TAKEAWAYS FROM LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT COURSE

Prepared for:
Prof. Arvind Shatdal

Prepared by: Talasila Sree Naga Karthik(1710120035)

Greater Noida

April 28, 2018

Key takeaways
The dimensions of leadership character helped me to analyze my strengths and Weakness. I
believe that I have few leadership traits and I know only few things I lack but after this course, I
got to know many of my strengths and weakness which I don’t realize earlier and this will help
me to work on this in future.
Leadership is not a quality it is a Journey which everyone takes at one or the other point of
time
Session 1:
Leadership Competencies, Character, Commitment:
One thing I learned is that to succeed as a leader, one need to succeed at Character, Commitment,
Competencies.

Character consists of values, Virtues and Traits. Character is very important for leader because
it determines who will trust you enough to follow you.
Commitment:
It includes Aspiration, Engagement and Sacrifice. We saw Invictus movie (Not in LD) and could
interlink the movie with commitment of Nelson Mandela . He sacrificed his life spending many
years in jail fighting to build the strong nation of South Africa by uniting both whites and Black
with the help of Rugby world cup.
Commitment tells us what makes the leader to keep succeeding when everyone else including
the competitors are quitting. All the leaders will slip and fall but committed leaders will learn
from their failures, gets back up , searches for the light at the end of tunnel and move forward
again and the loop continues .
Competence:
Competence involves skills (Analysis, decision making, Communicating, teaming) ,
Judgement(Using Intuition,timing,methods to use),knowledge(Facts, Figures). Competence
refers to the wisdom to know when to say what needs to be said and when to do what needs to
be done. I feel that Competent leader learns a lot by interacting with people and sometimes
debating with them to come to an acceptable conclusion when there is any complex problem.
Case: Boldly Go
I learnt that Compassionate care, dynamic partnerships, high accountability and trust were
integral to both leaders and an organization.
When Providence health care faced 2008 global financial need to improve the patient caring.
I learnt that value based leadership drives change and Innovation .
Kotler’s 8 step Change Model
Create sense of Urgency-----Build the Guiding team----Develop a change Vision and
Strategy---Communicate Vision---Empower others to act-Short term wins--Don’t
Let up --Don’t let up-Create a new Culture
Here Collaboration, Building trust, Accountability of Walsh was an example at which her
leadership character meshed with culture at providence and this played a pivotal role in
transforming the providence health care
I learned from discipline of building Character article that in order to become a leader, managers
need to translate personal values into calculated action
From the Article ‘Why Should Anyone be led by you’, I learnt that managers expose their
weakness to establish the trust. Leaders are sensors in the way that they collect and interpret soft
data and sensing creates problems as they lose the followers sometimes. Leaders with good
sensors can sense what is going on around them easily. Employee management with tough
empathy is the other quality of leader and tough empathy means giving people what they need
but not what they want. The other quality of leader is that they capitalize on what is unique about
themselves not only by having distinctively different dress style but also in terms of imagination,
loyalty, expertise.
Four popular Myths about leaderships
Everyone can become leader? No.
Leaders deliver business results? Not Always
People who get to top are leaders? Not Necessarily
Leaders are great coaches? Rarely
Case: Coach K- A matter of Heart & Coach Knight- The will to win
Through this case, I learned that assumptions about the human nature is highly critical and it
drives how we motivate people or lead. Coach K and Coach Knight both are successful coaches
in basketball game but Coach K is a leader and leadership is Ongoing, adjustable, flexible and
dynamic. He looks into eyes of players to gauge the feeling, confidence levels and to establish
instant trust and he treats players like his own family members. On the other hand Coach Knight
is Fiery, in your face task master who leads through discipline and intimidation .
Different styles, but the results are similar. If you believe people are fundamentally good,
meaning they try to give their best every time, they are self-motivated, then coach K leadership
style is good according to me.
If you believe that people are fundamentally bad , if people are constantly looking to get over
then they needed to be lead with transactional management style that revolves around
punishments and rewards.
Leadership Theories
Path Goal Theory:
It specifies leadership style in which goals can be achieved by providing the employee with a
good work environment. The main aim is to make the employees productive by providing them
motivation and sense of belongingness by ensuring the good working environment
Fielder Contingency model
There is no one best style of leadership instead leader effectiveness is based on situation. Leaders
style is described as task or relationship oriented are those who tend to accomplish the tasks
maintaining good relation with the people in team. In general, mix of task and relationship
oriented style is effective .
Lewin three styles of decision making leadership
 Authoritarian style : This leader is directive and don’t allow the team to participate in
decision making . He/she issues controls the people in team to do work and they should
act accordingly .
 Democratic style : This leader encourages people in team to participate in discussion nd
group decision making
 Laissez-faire style : Leader give complete freedom to the team and wont provide
guidance .
Transformational leadership
It is the process in which Leaders and Followers raise one another to high level of morality
and motivation.
LMX Theory

