Want To Be A Successful Leader? Rajiv Vij's Book 'Inside-Out Leadership' Has Pro Tips To Amp Up Your Management Game

While we look up to industry leaders to show us the way, have you ever wondered who the leaders turn to when they need advice? It’s Rajiv Vij.

Rajiv Vij has been a personal coach to industry leaders like Harsh Mariwala (Chairman, Marico), Arun Nanda (Chairman, Mahindra Holidays), Raman Ramachandran (former Chairman, BASF India) and Sanjay Gupta (former Chairman, American Express India) and several others for years. Before finding his calling and starting his coaching practice fifteen years ago, he had served as the Managing Director of Asia, Franklin Templeton.

In his new book, ‘Inside-Out Leadership: 16 radical insights successful leaders wish they had discovered sooner’ Rajiv Vij unpacks his experience of coaching senior leaders for the readers. The book published by Westland claims to be a thoughtful and timely expression of what constitutes outstanding leadership.

The book lucidly describes several lessons that are relevant for current and aspiring leaders in any field. Here are a few takeaways from Vij’s book on leadership.

Every good leader has the potential to become great

Drawing on his extensive experience of coaching hundreds of leaders in both business and the social sector, Rajiv strongly makes the case that every good leader has the potential to be great. He further highlights that in his experience, the path to more excellent leadership lies in the work leaders do within themselves. It’s their extent of focus on the inner transformation that results in superior external leadership.

Personal mastery is the pathway to leadership mastery

In leadership positions, you cannot differentiate between leadership effectiveness and personal effectiveness. As a result, you begin to come through quickly – whether aggressive or permissive, insecure or courageous, trustworthy or manipulative. Rajiv emphasises that to be a more significant leader, you have to be willing to reform your inner being and embark on the journey of personal mastery. This is the real pathway to outstanding leadership.

This journey for leaders involves deepening their self-awareness, understanding and regulating the emotional triggers that make them insecure, agitated or stressed, learning about their limiting beliefs and creating a healthy mindset, going beyond numbers and outcomes and being inspired by a sense of purpose and taking greater personal responsibility of their actions.

Such mastery not only makes leaders inspirational individuals, but it also directly contributes to their personal happiness, balance and fulfilment.

Learn to take greater personal responsibility

Way too often, we tend to externalise our challenges and believe that the source of our ineffectiveness or unhappiness is outside of us. Rajiv illustrates with examples how the change is within us. When we look within and start to change, irrespective of the people and the circumstances around us, we begin to experience a different reality.

As he highlights, this is not about being self-critical, shifting the blame or compromising; it’s the difference between looking out of the second storey of a skyscraper and the 50th storey – the scenery outside by itself is the same, but we have a different perspective. When we shift our attitude, perceptions, beliefs, and behaviour, we suddenly relate differently to the world around us. Likewise, as we hold ourselves more accountable, we invariably inspire others to respond differently, too.

Structured reflective practice is crucial for leaders

Leaders lead a busy life. Rajiv points out that, unfortunately, one key thing that gets missed out in this busyness is the time to reflect. He highlights that even many successful leaders don’t have a consistent reflective practice.

Creating time for reflection is crucial for busy professionals. As a leader, as much as you need regular exercise for your physical health, you need a regular and structured practice of reflection for your emotional and mental well-being. Without reflective pauses, you can keep reacting to different triggers in the same conditioned way – whether by becoming angry, anxious, excited or stressed. Stepping back and reflecting allows you to build mental clarity and respond with greater mindfulness. When you quieten your mind, you are more focused, creative, and productive and present in your relationships. This significantly raises your effectiveness.

Rajiv recommends leaders build a structured and consistent reflective practice. For example, you can consider starting a meditation practice, writing a journal, practising positive affirmations and visualisation, among other ways to reflect daily.

And many more

Besides, there are several lessons around building a healthy and resilient mindset, nurturing deeper relationships, creating greater balance, learning skills to be happy, and discovering one’s life purpose and leading from that sense of purpose.

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