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Character is the building block of individuals and yet, when it comes to choosing people for leadership positions, organisations have given far more importance to skills and abilities than character. This has resulted in some disastrous situations in businesses. Cases of Enron[1] or Satyam Infotech[2] or Peanut Corporation of America[3] or The Volkswagen Diesel gate scandal[4] have been in the headlines at different time of business history. Legislations were passed after the Enron Scandal to prevent such corporate frauds. The Sarbanes Oxley Act[5] was one of them. But have the legislations really succeeded in removing the root cause of the problem? The answer is No. Unless Character becomes a key attribute that one looks for in building leadership pipeline or leadership hiring, such instances will continue to happen and unscrupulous leaders will exploit the loopholes in the system. Leaders and organisations will be able to rationalise their decisions and action, and the stakeholders will continue to suffer. This is why we need a new encounter with a leadership philosophy that places Character as one of the key attributes of Leadership. Fortunately for us, Servant Leadership places enormous importance on Character. The 3-7-10 framework that Leadyne Organisation Builders use for developing Servant Leaders include Character as one of the three leadership imperatives. Servant Leaders place high importance on Behaving Ethically ( one of the measurable behaviours under the DEEP BHC Framework described in an earlier blog). This further builds on having a high level of Awareness and an understanding of Stewardship, an attribute that teaches leaders that they are not owners of anything, but stewards of the resources, talents, organisation and people put under their charge. When Leaders start looking at their positions and possessions through the lens of Stewardship, their mindset will change from one of pride to one of humility. The problem is that many leaders do not realise that they have pride issues. This is where an assessment like Heartstyles assessment[6] comes in really handy. The organisations under the Yum Brand (Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bells etc.) have used this tool effectively to bring in transformation in their leadership mindsets.     Another key Character related behaviour that the  DEEP BHC framework promotes is  Emotional Healing, based on a greater understanding of Grace and Forgiveness. This behaviour strengthens the character of a leader to one that works for the good of all stakeholders rather than personal gains for the leader himself/ herself. I had discussed this behaviour in an earlier blog. Let us build leaders with impeccable character. Let us build Servant Leaders!! _________________________________________________________ Dr. Madana Kumar, PhD is the Servant Leadership Evangelist at Leadyne. You can connect with him here or contact him here.   _________________________________________________________ References: [1] https://www.investopedia.com/updates/enron-scandal-summary/ Accessed on 6th September 2022 [2] https://tradebrains.in/satyam-scam/ accessed on 6th Sept 2022 [3] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/21/442335132/peanut-exec-gets-28-years-in-prison-for-deadly-salmonella-outbreak accessed on 6th Sept 2022 [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772 accessed on 6th Sept 2022 [5] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sarbanesoxleyact.asp accessed on 6th Sept 2022 [6] Heart Styles assessment is the © Copyright of Heart Brands IP PTY Ltd 2008-2018 All Rights Reserved. Leadyne partners with Certified Heartstyles Assessors to help leaders discover themselves.

