Workshop on Leadership skills

Couple of weeks back, we attended a leadership development workshop at a resort – there is a reason behind conducting all these leadership development workshops at a remote location. I am sure that the organizers would actually prefer a location where even the cell phones do not work, but I suppose that it is impossible to find a location with at-least a three star amenities and without cell phone coverage. This workshop was different than the workshops I had attended during my work in the sense that there was lot more focus on looking for clues from your past to identify those attributes that might help you and those that might inhibit you to perform a leadership role. The rest of this blog is an excerpt from the paper I submitted.

The team and its leadership might have to perform in two types of situations:
There might be situations when the leader knows exactly what needs to be done and provides the lead by devising a strategy to win. While working on the strategy implementation, the team works on any improvisation if needed on the fly. These tactical improvisations are completely taken care by the team with no need for anyone from the top to lead or direct. Thus the leader is not needed to worry about the tactical issues. If this team can be imagined to be traveling towards a destination in a bus, the leadership of this team is needed only to decide the direction and speed of travel. Once the bus starts moving, the leadership can set its sight towards the horizon and judge what is happening at the destination, while a subordinate or a team of subordinates will worry about avoiding the potholes along the way. I realized that I have been in such situations wherein (given a strategy) my team had taken care of implementation challenges. I realized that such a situation is possible only if the team is very mature and there is huge confidence between the team and its leadership.
Alternatively, there might be situations when the team and its leadership are facing a difficult and new situation and hence the leadership is not sure how to strategize. In such situations, the lead is more important than the leader! The lead might come from any individual or sub-team within the team. In such situations, the leadership is needed to ensure that the team has confidence among each other and is ready to listen to each other during a crisis. Commitment from each member is required to win in such situations. Resonance is needed among each member of the team. Once the resonance sets in, the team working can be termed as “poetry in motion!!”
Thus I realized the age old adage that (in the context of adaptive leadership) the success of the team depends on both the team and its leader. I also realized that the making of such a team hugely depends on the capability of the leader. A leader who knows when to take control and when to let go, so that the team slowly attains maturity and builds up the ability to work in both the modes detailed above.

Let me not bore you with an in-depth analysis about my strengths and weaknesses and what I am going to do about them. My Profs are already going through that pain. But one more small excerpt which actually might be of concern to you – the readers of this blog:
Around two months back I had started using a blog to record my thoughts. Some of my musings were on experiences from leading a team, managing through issues etc. This workshop has only strengthened my resolution to continue recording my thoughts in the blog.
If I have to summarize as a ‘one-liner’ the gains of attending this workshop, I would say that every minute spent in the workshop added leadership depth to me and has strengthened the ammunition that I possessed to write my blog.

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