The Hindu Business Line : <I>It's about achieving balance </I>

Leadership is as much about "leading others" as "leading yourself". As individuals, our natural tendency is to do what we enjoy and are generally good at. To become a good leader, you must focus on your weakest attribute.

Let me explain this by using a model called the "multiplicative grading for leaders" (Becoming a Technical Leader by Gerald Weinberg, copyright 1986). As individual contributors, you are judged using the "summation" of your performance levels. For example, if you are 90 per cent on your technical abilities but only 50 per cent on your interpersonal skills, you might get a score of 70 per cent (average of 90 per cent and 50 per cent).

As a leader, things get a bit tougher and your people will use the "multiplicative" grading to judge your performance and you will get a score of 45 per cent (multiplication of 90 per cent and 50 per cent). This is clearly an overly simplistic model - designed to illustrate that a single weak area can cause havoc in your effectiveness as a leader.

So, what are the areas you should focus on as a leader? At a macro level, there are three: Ability to innovate; ability to motivate; and ability to organise.

To be a good leader, you must have deep competence and have the ability to innovate and generate new ideas (or at least be able to spot new ideas!). Second, you need the ability to motivate others.

Finally, you need the ability to organise your resources and channel the energy towards the achievement of the objectives.

To be a good leader, you must be balanced and be good at not just one or two but all three.

- Sandeep K. Arora, Lead Executive, Accenture Delivery Center for Technology, India

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