If you follow current discussions on Businesses, you cannot miss the debate over Purpose, People and Profits. Sometimes it is one against the other, other times it is about balancing the three. Traditionally business was about profits, or to use a broader term, wealth creation. This traditional understanding of business is being questioned now. A car requires fuel to take us from point A to point B, but none of us buy a car to just fill in fuel and keep it in the garage. We need to breath to live, but none of us will say that breathing is the very purpose of life. All of us understand that wealth is an integral part of business, but that does not mean that it is the purpose of business. The bottom line is this, businesses need to have a higher purpose. A purpose that is for bettering the conditions of humanity. No one disputes the fact that businesses will and should make money while solving the problems that humanity faces today. Purpose is one of the four tenets that differentiate the good , the bad and the ugly of leadership. I had written about the four tenets in my earlier blog (https://leadyne.com/encounter-the-four-tenets) , the other three being Power, Values and Significance. Purpose is a key part of vision, sometimes purpose is the vision in itself. It answers the question of why are we here? Why does the organisation exist? . Ken Blanchard and his co authors say rightly Leadership is about going somewhere. If you and your people don’t know where you are going, your leadership doesn’t matter.[1] Setting the right vision requires a right leadership philosophy. An encounter with the Servant Leadership paradigm will transform the way you as a leader, and your organisation looks at vision. Servant Leadership is often seen (and dismissed) as an oxymoron. As described in my earlier blog (https://leadyne.com/dcs) this is far from truth and the ability to conceptualise, and dream big of a perfect future is what makes Servant Leadership a reality. This is the first behaviour that we study and measure in our DEEP BHC framework. This behaviour called Demonstrating Conceptual Skills is defined as; Dream Bold and BIG. Participate in, and contribute to, creating a higher order purpose and an unconstrained vision for the organization. Transform a ‘What is’ frame of mind to ‘What if?’ An encounter with the Servant Leadership Paradigm will bring the visioning behaviour as a culture at all levels.   Apart from enabling leaders to set a higher purpose vision for the organisation, a culture of Servant Leadership enables vision setting at all levels in the organisation. There is a myth that the vision can be only at the organisational level. The fact is the contrary. A vision can and must exist at all levels of the organisation. Of course, there is a need for the visions to be aligned. The “Demonstrating Conceptual Skills” behaviour of the DEEP BHC framework (https://leadyne.com/measuring_sl) makes this aspect measurable and hence developable. An encounter with Servant Leadership paradigm will make your vision for yourselves and the organisation an energizing one. When the organisation has a higher purpose than making money, a vision rooted in bringing significance to the world we live in, it will energise people. An example is found at UST (https://ust.com) where the purpose is “Transforming Lives”. Such higher purposes  will help employees rally around the vision. On the contrary, when the organisation has an inward looking vision, the employees are forced to rethink on their association with the organisation. To be the #1…, to be the xxx of choice.. etc are inward looking statements that do not inspire employees working in the organisations. Lastly, an encounter with Servant Leadership paradigm will make sure that the profit motive is achieved automatically. Ken Blanchard says Profit is an applause you get for taking care of your customers and creating a motivating environment for your people.[2] One of the first thing that leaders can do to engage and motivate employees to give them a purpose. A purpose higher than creating wealth or becoming #1 in their business. Yes, you read it right!! Leaders can give a purpose for employees. McKinsey research shows that COVID 19 has prompted several employees to reflect on their life purpose. More importantly, they expect the organisational purpose to help them fulfil their life purpose.[3] Naina Dhingra of McKinsey says, One of the things that we were surprised to find in the research is that about 70 percent of people say they define their purpose through work. And, actually, millennials, even more so, are likely to see their work as their life calling.[4] And the benefit extends to bottom line as well. McKinsey research establishes a positive correlation between purposefulness of employees and their EBITDA.[5] As a leader you have the responsibility of ensuring a higher purpose for your organisation. Have an encounter with Servant Leadership. It will change your vision for good. And for the good of yourselves, your team, your organisation and the world. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Dr. Madana Kumar is the Servant Leadership Evangelist at Leadyne. You can connect with him here, or contact him here.     ________________________________________________________________________________________ [1] Jesse Stoner, Ken Blanchard and Drea Zigami. Leading at a Higher level. Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organisations.  Chapter 2. Blanchard International. 2010. Pp17 [2] Don Carew et al. Is your organisation High Performing? Leading at a Higher level. Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organisations.  Chapter 1. Blanchard International. 2010. Pp3 [3] Naina Dhingra, Andrew Samo, Bill Schaninger, and Matt Schrimper. Help your employees find purpose—or watch them leave. April 5 2021. McKinsey and Company. Accessed at https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/help-your-employees-find-purpose-or-watch-them-leave on 5 Aug 2022. [4] Naina Dhigra. The Search for Purpose at work Podcast. June 3, 2021. McKinsey and Company.  Accessed at https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-search-for-purpose-at-work on 5 Aug 2022. [5] Naina Dhingra, Jonathan Emmett, Andrew Samo, and Bill Schaninger. Aug 18, 2020. Igniting individual purpose in times of crisis. McKinsey and Company. Accessed at https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/igniting-individual-purpose-in-times-of-crisis on

