Training

This piece was on new training initiatives was contributed by Tapash Pal. Tapash is the Training Manager at Blue Lotus, and also heads team Blue Bridge.

Leadership Theory

Earlier this month at the TL offsite, team leaders and "potential" team leaders underwent a session on situational leadership as part of their overall training program.

What is situational leadership?

Classical theory defines different styles of leadership - autocratic, dictatorial, participative, bureaucratic etc., where a person is usually attributed with one style of leadership. But we all know now that this isn’t a very productive approach. GE along with Ken Blanchard (Author of One Minute Manager) developed a "Situational Leadership" module, which says that the leadership ought to be flexible and different styles should be adopted depending on the situation.

Ajai Singh, CEO of Transformation International, India and Principal Consultant, Shamrock Training Consultants & Master Leadership Coach, came down to conduct a one-day training session for Blue Lotus. Ajai is a Certified Professional Behavior Analyst, Certified Professional Value Analyst (the only one in the whole of South Asia), Certified Attribute Index Analyst, Certified Achieve Global Master Trainer, Certified Synergogic Master Trainer, Certified Entretel Master Trainer and Certified Leadership Foundations Master Trainer. He is also a Certified Master Leadership Coach and the sole Ken Blanchard Coach in India.

The first session was about a leader’s role in the changing work scenario. It touched upon the importance of workforce and how a leader has to adapt his or her style of leadership depending on the changes in workforce.

The second session was a LEAD self–assessment, which revealed our style of leadership. We were pleased to know that as an organization, we follow the "Selling Style of Leadership", which happens to be on the better side of the normalization curve.

In last session, Ajai spoke about Follower Centric leadership. What should a leader do if he has no follower? This session touched upon the third dimension, which is not covered by Ken Blanchard’s Situational leadership – PEOPLE.

All in all, the program has given us the direction for our thought process towards a three dimensional leadership.