24 Jul
Blogs, Leadership

10 Resources that’ll Make You Better at Leadership

Leadership is an important managerial quality that guides or inspires a set of people or an organization towards a goal of creating something new. A successful leader knows how, when, and where to use its resources. However, everyone is not born with this quality. You must continuously learn and evolve to become a good leader. Here is a list of 10 resources that are easily accessible and will help you become a successful leader –

  • Online Courses and Certifications

There are many online courses and certifications available to acquire leadership skills. The best part of these online courses is that you can learn about staying at home and at your own comfortable pace. These courses are quite affordable as compared to joining a business school. Some of the courses are free as well. Also, you can enroll in many courses at the same time and get lifetime access. Generally, these courses are affiliated with a university or known college and you receive certification at the end of the course which will add value to your resume. The known online resources you can get started with are –

  • Coursera
  • LinkedIn
  • Udemy
  • MIT OpenCourseWare
  • Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
  • Cornell Online Executive Leadership 

Advice and Quotes from real people

It is not only books or courses that will give you an insight into leadership skills. You can also get it from a mentor or advisor who can help you to think out of the box. Mentors can be any person. He can be a college professor, a business owner, or an expert from an online platform. There are many online platforms and apps which provide a great leadership opportunity to connect with like-minded people and discuss ideas and knowledge. Real talk and Mara mentor are such apps that connect you to a vast list of professionals at different career stages which can help you to share their knowledge and experience. These apps support both iOS and Android users. 

Advisors on the other hand are individuals whom we know and share deeper bonds. These sets of people know their strengths and weaknesses and accordingly coach us to improve in areas where we lag. You can even hire a consultant which is specially hired to develop leadership skills in you and boost your confidence to become a successful leader. 

Business Schools

Another valuable resource that can sow the seeds of leadership in you is business school. It is a traditional way to gain knowledge and experience and is popular amongst those who want to change their career path or are fresh out of school. It is definitely expensive, time-consuming, and doesn’t guarantee any return. You might have to prepare and qualify for a written exam or an interview to get through. However, you tend to make a lot of contacts during a business school program. 

There are many business schools around the globe –

  • Columbia Business School
  • IMD Business School
  • IESE Business School, Spain
  • Insead Business School, France
  • London Business School, UK
  • Stanford Graduate School of Business, USA
  • Centre for creative leadership, USA

Real-time Feedback

Feedback is a great tool for a leader as it gives him a chance to change and evolve himself. The leader is self-aware of what changes he needs to do to improve on his skill and learn from his mistakes. However, it is difficult to find people in your workplace who can give genuine feedback and guide you on how to improve on it. 

Books

Reading is one of the most valuable ways to acquire any skill. It helps us gain knowledge about the subject and also about other’s experiences in that field. There are tons of books and resources available in the market on leadership. 

Blogs and Websites

Apart from online courses and certifications, you can get access to vast data available on websites and blogs related to your area of expertise. These blogs and websites give valuable and latest information available in your field. This information can be used to brush your skills and learn new insight which you cannot get in books or schools. 

Team and workspace

A leader or an entrepreneur should be an expert in his field and ready to gain information from any resource. Knowledge doesn’t come in a single day but it is a continuous journey. A leader has to learn each day and share the ideas and thoughts with his team. It is not necessary that he will have all the answers. Rather he should be ready to tap knowledge from his team and create a culture of learning amongst them. He should be ready to take critical feedback from his team and workspace and improve on it. 

Conferences and workshops

Conferences are a great way to meet and learn from leaders. It helps us to gain the latest information in that field and how we can apply it in our life. There is also an opportunity to network with like-minded people. There are many workshops and training sessions organized during the conference which help in gaining hands-on experience. It helps in changing your perspective when you meet people during workshops or conferences. 

Failures

You might think about how a failure can be a leadership opportunity? However, it is a proven fact that all the Stalwarts have faced many failures in their life but they didn’t succumb to these failures. Instead, use these failures as a learning tool and grow strong to become successful leaders. A failure teaches us gratitude and makes us mentally tough. It gives us new challenges and helps us to learn from our mistakes and evolve as a leader. So next time when you fail, don’t get disheartened. Treat it as a part of your journey, learn from it and leave it behind. 

