Strong business leadership is a crucial part of any organization’s success. Transformational ideas—a team with strong and compassionate leadership is more likely to be more productive. The goal of business leadership is to find the guidance model that works best for a company and its team of employees.
Several specific qualities are associated with strong leaders. Most of the leaders involve their abilities to accomplish tasks efficiently, influence others to perform well and consistently meet and exceed expectations. Such effective leaders recognize the importance of being organized in the workplace.
If any company has an organized leader, the entire team is more likely to perform well and function efficiently. Dr Ankita Singh, the Senior Vice President and Global Head of HR, IT, Travel and Admin at CIGNEX and the Founder of the HR Association of India, is an absolute classification of transformational leadership intellect.
As Senior Vice President and Global Head of HR at CIGNEX, she has over 22 years of progressive experience in managing and leading various aspects of Human Resources spanning across high paced business domains of ITES. In addition to all functions of HR, Ankita overseas other enabling functions like Administration, Travel and Resource Management.
Ankita holds a PhD in Management and is a Gold Medalist in BBA as well as MBA. She has done HR and Business Strategy related Executive Management Programs from IIM-A, ISB- Hyderabad and XLRI. She is a certified PPA (Thomas Profiling) Practitioner.
The journey so far has been challenging yet amazing. Last 17 years, Ankita has been working with the same group. It has been a tremendous learning experience to evolve with the company and grow with it. Ankita, with her team, has progressed through all thicks and thins together. It feels magnificent to know that there is so much to give and get, even after many years.
An Exemplary Leader
Ankita has been fortunate enough to receive support from everybody around her. She always had an incredible team, outstanding mentors, and the best family to take care of all that needed attention.
The start was, by default, Ankita just landed in HR, but it didn’t take much time for her to realize that she appreciates being part of that function and that Ankita can sensibly learn and contribute, and then there was no looking back. Today Ankita heads all business enabling functions like admin, IT, travel, and PMO, but the core is still HR and will remain. I have been extensively working in HR; my core interest and expertise is to enable human capital.
I have been part of the same group for the last 17 years. As a Senior Vice President and Global Head of HR and other business-enabling functions, I am responsible for enabling business through people, processes, practices, and passion.
Overcoming the Challenges
Change! It has been a challenging journey to reach a level where you can stop for a moment and say, “Yes, this is what I wanted to achieve.” Everything around us is changing at a pace that’s unmanageable and uncontrollable.
The only way to sail through this is to stay flexible. Change as many times as needed. Staying relevant is more important than anything else. It is challenging to find a perfect balance, and something would suffer. Still, I try to follow the 30:40:30 rule. 30% mental and physical health, 40% work and community contribution, and 30% self-development and family.
Pearls of Wisdom
As a piece of advice for the budding aspirants, Ankita shared, “stay authentic and nimble, never compare yourself to others, never underestimate your capabilities, invest well, and stay relevant.”
Moreover, sharing her views on promoting women’s empowerment—Ankita expressed, “It can’t be generalized. Should be promoted, where people still see the gap and need to reinforce it. It’s better to talk, support, and promote whenever and wherever needed. In other places, where the culture is more structured, unbiased, and open, we should encourage capability and ability over gender-specific norms and initiatives.”
Embracing the Opportunities
Being a transformational leadership intellect, Ankita shared her opinions on the changing scenario of the world and future opportunities for women post-pandemic, she expressed, “I think more than the world; I have seen women changing. They have started identifying the opportunities. Instead of saying I can’t handle this much, they came forward and said that “I might not have eight hours to give but let me find something where I can contribute for three to four hours”; they became more adaptable to meet the need of the time.
I have witnessed women employees wanting to come back to work because of no location barrier and WFH opportunities, and the best part is that the world happily supports and welcomes them.”
