Not just Human Resources...

Originally published July 6, 2019 I get a call at midnight. My friend of many years, is on the phone sobbing, looking for advice. Groggy and horrified - I listen to her story. She is a free spirit, marches to the beat of her own drum, is passionate about making a difference and is always immensely engaged and immersed in everything she takes on... The person on the phone does not sound like her. The person on the phone sounds crushed, has self doubt, feels isolated and alone, and is anxious and insecure. Over the last year, bullied and broken down by her boss, she is a shadow of herself. I have never seen her like this. As I listen to her, I reflect on the toxic leaders my colleagues and I have encountered, faced, and dealt with over the years, the trauma of their teams, their impact on the culture and the damage to the organization. When we think of toxic bosses, our first instinct is to think of the extreme cases of verbal abuse, harassment, bullying, etc. However, there are also ...

My brush with ‘the power of ambition’ – a personal experience This is a story of how ‘ambition’ transformed an ordinary business unit, stuck in the rut of its own limitations and its industry’s limitations into a powerhouse of achievement. Well.. let me start at the beginning. This particular business unit is the parent division of a large IT company, but it operates in the FMCG space. The FMCG market, especially personal care products, has been increasingly tough in the last few years. This unit was facing considerable de-growth and coping with low morale of its employees. Historically, things, for some reason tend to get worse, before they start to get better… and this division was probably at one of the lowest points in its existence. A leadership change brought in a fresh perspective, new dreams, and a big dose of ambition. Ambition and passion go hand-in-hand and are both equally contagious. The leadership team became the real pillars of change. I remember meeting this team ...

Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 in a thatched hut with no electricity or running water in the village of Mvezo in the black homeland of Transkei. Rolihlahla means ‘troublemaker’. A teacher tacked on the name Nelson, perhaps thinking it less menacing. When he was 12, Mandela’s father died, and he left the family to become ward of the Paramount chief of the Tembu tribe. He attended a missionary college but was expelled when he joined a protest against efforts to weaken the student council. He left for Johannesburg and worked as a guard at a gold mine, then as a clerk in a white lawyers’ office, and studied for a correspondence law degree. He was 24 when he joined the African National Congress, a mild mannered organisation of old leaders, who sought to improve the treatment of blacks via constitutional means. But Mandela had other ideas, and his timing was right: A new, more impatient generation was waiting in the wings. Two years later, Mandela and a handful of friends created t...

CRUCIBLES OF LEADERSHIP - Trial-by-Fire Growing up, Harry Truman never thought of himself as a leader, nor did anyone else. With “eyeglasses thick as the bottom of a coke bottle”, writes historian David McCullough, Truman couldn’t try out for school sports and mostly stayed at home, working the farm, reading, or playing the piano. Friends thought he was a sissy, and so did he. When he graduated high school, his family had run into hard times and he remained on the farm, the only president of the 20th century who never went to college. But the course of his life changed forever when, at the age of 33, he signed up for the Army to fight in World War 1. He was shipped off to France as the head of an artillery battery, and there for the first time in his life he was forced to lead men through moments of mortal danger. His initial test came on a rainy night in the Vosges mountains. The Germans has dropped an artillery barrage close by, and his troops, panicked that they were bei...

Leadership Series - a snapshot of defining works on leadership Lives of great men all remind us To make our lives sublime And leaving, leave behind us, Footprints on the sands of time… Leadership has been an existential issue in the world right from its birth and will continue to be one till the end of the world. It’s a concept that is quite difficult to deconstruct. There are probably as many theories out there as the number of thought leaders. Each, in its own unique way, sounds plausible. However, there always seems to be a mysterious missing piece of the puzzle. Can’t really blame them, ‘coz in this context especially, the whole probably is more than the sum of its parts. The truth is probably still out there, shrouded in mystery. I would like to invite all of you also to post inspirational stories of leadership, whether your own, people you know, stories of courage or personal strife, stories of victory against the odds or simply stories that you have read and are inspired by....