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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

Notes from my heart on leadership!

Arun Subramony
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Arun Subramony
Leaders ‘by design’ are visionaries and almost always inspire their teams or followers. Beyond vision and inspiration, successful leaders also do something very powerful – align!

It is extremely important for a leader to align his or her interests and styles of functioning with those of others around them so perfectly as to achieve a well-harmonized togetherness in whatever they are engaged in. In my 18 years of work life in IT industry, I have found the following four abilities indispensable to achieve recognition and success for any leader working in a team environment:

Ability to work together: This is the most fundamental and non negotiable phase of alignment required in a team consisting of members with all diverse attributes (gender, geography, culture and others) - irrespective of the positions they hold in the organization, or the roles they play in the execution of a particular task or in handling a particular situation. This also helps the organization to be agile and engaged.

Ability to play together: I always look for the camaraderie and fun quotient in my teams, to assess my organization’s health index. Team members who engage and connect on a social plane beyond work create a fun filled environment. Cross functional team members getting together to explore hobbies; to unleash talent and celebrate occasions or achievements beyond work is a good metric to determine the ‘fun’ quotient. A leader’s ability to relate to his or her team as a friend is probably very critical to the success of any organization in the knowledge economy.

Ability to learn together: Once we achieve the first two phases of alignment, we have almost cracked the code and probably crossed the tipping point. Recall our elementary school days – boys and girls learning together in an egoless environment. Creating that egoless mindset helps the team to have the ability to learn from each other. I often share my learning experiences with my team, from people that I interact with – my cab driver, my travel agent, or my friend’s three year old daughter. This attitude helps team members to listen to new ideas, or an alternative method of solving a problem, irrespective of where they come from.


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