Personal & Professional Growth: 4 Leadership Skills

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4 Organizational Leadership Skills That Helped Me Grow Personally And Professionally

22 Feb 2022
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Leadership

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
~ Jack Welch

As the dynamic business world undergoes a rapid transition led by technology, organizations are increasingly looking at leaders to overcome challenges. The perception has been that organizations are over-managed and under-led.

Organizations are realizing that the modern business environment is uncertain, volatile and complex. To survive and grow in this scenario requires a different skillset and therein a different set leadership skills and capabilities. The way forward is to focus on leadership development. The notion that leadership development should be restricted to the higher echelons is slowly being discarded. Employees across the length and breadth of the organization are being called upon to take up roles and decision making that is in consonance with corporate strategy and culture. It is important, therefore, that besides functional skills they are also equipped with soft skills that are relational.

Gaps in traditional management education are, therefore, becoming evident and there is a need to structure learning to fill these gaps and cater to this emergent demand. Whether one is looking at an entry-level position or looking to move up the career ladder, acquiring leadership skills alongside functional ones would be a valuable asset.

This brings us to the question “whether leaders are born or are they made? The jury is still out on this. Though this question has been hotly debated over time, past experience tells us that leadership skills are developed and learnt over time and through experience. In a business scenario, organizational leadership skills are inculcated through experience, development and practice. Learning these skills as part of management education is the way forward. The transition from a conventional functional role to one that requires this skillset assumes importance as we look at the cutting edge programs, such as the ones offered by SOIL Institute of Management.

My Growth Through the SOIL Leadership Program

Having completed my B.Sc. in Business Studies with a focus in Marketing for the U.K., I landed up with a dream job as an executive in Ogilvy, one of the largest advertising agencies. Soon I decided that the way forward was to get exposed to a wider canvas in a sales and marketing role. I took up a role at EICOP SARL, a commodity trading company looking after business development. A linear vision to career advancement led to pursuing an MBA course, at that time perceived to be a faster path to success and growth. Armed with my vision of going up in the corporate hierarchy, my goal was to pursue a management course from one of the top MBA colleges in India, one that would catapult me to a leadership role. I looked to build on my previous education through an MBA course that would enable my career to transition, equip me with skills that would be industry relevant and help me in the long run. The PGPM at SOIL Institute of Management offered me just what I was looking for. A relatively new institute, it had a vision of “Building Leaders with Character, Competence & Enthusiasm.” This vision aligned perfectly with my goals and I took the right decision to leave the traditional MBA colleges in India, for SOIL.

SOIL’s one year MBA – PGPM has been designed to address challenges faced by young executives and helps them with additional skills required to address them. I was able to return to the corporate world after a short hiatus, armed with a thought process that helped me to think differently in a leadership role. The course itself is unique as the pedagogy is designed with a holistic mix of liberal arts, psychological transitions through experiential learning, case studies, and more. The 1 year MBA – PGPM programme focuses on building soft skills besides reinforcing functional ones. As I look back, the experience has helped me not only professionally, but personally too.

While I have taken a lot from the one year spent at SOIL, I am singling out the four organizational leadership skills that have contributed to my career and personal growth.

Effective Communication – Effective leadership requires excelling in communication. Leaders tend to inspire their co-workers through empowerment and leading them to common business objectives. Adaptation, Listening, being transparent, lucid, and feedback are traits that I learnt through a well-structured teaching methodology. Learning through case discussion improved communication skills as we interacted with each other to arrive at solutions and each one was invited to present in front of the entire class. Importance of communication has also helped me to understand its value in my personal interactions with my family, friends and children.

Empathy – Empathy is a soft skill that is an important performance indicator in leadership style. It refers to the ability to understand others’ needs and to be sensitive to their thoughts and feelings. Working with teams, one often encounters stress on the professional and personal level and accomplishing goals and objectives requires an appreciative approach. We underwent some innovative experiences as part of the program such as the visit to Dharamshala where we worked with villagers and NGOs to understand and document their problems. Working with them helped us develop compassion as we saw their challenges at close quarters. Project work with NGOs helped us to give back to society in a small way besides building a sense of compassion. Today, I am able to relate to others problems both at the workplace and on a personal level and this helps me immensely in my decision making and considering others perspectives.

Teamwork – An effective leader facilitates the process of teamwork. Teamwork on the other hand helps in achieving a synergy between individuals whereby they can combine their talents and energy to achieve business objectives. Developing talent and a collaborative approach is key to successful team building and the leader should look at this area in right earnest to enable team building.

Once again, the exposure to real business situations through case learning inculcated a habit of working in a team and close understanding of group dynamics. Arriving at a collaborative solution was the culmination in great teamwork. Besides, participating in a Theatre workshop as part of the SOIL curriculum also helped me to build an understanding that achieving goals was all about teamwork and trust apart from inculcating other values.

Hard Work and Perseverance – Leaders need to be industrious and persevere to set examples for others. Hard working leaders often find a way to overcome obstacles at work and therein lies their ability to inspire and lead others to achieving common goals. Setting examples fosters emulation by co-workers and brings out the best in the team. It is obvious that an one year MBA is all about time management and hard work. Juggling between various events, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities at SOIL was a great learning experience that required me to be on top of situations and balancing them.

To Conclude

My journey post the 1 year MBA – PGPM at SOIL has been eventful to say the least. I have gone up the corporate ladder from a Management Trainee at Kohler to Senior Manager (Growth & Expansion) at Simbhaoli Sugars Limited. Along the way, I have had the opportunity to lead people and apply organization leadership skills imbibed at SOIL during the one-year MBA Program. My professional development has been aided in a major way by the application of my experiences at SOIL Institute of Management and its unique teaching methodology. I remain committed to the cause of leadership learning having seen the benefits as a professional and more importantly as a human being. A leadership style that moves away from binary choices to one that encompasses wisdom and compassion is helping me to realize the potential of people at all levels.

Karan Sood
PGPM

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