Posted on February 1, 2011 by Hemant

If you are or have been a senior corporate executive and are passionate about developing leaders, this can be a very satisfying area of work for you.

Learning Leadership is pleased to invite senior corporate executives to join, as leadership coaches, the Learning Leadership’s online executive coaching platform. You can leverage Learning Leadership’s programs and processes  to use your insights and develop leaders.

About Learning Leadership (visit site for details)

Learning Leadership combines  action learning, leader’s thinking practice, and improvisation. This is done in the context of a learner’s work responsibilities.  The coach gets powerful insights into the learner’s leadership skills and applies just the right kind of inputs.

Learning Leadership’s programs cover emotional, operational, and strategic leadership skills. The programs help organizations to build leadership pipelines. Most executive coaching program focus on the so called soft skills alone. Learning Leadership’s programs cover both soft and hard (business) aspects of leadership.

Profile of the Leadership coach

1. CEO level experience or broad cross-functional experience at senior levels.

2. Passion for developing leaders.

3. Prior coaching experience desirable but not must, if the profile matches on other counts.

4. Ability to connect with organizations at senior levels to get executives to enrol in Learning Leadership’s one or more programs.

5. Broad agreement with Learning Leadership’s values, philosophy and process.

If you are interested, please the review material on Learning Leadership web site. You may also review the blog posts “What to look for in your leadership coach -1″ (to -6) in this blog.  Please write to me for further information at hemant.karandikar@learning-leadership.com.

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Posted on January 22, 2011 by Hemant

I am often asked how does one find the extent of improvement in leadership skills after going through a leadership development program. Learning Leadership has devised a simple yet very powerful leadership baseline.

You can use this baseline to find efficacy of any leadership program by drawing it before and after the program. The baseline relies on how you allocate your time amongst various activities broadly grouped under reactive and pro-active categories.

Anyone can easily establish his or her own leadership baseline since it connects with day to day work situations. One just needs to complete the ‘Draw your leadership baseline’ workout* in our ‘Discover your leadership profile’ program. The workout also comes with guidelines on how to interpret the baseline. This is a free program. It requires registration.

Accessing and using Learning Leadership’s Leadership baseline workout:

If you are a registered user, you can now access this special workout for drawing your leadership baseline. Just log in and enrol in our “Discover your leadership profile” program. This program is free.

If you a not a registered user yet, register and click the program “Discover your leadership profile”

If you enrol and undergo various other programs (require payment) on Learning Leadership, you will see a good shift in your baseline. Of course, you will need to put in rigorous thinking and implementation efforts, but the results will be there for you to see.

Our executive coaching supports your learning efforts -workouts* and implementing your agenda. That’s why you learn faster and better.

Go ahead tell us about your results.

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*workout: A workout is an exercise based on your work situations and devised to help you apply leadership principles and come up with your own actions (agenda)

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Posted on January 6, 2011 by Hemant

Assumption: You agree that you need ‘capable’ leaders at various levels in your organisation for agility in framing the need for change, for framing a strategy, and for implementing a strategy.

But before I discuss the new, let me deal with the old.  The leadership development programs of various types.  They (those run by good institutes) are great in bringing up some powerful concepts in leadership with the help of case studies and some group activities. They can open minds, give fresh insights, and can be a great way of networking (also some site seeing depending on their location).

But the minds that are opened need to stay open.  It is well known that human minds revert to their habitual thinking patterns as soon as the ‘normalcy’ returns. Therefore, any retained learning from the MDP decays exponentially soon after your executives return to work.

What we do in Learning Leadership programs is to provide your executives with work based exercises (workouts). With their own work and life as their  ‘case studies’, your executives are paced through application of various leadership principles to come up with own action plans. When you think in terms of real and verifiable actions, you think well.  Our executive coaches go through these workouts one-by-one and give feedback for fresh thinking by the executives.  Our executive coaching method helps in forming NEW thinking habits at the same it helps in coming up with real world action plans.

The workouts require rigorous  thinking efforts. The workouts can be done anywhere  -in executives’ normal work environment, or at home, or while travelling.  The entire learning process happens over the internet.

The workouts are based on the Regenerative Leadership model. The model integrates best in class tools and practices in the area of leadership and management. The Learning Leadership programs cover emotional, operational, and strategic skills.

So let your new year’s agenda get one more important entry: Learning Leadership‘s workout-based executive coaching for you and your team. At your pace, place, and time.

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Posted on November 29, 2010 by Hemant

Working on case studies is a popular method of learning leadership and management concepts. A case study lets a learner to explore a concrete situation by applying various concepts and draw conclusions. The teacher can then give some further explanation.  Case studies simulate real life situations in a classroom setting and are therefore indispensable in management studies.

Learning Leadership innovates in the use of case studies. It uses a leader’s work and life situations as a series of case studies through workouts designed to capture them. A Learning Leadership coach is in a unique position to give relevant feedback to the leader helping him or her to improvise thinking.

This innovative method lets a leader to use the learning and action points straight away in his or her work.

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Posted on November 24, 2010 by Hemant

Great leadership conjures up images of charismatic personality and great oratory. Indeed, these can be assets to anyone. However, leadership goes beyond charisma. Great leaders capture the essence of their vision or mission in simple language and inspire their people to strive for it.  They communicate what is needed and they know how to communicate.

The art and science of communications goes beyond body language and style. Systematic planning, researching the subject and the constituency, and well defined objectives help in communicating effectively. The ‘art’ comes on top of such preparation and it can not substitute a systematic approach. It is possible that some leaders may get this right instinctively. But, for those who wish to learn leadership it is best to prepare for their communications well.