An Encounter with the New Leadership Paradigm Part 1: The four tenets of Leadership for the future of work The future of work has been a hot topic of study for the past several years. The question that I would like us to ponder on today is the leadership philosophy that is best suited for the future of work. The future of work requires each one of us to have an encounter with a new leadership paradigm. What is this new leadership paradigm? In this blog we will examine one part of this encounter. Studies reveal that the future of work will be more Hybrid pitting Remote working Vs. Traditional office. The concept of Gig workers or alternate works have been doing the rounds since early this millennium. Employees have a lot of choice in the future of work. Technology plays a a major role in changing the profile of the work, the worker and the workplace of the future. Employees are not happy with organisations that provide a great Employee Experience (EX). They are looking for great life experiences, which often transcend the boundaries of the traditional office. Engaging the employees requires constant innovation. Traditional ways through monetary means alone are not sufficient.  The great resignation proved this point beyond doubt. Employees are looking for a holistic approach from their employers whether it be their well being or upgradation of their skills. The role of leadership in meeting these new challenges cannot be overstated, or over emphasized. My studies reveal that there are four tenets that differentiate the good, the bad and the ugly of leadership of the future of work. Power Purpose Values Significance Power I have discussed this in an earlier blog (https://leadyne.com/power-in-servant-leadership) . The fact is that leadership and power have always been bedfellows and not always the right way. While we acknowledge and accept the fact that there are several leaders who use power appropriately, the list of leaders who misused power is longer in the history of humanity and especially in business history. It is becoming increasingly clear that the employees of the future are not going to respect leaders who use power to further their self-interests. It is not the absence of power that differentiates. It is the conscious choice to use the power “with people” and “for people” as against “over people” that will different the good, the bad and ugly of leadership. Purpose The concept of “Purpose-over-Profit” might have sounded outrageous a couple of decades back. But not any more. Several business leaders are touting purpose as their focus. One of the recent HBR articles on Great Resignation[1] argues that mismatch of personal purpose  with organisational purpose is a major cause of the Great Resignation. In short, while everyone agrees that money is required to keep a business running, making money cannot be the purpose of a business,  just as filling gas in a car is the not the purpose for which we buy a car. Employees of the future are looking for organisations to pursue a higher purpose, a purpose that solves some problems that the current generation is facing or problems that future generations could face. Values Organisational values are an integral part of the culture of the organisation. More precisely how the leaders embody or demonstrate those values, defines the culture of the organisation. Employees f the future will not be satisfied by mere lip service  to values or with just nicely farmed values adorning the wall so the corporate office or the websites. They want to see it in action. They want to see it embedded in the culture of the organisation. Absence of a strong set of organisational values and/or failure of leaders to translate such values in to observable workplace behaviours results in toxic culture. An MIT research into to topic reveals that toxic culture is by far the biggest driver of the Great Resignation[2].  Employees are looking for leaders who espouse a set of values in line with their personal values and moral standards. Significance Corporate culture has eulogized success disproportionately in the past, to the extent of downplaying collaborative work culture. Individual successes have been rewarded bountifully and this resulted in unhealthy competition within organisation itself. Employees of the future are not impressed by individual success of leaders. They are asking the question, what difference did that make to others? What difference did the success of a leader make to me? What difference did it make to the world? What difference will it make to the next generation. This is what I call as the “Life of significance”, that I discussed in my other blogs https://leadyne.com/4-personal-habits-2  and https://leadyne.com/four-reasons-why-servant-leadership-is-the-most-suited-leadership-philosophy-for-the-post-covid19-new-normal These are the four tenets that we need to look at when we encounter the new leadership Paradigm for the future of work. Servant Leadership scores high on all these four tenets and thus becomes a viable alternative for the Future of work. Come and embrace this leadership philosophy. ___________________________________________________________ Dr. Madana Kumar is the Servant Leadership Evangelist and Chief Consultant at Leadyne. You can connect with him here or contact him here [1] The Great Resignation or the Great Rethink?, by Ranjay Gulati, HBR Review March 22, 2022, Web accessed at https://hbr.org/2022/03/the-great-resignation-or-the-great-rethink on 9 June 2022. [2] Donald Sull, Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation, MIT Sloan Management Review, Jan 11, 2022 . Web accessed at https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/toxic-culture-is-driving-the-great-resignation/ on 20 Jan 2022