Read about how a soft-hard-soft leadership style works best in an environment that is constantly changing.
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Management literature is littered with debates on what is the rightleadership style. Most of these models recognize that there is no right leadership style, that different leadership styles work in different environments.
Based on my own experience over the last few years, I have found that a soft-hard-soft leadership style works best in an environment that is constantly changing.
Simply put, a soft leadership style is focused on people and a hard leadership style is focused on targets and processes.
According to my Soft-Hard-Soft Leadership Style Model, managers need to adopt their leadership styles to how easy or difficult their environment is.
There are three stages in the Soft-Hard-Soft Leadership Style Model model –
Stage 1 - Soft-Soft
When the environment is soft and targets/ processes are not under pressure, managers should adopt a soft leadership style to maintain the feel-good factor in the team.
Quick Summary: Read about The Xeta Shootout Contest, where you can make your own Xeta TV commercial in a video or storyboard format and win an Indica V2 Xeta.
You can also watch the entries submitted by others and comment on them, participate in a slogan contest on the message board, or tell your friends about the contest.
Make no mistake, office influentials are self-educating themselves in ways that can be beneficial not only to themselves but to their organizations. Being an active participant in social media means you learn how to custom design web pages and profiles, manage your personal brand, network and communicate with people from all business and backgrounds.
That sounds a lot like yours truly, but I don’t think my Technorati rank will be a factor in deciding my annual bonus anytime soon.
Stuck in morning rush hour traffic on Mumbai’s Marine Drive, on way to work, I found myself next to a Mercedes and a Maruti 800.
In slow-moving bumper-to-bumper traffic, the bigger Mercedes was at a disadvantage to the much smaller Maruti 800. The Mercedes stood still in its lane, while the Maruti 800 maneuvered itself into small openings and got ahead. I found myself calculating how much costlier it was for the Mercedes to be stuck in heavy traffic because of higher fuel consumption. I also found myself thinking what a waste it was for the Mercedes to be stuck in rush hour traffic on Marine Drive, when it should be doing 150 km per hour on the Mumbai-Pune highway. In fact, I almost felt sad for the Mercedes because it was on the wrong road.
Now, think of people instead of cars and careers instead of roads. Or, think of businesses instead of cars and industries instead of roads. I’m sure you have heard of hundreds of brilliant people who are stuck in the wrong career. I’m sure you have read about dozens of interesting businesses that don’t do well because the industry they are in is too crowded.
Seven reasons you might fail to become the best in the world -
- You run out of time (and quit).
- You run out of money (and quit).
- You get scared (and quit).
- You’re not serious about it (and quit).
- You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre (and quit).
- You focus on the short term instead of the long (and quit when the short term gets too hard).
- You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world (because you don’t have the talent).
Even worse than quitting in the first six cases: not quitting. Settling. Sticking with it but not succeeding.
Diogenes at ‘Quasi Fictional Views’ asked me to contribute a piece for her ‘Fine Art of Blogging’ project. Blogging biggies like Liz Strauss and Chris Garrett have contributed to the project previously and I’m truly touched that Diogenes asked me to participate. Diogenes asked me to answer a few questions about my blogging and here’s the piece as it appears on her blog.
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What is my blog to me?
At the simplest level, my blog is a repository of my thoughts and ideas. It is also a white board where I experiment with words and projects, a place where I try to find my voice as a writer, and a project that will become my purpose, my calling, or my legacy. My blog is also a medium to create new conversations with people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, and some of these conversations have already become entrenched into friendships.
Why do I blog?
I started blogging because I wanted to be a writer, to write for a living, but wasn’t sure if I had the voice or the discipline to shape it into literature. Blogging was one way to find out.
As part of my 30-by-30 quest, I’m asking my friends to write guest posts on my blog offering tips on how I should go for one or more of the thirty goals in my list.
There won’t be a better day ever, then, to have the first guest post in the 30-by-30 series, on the other very ambitious goal in my list - have assets of more than a crore.
Ranjan Varma writes about business and finance at Weblog on Business and Finance where he has cross-posted his advice to me.
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Gaurav’s post on the thirty things he wanted to do before he is thirty was a brave one. I wondered at his bravery and wished him all the best only to land up in trouble myself - he wants a way to build a net worth of one crore before he is thirty and now wants me to find it!
Whenever I find myself on a new blog, I quickly check the blog’s Technorati rank and feed count to get a sense of the blog’s popularity.
If it is a desi blog, and I like the two or three posts I have read on the blog, I subscribe to it anyway, because popularity metrics aren’t really an indication of the quality of writing on personal or opinion blogs. However, if it is a blog in a saturated niche like blogging tips, personal development, marketing or technology, I do use these popularity metrics as a proxy for how influential the blog is in its niche and rarely subscribe to any blog which has less than a few hundred links or subs.
A lot of blog readers also use these popularity metrics as a filter before subscribing to a new blog and you need to be aware of it before you decide to display your feed count on your blog.
In my opinion, you should display your feed count if -
I’m increasingly finding myself spending all my free time with Kanishka and Avantika.
Kanishka and Avantika are one of the cutest couples I have ever known and watching them together sometimes makes me want to get married myself. What I like best about them is how well they complement each other. Kanishka is an Engineer, CA, MBA and high-flying FMCG marketer all rolled into one and has the slightly world-weary air of a wise man who has seen too much of the world too early. Avantika, on the other hand, is a lawyer who has left the corporate rat race to work with an NGO, and looks at everything with an infectious wide-eyed, child-like curiosity. They are both very interesting people by themselves, but together, they are absolutely adorable.
Both Kanishka and I have been going through a introspective phase of late. Both of us have been taking stock of what we have achieved so far, setting goals for what we want to achieve going forward and searching for tools to help us achieve our goals. Every time we have met during the past few weeks, Kanishka and I have ended up exchanging notes on what we need to do to become all that we want to, and my 30 by 30 list was, in part, a result of these conversations.
