Archive

2007 has been a year of interesting journeys. The first of these, the road show preceding Kenexa’s follow-on offering, was a stimulating and educational experience that I have written about in detail in earlier posts. The second, more recent journey was intellectual rather than physical and was equally rewarding and instructive, although with an (as yet) unknown outcome. The interesting thing about both these journeys is that there are various forces acting that are bound to affect the outcome, and it is difficult to anticipate all of these and know whether the journey will end in success or not. One of the most interesting (and wholly unexpected) e-mails that I received in the recent ...

In my last post, I spoke about leadership skills unique to every person. While talking about abdication of one’s unique skills, it crossed my mind that there is another aspect to abdication and leadership. When you are a leader of any kind and in any position, you have an obligation to fulfill all the requirements that go with that position. For example, say you’re a famous sports star—you need to follow a certain way of life or uphold certain values simply because you are in a position where many people look up to or are influenced by you. You cannot abdicate this. Similarly, a successful and respected business leader is the one who has the skills but also “walks the...

I truly believe that every human is born a leader. At birth, a baby has the ability to lead by communicating its needs, such as needing to be fed or changed, and having these needs fulfilled by its parents. Essentially, at this stage, both the baby and parents are clueless about what to do, but the baby instinctively leads the way, and the parents follow. Thus, in this situation, the baby is clearly the leader. And when every human being has been born a leader, no-one should later think they are failures or have-nots. Everyone is born with unique leadership skills that can be harnessed and developed, and everyone must realize this fact. Whether these talents enable us to become renowne...

Clear and direct communication, with few chances of being distorted along the way, is essential to convey what you really want to say. The children’s game ‘broken telephone’ (‘Whisper down the lane’) is an example of how things can go wrong, as the final message that emerges is usually unrecognizable, often gibberish. Now, if you put this into the context of an organization, it becomes quite worrying in terms of how the message can be distorted as it moves forward. Consider the example given below, which demonstrate how you might be transmitting when you should be transceiving. Expressing anger In the transmitting mode, you will stay in your normal mode&mdash...

One of the obstacles to transceiving is that people tend to disregard the fact that the recipient may not share their thought processes and viewpoint. If the listener’s perceptions and expectations are not met, what should be a true dialog will become merely two monologues. The recipient will be governed by his or her self-interest, by the identity of the speaker, and by how the latter is communicating. The communicator needs to develop the finesse to keep the recipient’s frame of reference in mind, so that his message is meaningful to the latter. It is immensely useful if there is some common area within the frame of reference that both can relate to. When we transmit in one dir...

A truly effective communicator can gauge how his communication will be received and is able to tailor it in such a way that the other person is truly receptive to what he is saying. While conducting a conversation, he is able to accurately “read between the lines” and understand how the recipient is being affected, and can then guide the conversation so that it has the exact effect that he intends. When you communicate, you could be like a radio transmitter, sending information in one direction toward the recipient. Or you could be like a transceiver, which is a device that both transmits and receives signals. In other words, when you ‘transceive’ you are transmittin...