Early in my career, I developed a management style I like to relate to as "participative leadership" "" engaging the team in defining the future and collectively owning and building the path to fulfil the company's vision. When I moved to Cisco India, I started working across all levels of the organisation to get employees engaged in this style of leadership. While the company had made great strides, I was convinced that we were still not ready for the future. I wanted our people to take more risks and not be restricted by their day-to-day activities and tactical goals.
What emerged from a series of meetings with my senior management was a shared vision for our business and an exciting business plan. The highlight of the effort was not just the quality of the output but also the ownership of the plan by the team. And with the entire team now owning the plan, success was certain.
Relating an MBA degree to today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table. While leadership is not about decision-making alone, active involvement of the team in the decision-making process improves the understanding of the issues involved by those who run the business.
What an MBA does not teach you, however, is that, as a leader, tough calls and hard choices are necessary. With participative leadership, people are more committed to actions because they have participated in the decision-making process. Hence, the social commitment to one another is greater and the likelihood of a successful outcome is larger.
(Rangu Salgame is Managing Director, South Asia, Cisco Systems. He graduated from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in 1994.)
