Vivek Chandrashekaran, an expert in delivering growth mandates says it’s challenging to bring the words leadership and relationship together because often, leaders are expected to be objective when relationships are rarely objective in nature.
A firm believer that career success is often predicated on relationships, Vivek is adamant that you will not become successful in your profession if you do not take the time to nurture a few good relationships along the way.
Having focused on driving commercial best practice and customer intimacy in Internet, Technology & Telco/Cable businesses in Europe, Vivek’s insights around leadership and relationships stem from his entrepreneurial experience in building high performance product organisation for a global online subscription business.
It’s all about growing with people on your career path he says. People can take you from one starting point to a whole new and exciting place in your profession. And so, he firmly believes that we need to keep those relationships going, and he has personally experienced this benefit through the start of his career to now.
Vivek’s career spans two decades of work experience. His personal journey with leadership and relationships began in a large, traditional organisation, where departments were typically structured to be led and to operate in silos.
It was here, he says that he experienced how in many large organisations, it was the norm for each department to adopt their own set of customs and traditions, but that this separatist approach has had a profound impact on the lack of success that many organisations face today. How can we truly align to a vision and be integrated as teams when company structure makes it difficult to cut across the barriers between these departments?
From traditional leadership to witnessing a change in leadership model; over the last ten years, Vivek has been involved with a number of smaller and larger European companies. In this time he has witnessed the ‘transformative’ approach in companies, where many have adopted commercial agility transformations. He counts himself lucky for these experiences, as his definition and view of leadership and the role of leading has evolved.
How should leadership look in for companies in these times?
In today’s working world, we are dealing with a vast kaleidoscope of different cultures, challenges, situations and personalities. Vivek shares his insights around leadership and touches on the evolution of traditional leadership mandates, to the current stream of relationship building, and why and how we should view relationships building as an objective and also in a meritocratic way.
Take a listen to Vivek’s podcast discussion with Exponentially Me CEO, Eksteen de Waal to discover insights into leadership, as well as the link between leadership by understanding characteristics and why understanding purpose should be important for teams.
