Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Vijayalakshimi Kandasamy

How would you introduce yourself?

I am a Lead consultant at Thoughtworks with over 19 years of IT experience . I consider myself fortunate for being exposed to a variety of projects in different domains with many organizations.

I am always passionate about solving problems with a keen interest towards Project and People management. This interest also led me to pursue MBA while parallelly working as a developer. On the personal front, I am a mother of two tweens. I love to be close to nature and spend my spare time trying to maintain a small farmland.

Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role?

I started my journey as a Java/ J2EE developer in a small sized product company. Being in a small sized company one can’t restrict to a specific role and that helped me to explore and extend my knowledge on the end to end software lifecycle. As the product I worked on was acquired by a large software firm I moved to this firm as part of the acquisition. This opened doors for me to work more closely with clients and understand their perspective. I have spent considerable time in the automotive domain and also with DevOps in trying to set up CI / CD pipeline for toolchain and in automation to bring down lead time for release.

During my journey , I always ensured to take up the opportunities that came my way and challenge my limits. Before Thoughtworks, I spent more than a decade with Bosch which helped me to shape my management skills.

Being empowered , accountable and driving strategic initiatives to deliver results were some key factors that inspired me to take up leadership roles.

What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them?

Collaborating with different teams to achieve a common goal is one of the challenges I could recollect . As a means to overcome , an alignment on the priorities, the benefits of the common goal and responsibility of each team involved will bring everyone on the same page. Following this, establishing a mechanism to uncover and track dependencies certainly helped in successfully delivering the results.

Keeping the teams focus and delivering results while navigating through ambiguity and uncertain times is definitely a key challenge faced. Being transparent about the situation , constant communication with teams, working on solutions given the current clarity and openness to evolve as the situation improves were some actions we implemented to sail through the rough patch.

What motivates you everyday?

It is good to be surrounded by people who constantly motivate you however I feel the best is to be intrinsically motivated. The impact created due to our work and the value we add to the organization motivates me.

Also I am greatly motivated while I am able to mentor people and make them realize their complete potential.

Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to?

I do not deny the fact that some training and leadership programs help play your role efficiently , but more than any other means I imbibe a lot of skills from the people I collaborate with on a daily basis. While I had opportunities to work with a lot of inspiring leaders , I still cherish working with my first mentor after moving to IT. He inspired the team by his way of approaching a complex problem , modularizing it and then connecting the dots. We were as freshers quite awestruck by his way of solving problems.

Another great leader I look up to, empowers his team to be autonomous and stands by them during difficult times. My Mother has been a great inspiration in my Journey ,a Doctor by profession she has always been empathetic and I Am greatly astonished by the positive impact she has created on many people.

What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style?

Leadership is just not a designation or role offered to you, it is a mindset where you assume responsibility and be accountable for the results. I do not stick to a specific leadership style always ,it is scenario based and a mix of multiple leadership styles. Although mostly inclined as a Democratic leader in some cases I also tend to be autocratic where specific guidelines have to be set and to keep the team focused on near term time critical goals. In a few other scenarios in my experience, where there was a strategic restructuring of teams based on product revamp I acted as a transformational leader in adapting quickly to change and supporting the teams to eventually sustain.

It is not that I consciously shift between different leadership styles but this comes out naturally in a given situation. Only later when I reflect , will I be able to differentiate the approach taken and the correlation with the leadership styles.

What would be your advice to other leaders?

I believe there is no substitute for hardwork and commitment. As leaders, creating an unbiased environment that encourages open feedback is essential.While it is quite common to spend significant effort firefighting on the current priorities , setting up time to strategically plan the long term objectives of the Project will not only help the Business but also reassure the team of the opportunities ahead.