By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam I was meeting up with an old friend after several years and we decided to catch up with each other over coffee. This friend had worked as a Senior Adviser in his Government before moving on to work in the private sector. He was narrating his experience of working with two…
Leadership Crucibles
November 11, 2019By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam One question that people keep asking me is what prompted me to start Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM) when I was just 19 years of age. What was it that may have prompted me to do what was considered non-conformist during the eighties? I have thought about this a lot and…
Leading in the Here and Now…
October 28, 2019By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam Mindfulness and living in the present are words that are thrown around so commonly that no conversation on stress-free living, meditation or wellness is complete without using them. It is increasingly becoming ‘cliché’ to use them and one is surprised at how little people actually know about this or how useful…
Leading by understanding the ‘SELF’
October 14, 2019By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam A few months ago, I saw a tweet from a recently elected Member of the Parliament (MP) expressing his happiness at the address of the Prime Minister to the newly-elected members. In his address, Prime Minister Modi reminded the MPs that being an MP should not be seen as a position…
Exercising total leadership
September 23, 2019What we saw was not just ‘Authentic Leadership’ but a combination of ‘Crisis Leadership,’ ‘Political Leadership’ and ‘Total Leadership’ By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam. If there was any recent event that attracted more eyeballs than a cricket match that India played in, it was the watching of the final stages of Chandrayaan-2 (Moon Mission) on Sept. 6,…
Leading through adversities
September 9, 2019By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam Manikarnika (name changed both for privacy and security reasons) was a lively sixteen-year-old studying in a College near her village which was located 200 kms from the State capital of a Eastern State of India. Being a tribal girl was not easy and she was lucky to have a father who…
Leadership is Risky Business
August 12, 2019By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam Traditional thinking associates leadership with authority and it is intuitively interpreted as having the power to lead people and organisations to bring about the change that one desires. Occupying positions of authority reinforces this understanding and people start relying more and more on the ‘power’ that goes with the position. Over…
Leading to Mobilise…
July 29, 2019By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam When one reads the several tweets that are flooding the social media space about the ongoing political drama in the State of Karnataka, one worries on how people are interpreting ‘Leadership’ and how they see the State being led. While one party cries foul and blames the selfish positioning of the…
Doing one thing at a time…
July 15, 2019By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam It is indeed amazing to see how people are constantly rushing ahead with their lives. All of them seem to be in such an undue haste. Very few actually stop, take a pause and ask themselves why they are in such an undue hurry. It seems as though man is engaged…
Measuring Leadership Outcomes
July 1, 2019By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam Leadership and leadership outcomes are indeed difficult to define and measure. Though there is a lot of literature on this subject, the fact remains that very little is actually known. Though many yardsticks have been developed to measure leadership outcomes, some of the widely accepted ones are answers to the following…
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