Volunteering

Another leadership opportunity which you can gain is through volunteering. It is a great way to give back to your society and cultivate a leader in you. Volunteering helps to elevate your spirits, increase your network and help in building leadership skills. You are able to improve on your ability to solve problems and soft skills too. In addition, volunteering also helps in boosting your confidence and prepares you for your future challenges. 

Conclusion

Leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders – a true quote by Tom Peters, who is a co-author of the bestselling book ‘In search of excellence’. Leadership is a continuous process that improves our thinking by continuously practicing, learning, and preparing ourselves for the next challenges. Hope our list of resources will motivate you to self-learn and cultivate the quality of leadership in you.

24 Jul
Blogs, Leadership

11 Powerful Traits of a Successful Leader

Tim Cook, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Reed Hastings, Mary Barra, and the list is endless… What made these people successful leaders? Were they born to be successful or was it something else? Can these traits be acquired? If you want to know answers to all these questions, you are reading the right article. 

Someone has rightly said,

 “A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others.” 

With the passing of time, companies come and go but some companies last for ages and the secret behind these companies is great leadership. Great leaders have the ability to motivate their employees and help them to visualize their goals and sync them with that of the organization. They have the charisma to hold the employees, investors, and consumers together and build a company with a clear vision. Tim Cook, the CEO of APPLE, Sheryl Sandberg the COO of Facebook, Iger the executive chairman and former CEO of Disney, Hastings the cofounder of Netflix, Mary Barra, the CEO of GM motors are all examples of great leaders and visionaries. Not all of these leaders were born leaders but they acquired these leadership traits with passing time. There is no fixed path that they took, which leads to success but what is common amongst them are these 11 traits, which help them achieve what they want. 

So let’s have a look at these 11 powerful traits behind successful leadership –

  • Effective Communicator

Successful leaders are effective communicators and they know when to talk, how to talk, and when to listen. They can clearly explain the goals of the organization or special tasks to their employees in an effective manner. The leaders must clearly explain the task to the employees and set an expectation for them. The communication should happen at all levels – one to one, with the entire department or staff via direct, email, phone, or social media. 

A leader should be approachable and should involve people from all levels. He should be a good listener and help people to fix their problems whether professional or personal level. 

  • Goal Setter

The leader sets clear goals for their team and organization and motivates and influences the team to achieve them. He will never give up on things easily and always find ways or solutions to achieve his goals. 

  • Accountable and Responsible

Good leaders hold themselves responsible for any mistake or failure. They set an example for the entire team to follow him/her if they have committed a mistake. They support their team members and encourage them to experiment and innovate even if they fail. 

  • Visionary

A visionary is a person who knows the future and makes concrete goals that will benefit the organization. He knows how to strike a balance between stability and growth and how much to take the risk. He foresees the change around him and takes the necessary steps and approaches to adapt to the change. The leader has to be strong in making necessary decisions but not rigid in case there is a better possibility available. 

  • Fostering Creativity and Innovation

Just like Darwin’s theory of evolution, you have to continuously adapt and evolve over time and if you will fail to evolve, you will perish. The same rule is applicable to organizations. If a company is rigid about its own ideology and does not evolve or create things that the market wants, it will soon perish. A leader has to foster creativity and innovation in its employees and constantly train them with new technologies. When the team will grow, the leader will grow and so will the company. 

  • Effective Relationship

Building relationships is not restricted to the professional level. A true leader shares a personal relationship with the employee. The relationship should be so strong that an employee can depend on his boss for anything. 

  • Influencer

A leader influences and inspires their employees to work towards the company’s mission and goals. It encourages people to become self-driven towards the company’s vision. It empowers people with goals and motivates them continuously to strive to achieve them. This is a true leadership trait. But it cannot be achieved just by communicating. The leaders must lead by example. He should set examples for his team so they can follow. 

  • Empathy

Another vital leadership competency is empathy. A leader understands the needs of his team and is aware of their feelings and thoughts. With this quality, he can understand his team members well and bring the best out of them. A leader should empathize and support their team members in need. A leader can understand the root cause of poor performance and can help the employee improve and excel. It also gives a chance to grow the relationship between employer and employee. 

  • Integrity

Integrity refers to trust, reliability, and honesty. This is a very important trait required to be successful in any field. You need to be trustworthy and you need to be surrounded by people who are trustworthy. Once you build this trait within and around yourself, you function as a strong team and no one can stop you from achieving your goals. 

