Leadership Jouney at Zyxware Technologies
As Zyxware Technologies forges ahead in its journey to achieve the target of Rs.100 crores and 1,000 people by 2018-19, we realize that building powerful leadership capabilities is going to be a major differentiator.Hence, each of us need to take stock of our present, reflect on our past, and prepare for the future as leaders. Our goals will demand the best out of us.
Today leaders are expected to be authentic and empathetic, which begins with a high degree of selfawareness. Authenticity refers to qualities such as openness, honesty, transparency, and being real. It refers to the kind of leaders who feel “good in their skin”, who do not feel the need to impress or please others, and whose effectiveness comes from being open and authentic with themselves and with others. Furthermore, such leaders not only inspire those around them, they also know how to bring people together around a shared purpose and a common set of values, and motivate them to create value for everyone involved. Moreover, they work hard at developing selfawareness through persistent and often courageous self exploration. They are reflective practitioners, who take the time to examine their experiences and learn from their failures. In the context of self development as a leader, they strive for qualities such as courage, confidence, care, selfefficacy, decisiveness, honesty, and integrity.
At Zyxware Technologies, we have initiated a leadership journey for Zyxware leaders by taking stock of ourselves as leaders. We have used the concept of 360 degree feedback also known as multirater/multiparty feedback for the process. “360” refers to the 360 degree in a circle, with an individual figuratively in the centre of the circle. The feedback comes from all around an employee. Feedback is provided by supervisors, subordinates and peers. It also includes a selfassessment and in some cases, feedback from customers, suppliers, and other interested stakeholders. The questionnaire aims to measure the effectiveness of leadership with respect to competencies, such as communication, conflict management influencing Others, interpersonal skills, relationship building, Team leadership, Teamwork, Vision and Strategic thinking, diagnostic information gathering, application of technology to tasks, and customer focus, which are the prerequisites for a leader. We wish to accord our sincere thanks to all the leaders and their raters who participated in this process.
In the analysis phase, the leader's selfrating will be compared with the average of the individual's rater group (superviso, peers and subordinates) rating for each competency. In addition, the leader's self-rating can be compared with the rating of supervisors, peers, and Subordinates individually. This will throw further light on how the leader is perceived within different levels. At the debriefing section, action plans that balances the needs and resources of the organization with the leader's personal goals will be developed.
A genuine awareness of our strengths/weaknesses, and actions to leverage on our strengths and to overcome our weaknesses, will help to mould ourselves as great leaders. Having a team of great leaders at Zyxware Technologies will be our competitive advantage in achieving our ambitious target by 2018 - 2019. Also, the measure of quality of Zyzware leaders will be the number of leaders, not the number of followers.
('Definition of Authentic Leader'- Source - Kets de Vries, Korotov, and Florent-Treacy, 2007; Kets de Vries, Guillen,Korotov, and Florent-Treacy, 2010)
