that leadership styles in developed countries will not suit our needs as we are totally different economically and culturally as well. Hence, we should learn from western leaders, apply accordingly in our context to be a successful leader.

There were interesting panel discussions on - how successful leaders think, great leaders take risk, managing the most talented and managing leadership derailers.

Overall, SiliconIndia Leadership Summit was an excellent platform to learn directly from the real life experiences and insights of great Indian corporate leaders.

Thank You SiliconIndia!!!


With Love,
Anbusivam