Leaders with integrity take accountability for any mistake done by them or by their team. They try to understand why mistakes happened, learn from them, and make new paths to achieve their targets rather than blaming others. They need to drive their team and organization with integrity and carve proper practices, methodologies, and values to create a good working environment for the organization. 

  • Quick learner

True leaders are quick observers who can perceive the problem, quick thinkers to understand what caused the problem, and quick in finding solutions. They have good analytical and critical thinking skills and they adapt well to new technology or uncertainties. Their constant curiosity to know sets them apart from the crowd. They always desire to learn new and implement them quickly in the current scenario. 

  • Team builder

The ability to create and lead a successful team is vital for any leader. The performance of any leader is determined by the performance of the team. A leader should constantly fuel his team to achieve the set goals and should celebrate every little success of the team. Even if the team fails, he should take accountability for the failure and never blame his team member. Also, building the same culture within the team is also very important for the success of the organization. Practicing integrity and empathy within a team will always help a leader to achieve a strong and reliable team. 

Conclusion

There is no fixed path or road to success. But to achieve the success you need to practice these traits consistently. You need to hold people together and you need to build teams in order to achieve your mission. You need to learn from mistakes and evolve from them. You need to be ready for future challenges and that will define – who you are.

28 May
Blogs, Leadership

5 Roles and Responsibilities of a Team Leader

In the present super-competitive business environment, the managers, executives, and chiefs must have different leadership skills to promote a healthy work environment in the organization. After learning comprehensive leadership skills and get trained for the specific, incorporating them in the workplace is a must. 

With leadership skills, you can work on resolving the conflicts between peers, you can utilize techniques that will help in improving the productivity of employees, you can drive activities that can enhance their work performance, you can lead the changes in the organization, and whatnot. 

There are some key roles and responsibilities of a team leader that will help them define their job and organize the work structure. Some of the major roles and responsibilities of a team leader are mentioned below: 

1. Managing the Admin & Operational Work 

From all the paperwork to emails, meetings, performance monitoring to reporting, a team leader role falls under such category. It is crucial to take responsibility for the teamwork, and their achievements. Of course, a team won’t be handling such a work part, but it’s just that team should strictly adhere to the process, follow the time-management technique and ease your workload as much as possible.

2. Motivate the Team

Despite the fact that you lead and motivate the team, there are substantial leadership skills and qualities that can drive performance as well. They are:

– Training and tutoring 

– Conveying objectives and targets 

– Setting targets 

– Timely feedback

– Team meetings 

– Working on Personal Development Plans

– Sharing ideas through Presentations & reports 

– Supporting social and well-being exercises 

– Rewards & Incentives 

Your team will possibly meet their objectives when they feel motivated & supported by team leaders. You need a strong handle on their individual targets, how well they’re performing and giving them feedback, and then providing the right coaching accordingly. There are some team members who’ll need more support from you as a leader in comparison to others. Just make sure you fulfill all those requirements and motivate them to do better. 

3. Manage Performance 

As a team leader, your roles and responsibilities include performance management. Basically, it’s two-fold:

– You have to praise your team members interpersonal skills and analyze their job, work, and how they perform throughout. 

– It is important to keep a close check on the quality of their work, what exactly they are delivering and how it’s making an impact in the organization. 

Performance management is pivotal. Hence, make sure that as a team leader, your approach towards it should be clear and precise. And, when you are keeping a close check on their performance, you’ll be able to justify your role and what could be improved. 

4. Problem-Solving Skill 

Basically, it’s more of a people management skill. Solving conflicts, finding the cause of the problem, uniting different personalities, that’s what real art is. It is important to empathize with both sides and solve the problems among the team members. 

Rather than punishments and sorry games, you can try different techniques to solve the conflicts. Some of them are mentioned below: 

– Introduce some new rules of working together 

– Separate tasks to avoid any sort of clash or conflict 

– Try to incorporate meditation in the daily schedule 

– Work on Improving team building activities 

5. Welfare of the People 

Being a team leader, it is vital to take care of the people in your team. Hence, take care of the atmosphere, environment, work balance, and compliance. 

