Gowri S Ramani - Leadership Blog

Transitioning from technical to business leadership? What are the top skills to build on? As a lot of my clients are from the technology industry, one of the common situations I come across is when a technically strong person is at the inflection point to move into a broader business leadership role – by choice or by lack of a choice to grow within the company without making that move!   Many large technology companies now offer clear technical and business leadership paths to grow – on the technical side go from an engineer to a designer to architect to fellow/scientist, etc. And the managerial or business leadership path commonly goes as project manager, program manager, client engagement manager, practice head, business unit head. And a person can choose to pick up one of these or a product management path to becoming a product owner.   In several companies, even MNCs these choices don’t exist and as a technology expert, you may have to pick up a business leadership role if...

  Biases and Leadership - Are your biases holding you back at work? We don’t see things as they are – we see things as we are…Anain Nin In the last article, we looked at some key leadership behaviors expected at the mid-management level to be taken seriously as a leader instead of just a manager and be able to grow further. This article let us look at what are the common biases at the workplace and how they could derail your leadership journey. What is Bias? Wikipedia defines it as Bias is disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases are generally based on our strong beliefs and most of the time we are consciously unaware of the belief or bias or both that we carry. But they can have a huge impact on our behaviors and actions. So, what are the 5 most common biases, in my experience? 1.Affinity Bias: In simple terms, it means we have an affinity for people who are similar to us. That sounds no...

There are several leadership styles, Leader As A Coach is one of the more popular ones in recent times. As organizations are becoming more global, diverse, distributed, and matrixed, with remote working being the norm, old principles of leading by authority or hierarchy are becoming less effective and acceptable. Organizations are looking for leaders who can lead by example and create more leaders at each level to help to stay agile and dynamic! Remember the adage – feed a person a fish versus teach the person how to fish – that’s what you as a leader are trying to do – create leaders capable of leading themselves first. So what are the key elements for a leader to adopt a coaching style and still stay effective and efficient? Here are the five essential elements: Safety: First, when adopting a coaching approach with a peer or a subordinate, you must create a safe space for the person. She has to feel safe to share her thoughts, ideas, feelings about the situation and/or work and exp...

Several of my clients, already mid-senior leaders in organizations, bring up the topic of how to improve their strategic thinking capabilities as an area for development in coaching sessions. So, they are not unfamiliar with strategy, strategic planning, or strategy execution! What makes strategic thinking different from strategic planning and why is it still a common area for development in leaders? This article is based on Strategic Thinking: Can it be taught? by Jeane M Liedtka – a shorter, simpler summary. Reference to the original paper is provided at the end. Henry Mintzberg, one of the most famous experts in the field of strategic management differentiates strategic planning and strategic thinking as below: – Strategic planning is the systematic programming of pre-identified strategies from which an action plan is  developed – Strategic thinking, on the other hand, is a synthesizing process utilizing intuition and creativity whose outcome is “an integrated perspective of the...