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I hope reading
7 Questions with Anuradha Monga
helps you in your leadership.
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Jonno White
7 Questions with Anuradha Monga
Anu Monga has a distinguished career in school leadership always pushing the benchmark standard of excellence. She has more than thirty years of senior leadership experience having worked in different capacities with leading schools in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Kodaikanal, and continues to be an active player in building international partnerships to promote quality education. She serves in many national and international boards and accreditation teams, and works with governments around the world promoting educational collaborations. Anu views schools as #structures of joy, and her life commitment has been to look at the student as central to any classroom pedagogy and believes that one of the assured criteria for an effective pedagogy is a happy school. Via TAISI, she has managed to build a professional development community with schools across India. She believes that the art of running a successful school rests not just in finding the right people, but in keeping them. This requires #heart-led leadership skills, the ability to listen, understanding what motivates people, allowing everyone to grow and providing the necessary training and infrastructural support. Her strength and passion has always been to take projects and challenges that need to be worked on and breathe new life into them.
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1. What have you found most challenging as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise?
Working along diverse workforce & managing the external environmental factors which were greatly enthused with my team management expertise
2. How did you become a CEO or executive of a large enterprise? Can you please briefly tell the story?
On my way back from an IB Conference at Perth; I had a long halt at Singapore wherein I thought through to set-up an organization of its own kind to help the Education community at large. This is how TAISI evolved about 15 years ago with just 8 members & now grown into having 200 plus members.
3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?
After waking up early in the morning, I do my yoga ritual & then have my breakfast. After getting ready, I head to my workplace to start my workday. My work involves being interactive with my team members; I prefer walking up to their workspaces rather than sending emails being at the same location. Of course for the current times, meetings are planned over online platforms though I give enough breathers to not be glued to the system all the time.
4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?
I always feel that Leadership is a lonely position; I have learnt to be always amongst my team as a member & be friendly but I am not their friend.
5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?
Learning to Lead: The Journey to Leading Yourself, Leading Others, and Leading an Organization by Ron Williams provided me with practical, tested leadership advice, whether searching for a new career, looking for proven management solutions, or seeking to transform my organization. Developed from Williams's own personal and professional journey, as well as the experiences of America's leading CEOs, these strategies emerged boldly from engaging stories, outlined with practical steps for you to accomplish goals such as-- - Launching my career quest - Avoiding professional pitfalls, wrong turns, and wasted effort - Overcoming interpersonal challenges and conflicts - Building and leading an effective, high-performance team - Prioritizing and solving problems from multiple perspectives - Developing my leadership style and mastering communication - Casting a vision and changing the culture of my organization
6. How do you build leadership capacity in a large enterprise?
Understanding the economic advantage of Diversity and inclusivity has been a great driver for me to build up the leadership capacity.
7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise so far?
Building up my team of Educators in the TAISI Community over the years has been a great journey comprising interesting stories for every hire. Adding every member into the conglomerate having distinct abilities has been a wonderful experience of its own.