Brig NB Grant Memorial Lecture 'Leadership in Challenging Situations Lt ...

LEADERSHIP UNDER CHALLEGING SITUATIONS: KEEPING IT SIMPLE 1. Leadership is about getting things done, with a motivated team. The leader’s actions motivate the team. Under challenging situations, leadership must be more grounded and aimed at achieving positive, synergised action. To achieve this, the leaders focus must be on three essentials, (1) effective Communication, (2) promoting Initiative and (3) Grit in execution. It keeps the approach to leadership simple and works in all situations from the normal to the more challenging. 2. This approach will be explained relating it to two challenging personnel experiences. First is an action during Engineer Support on the Siachen Glacier in 1990. It will be covered in the beginning, to serve as a backdrop to the discussion. The Sikkim Earthquake in 2011 and the BRO action to restore connectivity to Gangtok in record time will be discussed as another example before concluding the presentation. Both serve as examples of the three essentials discussed. 3. Effective Communication. Effective communication creates a healthy bond between the leader, the team and the task in hand making execution more adaptive, responsive and efficient. For effective communication careful preparation is required. A leader requires all the skills and attributes to think through the task in hand - a clear head, an agile mind and a sharp intellect. It further needs social skills – empathy, tact and clear expression. Most important it requires the ability to listen, obtain feed-back and respond to it. To keep all this simple, effective communication needs to develop into a natural style of a leader. The simple art of giving verbal orders is drilled into junior leaders. The format and basics involved can evolve further into a style of a leader to suit various situations, and levels of command. 4. Promoting Initiative. Initiative is the hall mark of both, the effective leader and of winning teams. Initiative in a leader depends most on self-confidence and courage. It also positively influences some of the other key qualities required in a leader. A person who demonstrates initiative will have a healthy mix of all the key attributes commonly expected of a leader. How to promote initiative in leaders and how to create an environment that encourages initiative at the lower levels will be discussed with examples. This will form a major part of the presentation. 5. Grit in Execution. This is the third essential a Leader should focus. It is a combination of all the dynamic qualities that we talk of stamina, determination and courage. It endures when morale and motivation levels are high. It is enhanced by a strong team bound by loyalty and tradition. A leader must understand all this to achieve heightened performance through the more trying moments of executing the task. 6. In conclusion the presentation touches upon the VUCA World, an acronym for VOLATILITY, UNCERTAINTY, COMPLEXITY & AMBIGUITY, which has come into more recent discussions on Leadership. As the world gets more ‘VUCA’, the three essentials continue to remain a simple workable approach for effective leadership.