Final hand-in

Subject: Leadership Discovery Process MMBFO1204E

Hand-in date: 26th June 2020

Program: Full-time MBA, Copenhagen Business School

Exam number: S131146

Illustration: The Little Prince

S131146 Leadership Discovery Process

Introduction

Leadership is a topic that I have heard and been trained in through several short courses, workshops,
conferences as well as real workplace experiences for the past 7 years of my managerial career. While
all of these were tagged as ‘leadership trainings’, what these courses were doing was telling me how
to be a good manager. “Management is about coping with complexity…… Leadership, by contrast, is
about coping with change.”1 Right from when I was an individual contributor at HP until when I was
managing multiple teams, I was encouraged to sign-up for various trainings to move forward in my
career to become a better people manager. Mostly repetitive, redundant unless you were in a
particular situation immediately after going through the training, they primarily offered a rubric to
address certain challenges or assess project/employee performance. When I look back at this
experience, I understand how I could have gotten more out of it if only I had a holistic perspective
instead of an individualistic one.

Having built and led a team before, I understand the challenges that you face as a manager. Specially
to motivate and inspire others. The first time I led a team, I was unaware and untrained, I focused on
the tasks and believed that my job is just to get those tasks delivered with the help of my team. I did
not take a step back to figure out what are the motivators, drivers, aspirations that would help me and
my team perform better. It has been an uphill task to inculcate the ability to inspire others, especially
me being an introvert, since grand words and gestures do not come to me easily. Two key traits in me
have been of great help to be a good manager – listening and empathy. These traits have helped me to
understand the requirements and challenges of my team and motivate them towards success. But I
have also understood few drawbacks by seeking feedback from peers. That I might come off as
aggressive to my senior colleagues because I passionately speak of certain areas of my work or that
my calm demeanor during pressure situations might be misconstrued as not caring enough about the
situation, was in my blind spot. The feedback has helped immensely to understand myself better and
increase my ‘arena’.

I have been lucky to be part of organizations that young and dynamic and emphasized on building a
good working environment. Some of the organizations were better at fostering a good work culture
than the others. It is so important to be able to be my authentic self at my workplace hence the
organization culture fit is a high-rated parameter for me while choosing the organization I want to
work for. A culture that doesn’t expect you to be just similar to everyone else, but one that allows you
to influence the culture and mold your work around it.

1
Kotter, J. P. (1999). John P. Kotter on what leaders really do. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

S131146 Leadership Discovery Process

What it takes to be a good leader

Being a good leader is a lot about how much you can let in through the ears and what you can process
in between those years. It is a lot less about how much comes out from your mouth. A good leader
first and foremost knows themselves well and then takes the effort to know their team members to be
able to lead them well. Only then will they be able to lead the team in the right direction, based on the
organisational, team and individual goals.

In “Leadership that gets results”2, Daniel Goleman talks about various styles of leadership. He makes
the point that effective leadership draws from one’s emotional intelligence and that leaders with best
results do not rely on just one style of leadership, they use different styles depending on the situation
just like a golf pro chooses clubs based on the shots. I have briefly explored the coaching style of
leadership and have seen significant shift in the behaviour of the team members. The critical area I
explored for coaching was career goal-setting for my team. Although, I did not follow a structured
framework like the GROW model (Figure 1) developed by Sir John Whitmore, I relied on asking the
right questions to understand my team members’ aspirations. After studying the GROW model I feel I
could have done much more in helping them come up with their own options rather than spoon-
feeding a lot of information to them and asking them to choose. This put a lot of my energy in an area
which should have been driven by the team members themselves, hence energy management would
have been beneficial in this situation.

Leadership: A humanistic skill

Often times leaders fail because of how little they are able to connect with their team members. When
I first managed a team of two, I barely succeeded at being a manager. Firstly, I was new at managing
people; most organisations in India don’t think they need to train their employees to become
managers, it is assumed that just by the virtue of your competence at work you will be able to manage
people too. Secondly, I was not able to get through to my team beyond the task at hand; I was failing
at communicating. Which is ironic considering I was managing marketing and communications, but
this was different. Much later in the career journey did I understand that managing people was a lot
about two-way communication. Managing and leading people required authentic, non-judgemental
conversations that involved real listening. In my last 360-degree feedback, my team members rated
me high on being appreciative and listening to their perspectives. But I wasn’t able to challenge them
enough or share many of my flaws for them to learn from.