– Health & safety training 

– Safeguarding the team against bullying 

– Control working hours 

– Compliance with the company’s laws & regulations for employees 

– Safeguarding the team against any abuse  

Conclusion

So, these are the roles and responsibilities of a team leader. You have to make sure that you fulfill all of these to be a great leader and an idol for your team members – in terms of growth, progress, ethics, work management, and performance.

06 Jan
Blogs, Leadership

Be a Better Leader: Here are some tips

Becoming a good leader is all about honing a few skills that sharpen managerial skills. I strongly believe that every individual has the potential to grow into an effective leader. All you need is thorough guidance. You need to keep certain aspects in mind if you wish to establish your career as a manager. 

I think following the below-mentioned tips, which even the top 10 business leaders of the market abide by, can prove to be impactful for you. I suggest you keep the following aspects in mind and practice these regularly to hone your managerial skills. 

Understand Your Leadership Type

All fruits are good for health, but each tastes different and comes with a variety of nutrients. Similarly, all managerial tasks are essential but require different skills. You, as an individual, will have some strengths and some weaknesses for sure. Your first task would be to identify your areas of strength and shortcomings. 

I believe this will help you understand your requirements better. If you knew where you lack, you would be in a better position to figure out what you need to learn. I recommend that you comprehend your leadership patterns and work on improving the same to become one of the top business leaders in India. 

Excel In Communication

I can’t even think of a leader who is not a good orator. Can you think of leaders with faulty communication skills? Surely no! Hence, make sure to hone your communication skills as much as possible. A good orator is always someone who easily gains the attention of the listeners. 

Hence, with good communication skills, you will be able to convince your teammates, clients, and senior managers easily. Also, it is an excellent communication skill that adds value to the words spoken by a manager. No matter if you are a manager in an FMCG or a travel company, you need quality communication skills to be a top leader at any time. 

Be a Doer

I have seen plenty of managers instructing without doing. This process does not go a long way in making the manager one of the top businessmen in India.  It is only the doers whom the people follow and consider as the leaders. 

If you have the ambition to become one of the best leaders, make sure to lead by example. Instead of telling others what to do, do it yourself, and the rest will follow you. I suggest you be a pioneer and lead the rest of the people to achieve their goals.  If you want your team to be disciplined, follow the discipline strictly. Your teammates will automatically become disciplined. 

Listen More Than You say

Communication skill is not all about expressing your thoughts and delivering instructions. I believe one of the most important components of communication remains listening. Hence, if you wish to be one of the most impactful leaders, you need to be a good listener. Listen to your clients to understand what they expect from a project. 

Listen to your teammates to understand their evens and odds. Listen to your seniors to comprehend what they have to suggest to you. Wise people say that when we speak, we say what we already know. But when we listen, we learn new things. And, in my opinion, good leaders must be dedicated learners. Hone your listening skills, and you will surely be one of the top leaders in the country in the future. 

Sharpen Your Technical Skills

I don’t think that any managerial positions in the future will allow for managers without updated technical skills. The world is already getting ruled by technology, and in the coming years, its hold on operations will only increase.  Hence, technically skilled managers would be the demand of the day in the near future. 

I suggest that you hone your technical skills today. This will add to your already existing set of managerial skills. Businesses of all sizes depend on technology for daily operations these days. Especially with the COVID pandemic setting new rules for the business world, technology will be more critical in the coming years. 

Therefore, I strongly recommend that you get enrolled for a course or training to upgrade your technical skills today to be a fitting resource for the future world. 

Inspire and Stay Positive

 If the manager would not be positive, would the team act positively? I have seen plenty of teams failing to perform optimally just because the managers failed to keep the team motivated.  Success cannot be the only outcome of all the tasks. Failure also remains integral to business projects and tasks. Here comes the importance of managers. 

Leaders lead the way when the team fails to achieve a goal. With an encouraging, positive, and inspiring leader, a team can overcome any challenge or failure at any time. If you wish to be one of the top leaders, I suggest you be a positive thinker and motivator. 

Offer Rewards and Recognitions

The team always seeks appreciation from the leaders to perform with more enthusiasm. Innovative ideas must get the accolade, and outstanding efforts must receive rewards. If you would not offer rewards and recognition to your team, your teammates will never feel motivated enough to put in their best for any task any further. 

