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Stoa Digest #25: Become a Leader,

by Growing Another!

Nov 29, 2021

From the Editorial Room

At Stoa, one of the main aims, as is with any MBA, is to have our fellows be capable of holding leadership positions in organisations.

The attributes of a great leader apply to almost all spheres of life. Let's find out what they are. Great leaders will run an organisation smoothly, but also then share the credit with everyone that contributed in the whole team.

Leaders are the people who ask what needs to be done, then get going taking the steps towards doing it. Each part of this is a curve that is climbed with steep steps though. First you ask what needs to be done. Then you see if it furthers your goals, as a company, or even otherwise. And you create an action plan to tackle steps towards it.

All these steps require having full knowledge of the problem, to in fact solve it. To understand a task, it would need to be able to be comprehensible to an individual. Once it is understandable - you have to work out all the nooks & crannies of the solution, and have someone execute on them. Prioritise to pick the most important task right then, and hammer it out. What needs to be done now?

Commit to what you do best, and leave the bits you're not best at, to someone else.

A good leader will map out the Action Plan for their team, and then check in to make sure they're on track. This revolves around communication, and doing it with clarity. Your team needs to know exactly what your:

Expectations
Deliverables, and
Steps/tasks required to make the Action Plan come to life.

Effective leaders dont allow for problems to exceed the opportunities, presented due to change, for their teams to function to further the enterprise.

"We" before "I". This shows that an individual is considering the collective's needs & requirements before their own. It even changes how a leader thinks about their work & approaching it as a team.

Meetings are productive
At all points, it is we, never I.
Communicating
Action Plans
What needs to be done,
what is right for the enterprise.

Fellow Feature

What’s a great managerial lesson you learned?

“You have to be curious; It leaves you open to problem solution
Always figure out the best possible route.”

What are some tips you’d give to someone looking to be a good manager?

”Here are a few I know I think of whenever I’m doing this on a daily basis.

Being organised goes a long way- learn the skill of managing your own time.
The KISS method is your best friend - simplicity over robustness; always question why when digging through a problem, and do it with curiosity.
Keep doing it till you get better at it.”

What is something people can have conversations with you about easily?

“Problem-solving is inherently something I automatically do. It’s not even something someone has to present to me.
It also feeds perfectly into my skill of Quality Control.
My inherent curiosity has led me to know so much about things, that it becomes a lot easier to control the Quality of things happening.”

How do you tackle something when you don’t know where to start?

“Well I usually start a few of these ways:

Always understand what the person giving you the problem really wants
Understanding expectations - both of the person you’re working for AND with!
Understand the process of how they are doing it.
Apply it yourself & then learn from it.
Always try and keep 3 steps ahead when solving a problem and when understanding how to solve it.
Never be afraid to ask of shlep & context".”

How do you get out of having a bad mood when it comes to work?

“When you’re not doing something to the best of your ability, always take a step back. Sometimes that 15m of silence can change a lot. “

What’s something a Stoan is likely to not know about you?

“I have a huuuuuge penchant for magic tricks. If you meet me in person, I’d love to show you a couple of ‘tricks’ that are up my sleeve”

What is something you’ve learnt with Stoa?

“Just be you.”

Here’s where you’ll find Nikhil on Social Media: On LinkedIn / On Twitter

Announcements

We're seeing a lot of fellows refer friends, family & colleagues for admissions to the 5th Cohort. But a lot of misses are also happening because the Circle form doesnt get filled in, when you speak to them. Understandably so! Urging you to please find the link to refer fellows here.
A fresh crop of Stoans has begun to enter our servers.
So if you see new names around, say Hullo and welcome them in!
Find their Intros on Discord!

Birthday Parttaaayy! 🥳 🎂

Jacob Rohan - November 29th

Hritika Singh & Pranav Manie - December 1st

Kshitij Kuthiala - December 4th

Community Buzz

The Brewers & Their Brews

Puneet has been doing some insane hustling to gather insights. Stay tuned for more!

Puneet Birmaan @PuneetBirmaan

Over the last few weeks, I have been talking to over 60 customers of health and wellness platforms like @cultfitOfficial , @getburncal and @UltrahumanHQ and came across very interesting insights. Will be compiling and sharing these results shortly. Watch this space.

Shonik and Saumya are hustling to fix a really cool problem over the next 72 hours. Keep up with the S’s here #KUWTSs👇🏼

Saumya Saxena @saxenasaheb

The job search process is broken. Who's fixing it? We are. Together. 🧵

Shonik @Shonik14

@saxenasaheb @BuildBySTL @nitprashant We are thinking of creating a series of page that will help you streamline and coach your job hunting efforts. We are looking for tons of inputs. First things First - The Name. Pick name that you like and if you don't like any of then drop a suggestion!

Twitter Gang! 🚀🚀🚀

This is the coolest experiment we've ever seen a creator run. And it actually even knits into a story, which is really just neat as ever!

Sanjana @SanjanaLaddha

__________________________________ Dear people, I wanted to showcase one of my digital art projects on twitter. And for that I need your help (pretty please, i promise it’s fun) — Drop your date of birth (1 to 31) in the comments & I will reply to it with something special.

Coincidence that Srinidy was talking about something we were talking about too? We think not.

srinidy @srinidyR

Leadership has always been viewed from the lens of managing down. It is also managing up and managing peers and doing it with same passion as managing down. I wish more people spoke about this with such nuances. So many key takeaways from the leadership week @StoaHQ

Linking-In 🔗

Learnings that Anurag took away from the Leadership Learning Sessions this weekend with Shyam for Cohort 3.

Blogs

BIG WINS!!

Sudharshan’s now working on his SECOND NFT project.
Threado put out a really good actionable guide to community building and a curation of 800+ resources. If you are interested in the community space or building something in it, you should definitely check this out and let Hritika know what you think! Also, while you are at it - show them your support on Product Hunt!
Kashif wrote us this really, really nice answer on Quora about the Program.
If you’re a fellow, well, you’re free to go drop an answer in too!
If you’re a prospective applicant, you might get some context from his answer!

This week on Discord

Meetups

Event Announcements

Zero to One (The Entrepreneurship Club) at Stoa is organising their first conversation with Founders at Stoa.
If you’re looking for an invite to the Club reach out to Shiva, Rishabh or Ramasamy from Cohort 4!

For Stoans by Stoans ✍🏼📚⏯

Books 📚

Watchtime 🎥

Weekend Binges 🍿🥤

Blogs 🤓

Meme Wars 🥲

This week’s shiny new winner of

Best Meme

goes to …………

🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

Vignesh Kannan!

To end, we’ll leave you with this:

See you next Monday! Keep reacting, keep sharing, keep posting, keep learning!