2
Goleman, D. (January 01, 2000). Leadership that gets results. Harvard Business Review, 78, 2, 78-90.

S131146 Leadership Discovery Process

This leads me to the conversations traps that we more often fall into. Out of the four traps discussed
during the course – expert, problem, execution, distrust – I find myself fluctuating between the expert
and the execution trap when I am with my team. I have become more aware of the times when I face
the execution trap but still working on checking myself when facing the expert trap. Overall, I need to
practice having REAL conversations (Figure 2) that are Relatable for accommodating vulnerabilities,
Engaging and challenging, Appreciative of people’s strengths and involve more active Listening.
Doing this will help shift the focus on the team members and help me to understand them more
minimizing personal bias.

Coaching

Daniel Coleman defines the Coaching style of leadership3 to be able to develop people for the future
with underlying emotional intelligence competencies of empathy and self-awareness, to improve
performance or develop long-term strengths. With the two types of coaching - Performance coaching
which is work focused, and Developmental coaching, which is rather holistic in nature, it important to
differentiate between the two and understand which is more applicable in a given scenario. In most
organizations, performance coaching is encouraged, but developmental coaching is not given the time
and space it needs. Since performance coaching affects an employee’s work directly and has a more
immediate and visible impact on the organization’s growth, it gets the push from the management. On
the other hand, developmental coaching is a slow, systematic process. It affects an employee’s long-
term aspirations and will only be visible if the employee sticks to the organization over a long period.

But how can leaders be effective coaches for employees? The GROW model is a tried and tested
framework that can guide leaders effectively. The model outlines each stage with that it means and
gives indicative questions that can move the conversation forward. The best part is that this model can
be used for both performance and developmental coaching style. If followed systematically, the
GROW model offers a framework that is leading and flexible at the same time. I learnt that I need to
be an engaged and keen observer to offer constructive and pointed feedback to help the team members
grow. Another crucial insight was energy management while coaching to keep the conversation
momentum uniform till the end to be able to extract the most out of it and generate specific and
measurable goals.

3
Goleman, D. (January 01, 2000). Leadership that gets results. Harvard Business Review, 78, 2, 78-90.

S131146 Leadership Discovery Process

Change process

As the complexity in products and services increases, there is an increasing need to update knowledge
and gain newer skills. There is a higher degree of shift in the Leadership styles as the increasingly
complex environments demand lesser management and control and higher collaboration and co-
creation. A leader will succeed if they empower their team rather than enforce and direct. Leaders
have to accept and allow failing so that teams can take risks to be more innovative and creative. There
is a shift in mindset that believes in developing leaders through training and coaching. In this dynamic
environment, people emerge to assume temporary leaderships positions that influence other people
around them. And this change can be as large or as small. Being at the receiving end of change at HP
in 2012-13, I appreciated the middle management buy-in that was garnered by the top management
before doing a blast announcement. I believe this largely helped how the managers made us part of
the change and also took the hard decisions when required but with a softer stance.

Today, organizations are seeing constant change that is about achieving several small but key
milestones rather one big final one. When top management is trying to manage change, they tend to
be myopic about it and focus on influencing behaviors and surroundings of people. As you go deeper
into assessing how change is affecting the organization, human resources team gets tasked with
influencing values, processes, structures and policies. But as you reach the bottom of this change, is
when the real foundation emerges which is about influencing opinions, emotions, habits and
assumptions of individual employees. It is ok to say you don’t know about their situation and ask the
team to explain what they think and want.

During my stint with JWT, the top management assumed they could just implement a new billing
process for a major client (70% of the employees worked for this client on various brands) without
consulting the employees who would actually have to use this new process. This caused a lot of
discontent amongst employees and massive delays in work as employees weren’t convinced it was a
good solution. On the classic change curve (Figure 3), we were expected to go from chaos to
integration. I would have like the management to spend more time on trial and personal understanding
stages on the classic. This would have ensure a seamless integration of the new system as the new
way of working within the organisation.

Emotions or Affect

It is increasingly becoming evident that emotional intelligence is an important piece of the jigsaw for
a well-rounded employee performance and a cohesive team. An individual’s affect that includes
discrete emotions, moods, emotional regulation, emotional contagion permeates through teams and

S131146 Leadership Discovery Process

then through organisations influencing collective opinion, feelings and behavior during the period of
change. An aware individual is able to recognize, understand, label, express and regulate emotions
during these periods of uncertainty and ambiguity. Hence as a leader one needs to get a feel of the
team to understand what is happening, and not just hear the voice of the most vocal member. As a
leader you also need to not be visibly affected by the response from the teams.

