It’s appraisal time almost everywhere and its also the time when many companies fight the ghost of attrition.

Exit interviews can be varying…compensation, work pressure, work culture, relationship with colleagues and leadership issues as well.

Leadership seems to be one of the most talked about issues these days…just about anyone and everyone wants to talk about it and give gyan about what they think leadership is all about…

Succession plans, motivation plans, incentive plans et al…everyone takes its shelter under the leadership plan…

Here’s my take on it….

Leadership to me is about taking onus…take onus for evrything that is not right with your team, and give away the credit to everything that your team does to them. Leadership is not whether you take the right decision alsways, but it is about taking a decision and sticking to it, come what may, till the very end, whether or not anyone supports you. That will help your colleagues garner faith in you on grounds that you have the guts to stand up for yourself, for your values, principles and for what you think.

Leadership is all about understanding talent, identifying them and giving them opportunity…but there is a catch here…everyone gives opportunities, but good leadership skills mean whether you can give the opportunity to someone at the right time. Opportunity, reward, incentive, and an appraisal to your colleagues if not given at the right time and in the manner justified means of little value to your team. A leader should be willing to take risks with his talents…weigh talent versus experience and not justify everything with experience….Give that 25yr old bloke a chance to lead a team of ten…he has the talent, the intelligence, the attitude and most importantly, he wants to do it…so give him that opportunity…you take that risk…and then stand by him….support him, guide him and see him blossom…And then see the way you motivate an entire floor of people since they will realsie that you have the guts to bring out a talent and go out of the routine to create another leader…it will show that you are not insecure about your teams, it will show that you have the faith and most importantly it will make everyone look up to you as a mentor, a guiding light, a LEADER!

Incentivising and rewarding is also a responsibility of the leader…but to think that all incentives and rewards have to be in the form of money, to think that everyone of your team member will be happy with that is not a right notion. For some, giving more work is an incentive, for some giving them added responsibilities is an incentive, reward someone by promoting them out of turn, acknolwdge someone by writing a mail of appreciation that goes to the entire organisation also means a hell lot.

Appraisal is not about nit-picking on what your team cannot or has not done; it is about yes, pointing out what they could have done, but that should just be a five per cent of the appraisal review… An appraisal review should be about how good he or she has performed, what they have done beyond their KRAs and how they have taken initiatives which the management has noticed and appreciates. As far as pointing out gaps in performance, that should not be done on the final appraisal table, that should be a regular practice, a quarterly practice…this is something I realised in my days of teaching….when I was teaching in college, to kids who were appearing for their board exams, I could not wait for them to appear for their prelim tests and then tell them that weren’t good students…as someone at the helm of their welfare and academic growth, it was my duty to tell them that much before any exams took place so that they could improve with every passing test and then triumph in their final tests. Isn’t that how appraisals should be done too?

Leadership is managing people, taking risks, motivation and inspiration, but most of all, it is about you, what you stand for, what you aspire to be and about that collective vision that you have for your team and for yourself. We are leaders in our own circles of responsibilities…to a team of one, ten, twenty or fifty people and some leaders of an entire organization….so how much of the above are you doing?

Are you a LEADER yet?!