Exploring Ways to Develop My Leadership Capabilities

My  leadership philosophy, as described in the previous post, is "inspiring the best in each one" including and in fact beginning with myself. This entails intentionally looking for opportunities to grow and develop as a leader and an individual.

Given are the core capabilities that I would like to keep working on developing and some of the tools that I believe will help in this development process.

Emotional Intelligence: This is a core capability that (as stated by Daniel Goleman) encompasses Self Awareness, Self Regulation, Motivation, Empathy, and Social Skills. Each of these is critical to one's success as an individual first and as a leader. While the first three relate to personal skills, the last two relate to interpersonal skills. The tools that will help develop EI is self observation, gathering honest feedback from others around, analyzing and assessing this feedback and performing self reflection to gain insights. Based on the insights, develop a plan of action. If required, I would also help from a qualified executive coach who can guide me through the process and track progress. 

Change leadership: This core capability goes to the very heart of leadership. The ability of initiate, lead, and sustain change successfully will continue to be a cornerstone of leadership especially more so in an ever evolving environment. Every change initiative is going to be unique in its own way and it will be important to keep updated with the latest change management tools and theories and thinking through how these can be used to the unique situations of my organization. This will involve reading change literature and keeping updated about the various change efforts in organizations around the world, how they are being handled and what lessons can be learnt from their successes or failure.

Engaging the broader organization: One of the traps many leaders fall into is having their head so high in the sky that they forget to feel their feet on the ground. They limit themselves to their "inner circle" and while that may be important, missing out on engaging and connect with the broader organization also limits them from feeling the pulse of the organization and tapping into the vast resources and ideas that exist out in the broader organization. As a leader, I would like to keep learning ways to stay connected with the broader organization, to hear the voices of those at the grassroots level and to make sure that they can hear me and get a chance to establish a personal connection. In today's scenario, it could be through an organizational networking site such as Yammer or impromptu walk-throughs on the floor, but maybe in the future new ways will come into being. I would like to stay updated with these and take advantage of them.