Leader-Member Exchange Theory, also called LMX describes how leaders in groups

maintain their position through a series of tacit exchange agreements with their members.
Here leaders develop an exchange with subordinates and quality of leader member exchange
relationship influences subordinates.

Authentic leadership
They demonstrate passion for their purpose, practice their values and lead with their
hearts as well as their heads. Journey of authentic leadership begins with understanding the story
of own life. Life story provides context for experiences and through it, we can find inspiration to
create impact in the world. Leadership principles are values translated into actions.
Authentic leaders work hard at creating the self-awareness through persistent and often
courageous self-exploration.
Case: Knowlton Roberts II (A)
I found that self-awareness and ownership are crucial factors for the development. In this case,
we analyzed the Strengths, Weakness of Robert and compared with that of Rankle who looks
good in all aspects but when comes to team building, Rankle is weak as there are conflicts
arising because of him. Then we discussed about who will be effective in the given context and
concluded that based on their strengths, weakness no one is effective including the Roberts
manager Kim .
Level 5 Leadership
The learning from this article is that level 5 leadership involves the combination of both will
power and Humility. Level 5 leader sit on top of hierarchy of capabilities and is the necessary
requirement for transforming organization from ‘good’ to ‘great’.
Key findings related to Level 5 leadership
First Who
For those leaders, People are always first and then comes the Strategy .
Stockdale Paradox
Deal with Brutal facts of current reality and simultaneously maintain absolute faith that you wil
be prevailing.
Buildup-Breakthrough Flywheel
When you try to push flywheel in one direction, pushing it get flywheel to turn once .with
consistent effort, it will turn twice, five times and then momentum increases and wheel hits the
break through point .I understood that good transformations doesn’t happen overnight or in one
big leap .
Hedgedog concept
Breakthroughs require understanding of three interesting circles
 What a company can be best at
 How its economy work best
 What best ignites the passion of people
Case: Anne Mulcahy: Leading Xerox through perfect storm(A)
Taking the ownership of leading the team and developing our self is the lesson learnt from this
case. Debate happened in class whether she is level 5 leader or not but it is clearly understood
from the case that she had will power to rebuild Xerox. She can be treated as level 4 leader
considering her commitment to vision.
Case:Mount Everest
This case stresses the importance of team and trust among the members and even highlights self-
awareness. Case tells that mistakes are done by leaders Hall and Fischer and key take away from
this case is that one might be a leader in one or the other point in their lives but it is important to
be an effective leader in all conditions and unfortunately Hall and Fischer couldn’t realize this
and lost their lives.
From Article ‘What makes an effective executive’, I learnt about the eight practices of effective
executives
 They ask “What needs to be done?”
 What is right for the enterprise?
 Develop action plans.
 Take responsibility for decisions.
 Take responsibility for communicating.
 Focus on opportunities rather than problems.
 Run productive meetings.
 Think and say “we” rather than “I.”
From “Five minds of a manager”, we got to know about five mindsets of executives
 Reflective
 Analytical
 Worldly
 Collaborative
 Action