By Shenoj Kuruvilla
BAC Education Group’s Human Resource department organised another webinar session for staff on 18th February 2022. This talk, titled “Adding Value as a 21st Century Leader” was by Archana Vijai Kumar, a BAC graduate who has gone on to become a Digital Parliamentarian and the Asian Regional Representative at the Commonwealth Youth Council.
Archana started off by prompting the participants to give an example of a 21st century leader in their life. Many participants gave examples of politicians or well known people. However, Archana broke the participants’ worldview of what a leader is, by giving an example of someone small in her life who although doesn’t make a huge impact on the world, they do their work with excellence and dedication.
According to Archana, a 21st century leader looks like this:
- They have a people-centric approach
- They show vulnerability
- They have empathy
- They have social influence
- They are creative
- They use effective communication
From there, Archana shared some practical ways in which we can add value as leaders. We can be aware; a true leader is someone who knows when to lead and when to let others lead. We must be able to trust our teammates without micromanaging them, and strive to bring up new leaders. We should also be able to do our best to solve current issues with sustainable solutions.
Archana also reiterated that the ability to socially influence people is extremely important. She noted that in today’s changing era, leaders have to be able to share their view or idea in a single tweet or a short TikTok video. This way, we are speaking to the masses in their own language, and we are on par with them.
She ended with a quote from Robin Sharma, “Leadership is not about executive position or title, it’s about connection and influence. At its highest, leadership is all about adding value to the world and blessing lives through the work you do.”
After the talk, Archana answered questions from participants which sparked up some discussion on the changing scope of being a leader. All in all, this talk was beneficial to the staff who attended as they would learn to lead better in their jobs and lives.