While I believe I’m intuitive and pick up the temperature of the room pretty quickly and easily to
mitigate emotional tensions, I am not very good at managing my affect in certain situations with my
superiors or peers. Being a passionate individual, I tend to make my discontent or anger known
through my demeanour or even words. This has been a personal growth area for me. But I have
consistently worked on this aspect during my Integrated Strategy Project (ISP) group work. I have
consciously practiced to stay calm in situations by hearing out everyone first, internalising my own
thoughts in light of my team members’ and then putting forth my point in a way that more palatable.

Leading through change

In a change management process it is important to find a middle ground because you have to work
with the team. Also there is a need to acknowledge counter arguments and find an agreement for a
decision. I would personally take a softer approach towards taking a hard stance but make those
difficult yet necessary decisions to move forward so as to achieve the final objective.
As a leader implementing change, I believe it is important to understand the reasoning and also
believe in the change yourself. I have been through situations where I didn’t have conviction in the
reason for change and knew it would be difficult for me to translate that to my team which happened
in my last organisation. Hence I had to spend more time with my leadership to understand why the
change needed to implemented, how will it impact the future of the organisation and what will it take
from me and my team during the transition phase.

Change management also needs a more on-ground approach, especially to ensure that change is
communicated, understood and implemented across the entire organization. An innovation sprint
(Figure 4) can be a very essential tool to be a part of a larger change process within an organization.
Also coaching of employees is necessary for them to bring a shift in their mindset and think
innovatively. Every organization will have their own take on the innovation sprint. The primary
challenge is to get to the root of the opportunity rather than get stuck in the process of ideation. The
innovation design sprint allows to find this opportunity and also come to consensus on ideas quickly.
A design sprint allows simplifying the existing ideation processes and allows collaboration while
mitigating groupthink. This rapid way of ideation brings together a diverse team to contribute to

S131146 Leadership Discovery Process

innovation and ideation despite their personalities and level of competencies. It is the job of an
innovative leader to bring together a good, diverse team and select the process that best fits the team.

The world around us is a constant state of flux. It is imperative to address this flux and the changing
needs that come with this flux through innovative ways. The global pandemic was a hard knock for
humanity. It made visible the urgent need for governments, businesses and citizens to innovate at a
fast pace, not just by coming up with newer ideas or products or inventions to address this major
challenge but also to bring in a shift in the way we think about the existing products and solutions. A
good, innovative leader will adapt to these uncertain times and encourage others as well, to bring
about a shift in the mindset. An innovative leader nurtures a growth mindset by creating an
environment or culture where people can openly share ideas and also have the opportunity to fail. I
look forward to implementing sprints for sub-tasks with smaller teams. I would like to use sprints
especially with cross-functional teams where time is short, and you need quick deliverables, but the
problem statement is tricky. I want to work on technology projects to solve problems within an
organization and I believe sprints will be beneficial in such scenarios.

From being to becoming

Being part of the marketing and communication team most of my career, it was always a challenge to
get your point to the core functions whenever I had to get them to do things a different way. I have
learned that the most important step here is to build and nurture cross-functional relationships which
you can rely on in difficult situations as these relations then become your allies. Building a space that
ensures psychological safety helps nurture these relationships. I believe that allowing open feedback
mechanism, open door policy of the management, opportunities for informal, honest conversations,
environment where employees can share personal stories without the fear of being judged, are some
of the ways in which I can ensure psychological safety in my surroundings as a leader.

Jacinda Ardern, Bill Gates and Indra Nooyi are few leaders that I admire. In my view, what makes
them stand-out is their ability to be honest, authentic and tough but also compassionate and
empathetic towards others they lead. I believe personal leadership is a lot about creativity. I would
like to be known as a compassionate leader. A leader who supports people in their quest to find path
for them and not the kind who tells them which path to take. With that aim, I want to shape my style
around servant leadership that is for helping people who then in turn can work on growing
organisations and achieving goals. It is my endeavor to hone my leadership skills and help the cause
of environmental sustainability by staying motivated to finding new ideas for it, inspiring more people
to work on it and influencing organizations to embed it into their strategies.

S131146 Leadership Discovery Process

 APPENDICES

Figure 1: The GROW model

Figure 2: REAL conversations

S131146 Leadership Discovery Process

 Figure 3: Classic curve of change

Figure 4: An innovation sprint

S131146 Leadership Discovery Process