I know people who often go beyond their capabilities to justify the faith their managers put in them. A little appreciation would only make these people all more dedicated and committed to their task, which, in turn, would help you manage your task. 

When it comes to becoming one of the top business leaders of India, ODDY Uniwraps offers extensive opportunities. However, these are some of the easy ways to cope with ways I recommend sharpening your leadership skills. 

A leader is always someone whom the rest imitate. Hence, try to be as perfect as possible so that the entire organization runs optimally and flawlessly. Always remember that leadership is not a one-way road. It is a collaborative effort that needs every leader to be professionally impeccable and empathetic towards the team members. 

05 Jan
Blogs, Leadership

9 Strategies of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

An emotionally intelligent leadership is more about understanding human emotions. To achieve full potential at work, you have to understand others emotions.

First of all, it’s important to understand what are the characteristics of an ideal leader or who is an ideal leader?

The majority of you would answer that the pioneers who are supporting, mindful, tune in to his / her staff, don’t lose their temper, trust his staff and take an educated choice as an ideal chief. These are the characteristics of an Emotionally Intelligent Leader.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENT LEADERSHIP 

It’s the type of authority wherein the pioneer can manage his /her feelings as well as the feelings of the individuals around him. He very well understands his sentiments, his feelings, and how his feelings could impact others. It contains five components -Self – regulation, self–awareness, Motivation, Empathy, and Social abilities.

Let’s Understand more about strategies of Emotional Intelligent Leadership that you can practice at your workplace.

1. Express your emotions to motivate others 

An ideal chief should communicate his emotions to his devotees which would assist with setting an incredible tuning between pioneer and his followers. Communicating your emotions could likewise motivate your supporters to accomplish the work as per your necessity.

2. Try to gain perspective of others

It is significant for a pioneer to place yourself in other shoes. Expecting yourself in other circumstances would assist you with knowing definite circumstances and furthermore the best a decision could be drilled out. This technique assists in building better relations. Top businessmen also follow this strategy.

3. Checking the passionate atmosphere

It is another best technique to be trailed by a pioneer. Observing the emotional atmosphere helps pioneers to analyze the sentiments, clashes, or prerequisites of his / her gathering. It would assist with making a decision and settle debates just as would likewise persuade the employees.

4. Analyse how your behaviour impacts others 

Leader’s conduct impacts their devotees. They could be affected positively as well as adversely. So it is significant that an ideal chief ought to investigate how his conduct impacts others.

For example – A pioneer blows up, talks discourteously, discusses less with his supporters then it would leave a negative impact on his devotees and vice versa.

5. Re-evaluate the circumstance 

Rather than venturing into a choice promptly, the pioneer ought to investigate the circumstance again and should write down all the approaches to adapt to the circumstance, and afterward the best choice ought to be taken. As there are various bits of knowledge to a circumstance, for some it would be testing or for some, it could be simple, for some it is a chance. So the circumstance ought to be investigated first then any choice ought to be taken.

6. Make ideal relational limits 

Making too inflexible or too adaptable limits could make a negative impact. An ideal equalization ought to be looked after. An ideal chief ought to know about dealing with the circumstance by choosing when to make unbending or adaptable limits.

7. Utilize emotional comprehension to know the circumstance 

The pioneer should utilize his comprehension of feelings to dissect the circumstance and drive out the best outcomes. The pioneer ought not to be so emotional that his devotees could make him a bonehead and could escape from duties. He ought to impeccably investigate the circumstance and feelings.

8. Ask others in overseeing feelings 

In some basic circumstances requesting that others help to oversee feelings is the best methodology, a pioneer could receive. By requesting counsel or imparting emotional weight to others could just assist him in coming to the best result and could likewise feel more loose and new.

9. Help others to get emotionally intelligent

Helping other people to get genuinely shrewd is the best technique a pioneer ought to follow. In any case, first he himself ought to be entirely passionate and insightful then no one but he could help others. He ought to have authority over his feelings. By rehearsing this procedure the pioneer would likewise improve his abilities.

CONCLUSION 

So, there are numerous strategies by which emotional smart authority could be performed. Business leaders in India or top businessmen in India follow techniques to complete their work effectively. These procedures are straight. It isn’t important that you need to follow every and each technique. You need to simply investigate the things and need to take choice likewise