A team of leaders who are real and personal
In my previous role as a leader for a multi-national conglomerate’s service team, our boss’s boss called for a team meeting – one of the first one’s he did after he started his role as our business leader. He is a veteran in the energy sector, respected internally and externally for his ability to bring people together as an inspirational leader. He shared his vision for the team. He explained how the re-structuring plans would help get focus back on what matters the most and help the team achieve aspirational goals. He then shared one last slide to sum up. We all must be ‘REAL & PERSONAL’. I resonated with this message so much that I think this is the foundation of our team – to be real & personal in work lives, after nearly 5 years from that day and a week after a bitter sweet goodbye to become a cloud being. Let me explain why this ability to be real and personal is so important.
In today’s world, our technology have advanced so much that we can connect with people from around the globe almost seamlessly. You don’t actually need to be in the same location anymore to make a genuine connection with another human being or to be of mutual value. Yet, you will find people being polite for the sake of it, apologising and praising for the sake of it, giving recommendations that they wouldn’t give to their own and many more. When authenticity is lost, relationships lose substance and sustainability. So being real & personal with our own lives (including work) and people around (including colleagues & customers turned friends) is paramount for not just us but to everyone including you.
We are not just building a group of people who are real & personal but also a team of leaders. To an extent, as a cloud technology consultancy & implementation services company that has an entirely distributed and global workforce; this is key to success that we all own our work, be honest -even when its not convenient and be leaders of our own lives. So we only have 2 kinds of people in our team – one who leads other people and one who leads work.
To become a leader among us, you have to earn it from the team that is most difficult to earn – trust. Trust that you will say & do what is true to conscience – consistently. If you are leader of people, trust that you will put your interests behind for the team and team members – consistently. If you are leader of work, trust that you can get the job done in high quality, in time and reliably – consistently. As Simon Sinek explains beautifully, leaders get respect and front seat because it is them who will face the danger when it comes. As a reward we follow them and help them make their visions come true. This is the moral and social contract expected of leaders. This is what is expected of every cloud being; to face the modern day dangers such as an emotional customer or colleague in a conflict scenario where it’s hard to stand up for the truth and still do with compassion.
For cloud beings, our work and life is not separate. We don’t take a break from our work to live. Work is part of our lives. We do work that matters, work that help our customers achieve similarly amazing dreams as ours & reap the many benefits of cloud technologies for their lives too just like we have.
We don’t keep our dreams for retirement plans. We live our dream everyday. Living with our families and working with friends by leveraging the cloud to the most so that we can make time for all that matters and supporting our customers to do the same.
Although, we do have pretty cool retirement plans too. 🙂
What does your team follow as core value? How do you look for this whilst finding new members to join the team? We would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Much Love,
Aarathy
Founder & CEO
Being Cloud
Broken links removed & Updated, 27 Oct 2019