Your designation makes you a manager, your people make you a leader: Rajesh Srivastava

Whenever Rajesh Srivastava, Former CEO, Marketing Guru, Educator, Corporate Trainer, speaks, he has a clear, concise and very well thought out message to give out. Speaking at the launch event of Adgully’s definitive compilation of India’s Powerful Influencers 2020 on December 22, Srivastava made several important observations on leadership in the new normal.

“Everything that you thought you knew about leadership needs to be re-examined,” these were the words with which Srivastava started his address. Speaking about the traditional organisational structure, he noted how the decision-making rested with a few top leaders, while the remaining people were the followers. But, this structure needs a rejig in the COVID era, where leaders need to be developed at all levels, which is the basic concept of ‘Distributed Leadership’. How do organisations achieve this?

“You as a leader have to stop being a leader,” stressed Srivastava. In the traditional structure, a leader is the one with all the answers to employees’ problems, but with this system becoming irrelevant, the leader has to transform into, what he called, a “coach”. In the traditional system, a leader creates a dependent relationship with his subordinates, whereas a coach listens to the subordinate’s problem, then poses some questions that the subordinates replies to and in that finds the solution to his problem. So, in effect, the coach encourages independent thinking, which permeates down the line.

Moreover, speaking about the current times, Srivastava said that a leader should always anticipate the ‘black swan’ event (events that have never happened before).

He concluded by saying, “Your designation makes you a manager, your people make you leader. And when you become a leader, you should transform into a coach and make your people leaders.”

Watch the complete address here:

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