What should tomorrow's leaders be like?

We all are witnessing one of the biggest global recessions. Hopefully, it will be over in few months or more. However, current situation raises a vital question, "what should tomorrow's leaders be like"?

Recently I read an article detailing Marshall Goldsmith's views about tomorrow's leaders. Marshall Goldsmith is author of management-related literature, professor, consultant and executive coach. He is author of 24 management books. He also has a personal website that hosts over 200 free resources for visitors across the globe. Marshall said that leaders of the future must listen, learn and make mistakes.

I would like to outline some of the essential traits that tomorrow's leaders should possess.
(1) Everyday is a new learning and that is how a leader needs to develop himself/herself. Today's environment is very challenging and competitive. A leader need not be afraid of committing mistakes and should be ready to accept those.
(2) Leaders need to keep long term vision in mind. Ignoring long term vision can have adverse impacts on growth of the organization. I remember NRN Moorthy saying that there was a time when all the board members were in strong favor of selling Infosys, but NRN opposed it and today Infosys represents IT face of India in many ways.
(3) In future, CEOs/leaders will need to manage to people who have better IQ than leaders themselves. So, managing people and learning on the go is going to be very important.
(4) Willingness and desire to learn will play an important role. Good thing is that most of the Indian leaders/CEOs have attitude to learn more. In this challenging environment, one needs to challenge himself/herself and set higher goals to remain on the top.
(5) As CEOs grow their organizations, integrity needs to be maintained.

As we move forward to build a nation of leaders, let's groom ourselves as strong and true leaders. Continuous learning, people management and ethics are going to play an important role in this process.

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Are we prepared for test of Leadership?

Current recession poses challenge for the corporations and each one of us. When times are good, everyone comes aboard happily, but in bad times we suffer. Current situation is test of the leadership in a way and also presents opportunity to find innovative ways.

Corporates today are busy taking cost cutting measures, and making an effort to retain the best talent at the same time. Though it becomes absolutely necessary to take strict cost cutting measures at times, I feel that it is equally important to keep employees in the job as far as possible. If a company has to lays off or fire employees, the better option perhaps could be to reduce salaries of all the employees, including senior management of the company. We need to remember that in most of the companies, senior management of the companies draw a huge sum of salary. I agree that they deserve good returns for their hard work, but it is equally important to accept lower wages in bad times, for benefit of all employees. That would result in more faith by the employees (and their families) in the company, in long term. Still in many cases, companies have to take steps of reducing the workforce.

I would like to cite an example, which is on the same lines as my thoughts mentioned above. Japan Airlines is one of the top ten Airline operators in the world. Recently I read about CEO of Japan Airlines reducing his salary to lower than pilots of the company. You can see the video below on CNN about this.



If leaders of the organizations take remarkable steps in benefit of the workforce, then it has unbelievable positive impact on the mindset of the employees. On the other hand, any negative emotions taken by leaders get passed on to entire organization, like a chain reaction. Any fear shown by them can spread pretty fast. I feel that it may not be possible for you as a leader to change the world, but you can certainly change the way you look at the world. Being calm and thoughtful really helps.

As we get groomed to become future leaders, we need to learn carefully and calmly. Today's learning is going to be the foundation for tomorrow's leadership and will help each one of us in good or bad times again in future. Each of our actions should be taken, with long term vision in mind. If you display kindness to other people, that also spreads.

So, let's bring out our leadership skills from within in this test of leadership. Our steps can show the path to others and we can emerge even stronger. Let's build a nation of true leaders, who can sail through all times.

Thanks for dropping by. Your comments are source of encouragement for me. I will be glad to hear from you.
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