Learning Leadership‘s Communicate to Lead program helps leaders to learn and to practice the art and science of communications under expert coaching. The program helps leaders to learn the principles of communications from their experience and practice them through a well paced project of their choice.

Communicate to Lead takes the same approach that is the hallmark of Learning Leadership’s programs:

1. Learn about various principles and concepts through own experience

2. Put them to use by developing action points through various workouts

Please give it a try.

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Posted on November 11, 2010 by Hemant

Learning Leadership has a free program for you to discover your leadership profile.

There are many ‘tests’ that one can take to find more about oneself. Most such efforts usually stop at just that. While the organizations ordering those tests may benefit (in their people related decisions) the individuals seldom get anything of value from their participation.

The ‘Discover your Leadership Profile’ can be put to day-to-day use. Your workouts about the ways in which you ‘think’, ‘learn’, ‘decide’ will give you a better idea about what works and what does not work with you. You can share some of this with people working with you. This will help you to set their expectations about you and give them a chance to adjust their interactions with you accordingly.

You will be surprised to learn that many of your colleagues will be willing to make these adjustments since this will make things simpler for them.

Try it. You may like to suggest to others that they too find out their profiles and share with you. The program requires registration (standard two step process) but there are no charges.

At Learning Leadership, we aim to derive practical value from our learning efforts. This is just one example.

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Posted on October 29, 2010 by Hemant

Ajit runs a technology company. Ajit’s is one of those few companies that are started by technologists with passion for creating new products or new ways of doing things. Ajit and his small band of people have tasted initial commercial success in the way of getting some customers to buy, use, and endorse their new bandwidth conserving products for datacom applications. Although the money earned so far is still is less than the money sunk in technology and product development, Ajit is quite upbeat and impatient.

Ajit is impatient because,  he finds that he has to push things out of the door and to the customers. He hates it and wonders why his people can not handle these things themselves.

That is not all. He has that gnawing feeling that their products might fall behind the curve when it comes to meeting customers’ changing expectations and when it comes to shaping them.

Every new company or a company that is trying to grow goes through such pangs. Ajit, though a technologist, is aware of this. He attended some management development programs in which he had heard discussion  on this subject. But he has no clue about what needs to be done and in what sequence.

Ajit and his team need to develop emotional, operational, and strategic leadership skills. These skills can not be learned by reading books, attending courses or through being on the job. When you wish to be a leader who achieves operational improvements and who brings products that customers demand, you need to be able to think AHEAD. Ajeet and his team need to develop such thinking habits and and a also bias for actions. Ajit and his team need executive coaching that will encourage them to think across a broad range of business aspects and think of actions on the ground without missing anything.

Now, it is difficult to achieve and sustain such wide and deep thinking that is rooted in actions through lectures or group activities or strategy discussions over a limited period of two or three days.

At Learning Leadership, our various programs are based on well designed and well sequenced workouts which cover a broad range business and behavioural aspects. These programs run for several months and are designed for cyclical repeats. Our executive coaches ‘observe’ your thinking through these workouts and help you to think wide and deep. You get actionable agenda out of your learning effort. You get better and better in thinking like a leader.

Give it a try.

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Posted on September 11, 2010 by Hemant

University of Texas’s Business School has a distinctive architecture and distinguished faculty.

James Campbell Quick, John and Judy Goolsby Distinguished Professor, teaches leadership at the Goolsby Leadership Academy. Prof Quick and Learning Leadership’s Prashant Ranade integrated the Emotional Leadership program into the B-School’s course structure.

Prof. Quick had invited me to deliver a guest lecture to the new fall batch. During my lecture on September 9th, I had an opportunity to interact with Prof. Quick and about twenty five students having diverse academic, professional, and cultural backgrounds.

The students freely shared their experiences and learned about importance of emotions in work and life. For me, it was a learning experience to know that a diverse people can easily connect at the emotional level and that learn together.

During their ten-week course the students will receive guidance from Prof. Quick based on their on-line workouts.

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Posted on August 17, 2010 by Hemant

I am delighted that I will join the starting session of the new batch at the university.

Learning Leadership’s Emotional Leadership program will start for the next batch of B-School Students at the University of Texas, Arlington On September 9, 2010.

James Campbell Quick, John and Judy Goolsby Distinguished Professor, at the university’s Goolsby Leadership Academy will start this online program and teach how to develop emotional leadership.

This program has helped many executives in understanding themselves and channelising their emotional energy in better ways. This is at the heart of leadership that has power to bring in change.

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Posted on July 27, 2010 by Hemant

At Learning Leadership, we always recommend that our Emotional Leadership program is used as a platform to launch leadership development initiatives in an organization. A leader’s ‘presence’ is felt when he or she inspires people to achieve something worthwhile. Inspiration being an emotional phenomenon, a leader must be in close touch with emotions -own and those of people.

The Emotional Leadership program has been running at the College of Business, The University of Texas at Arlington, USA.*

The importance of Emotional Leadership is best understood from what Professor James Campbell Quick says:

“Emotional Leadership offers a pathway to the heart of leadership growth and development. Great leadership inspires; inspiration come from within. This course invites you to know yourself and the power of your own emotions. These are the gateway to knowing and leading others. Emotional Leadership empowers you to enhance your emotional intelligence, which is essential to the skills of powerful leadership. Emotional leadership is key to effective leadership.”

James Campbell Quick
John and Judy Goolsby Distinguished Professor
Goolsby Leadership Academy
College of Business
The University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Visiting Professor, Lancaster University Management School, UK

Various workouts in the Emotional Leadership programs offer good insights for executive coaching. An experienced executive coach can understand the person under coaching better and provide useful developmental inputs.

*The Emotional Leadership is also running at several corporations.

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