“Learning the art and science of motivation empowers you to be highly energized engrained with a purpose through a focused and highly disciplined mindset.”
Prof Kumaran RAJARAM is a Senior Lecturer in Global Leadership and International Management, Course Chair where he lectures, leads a team of senior instructors and is responsible for the curriculum & learning design of management and leadership courses in Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He is a REP Fellow and teaches in the Renaissance Engineering Programme, which is one of the NTU’s Premier Scholars Programmes (PSP). He is also a Fellow with the Centre for Research and Development in Learning (CRADLE) where he performs cutting-edge research in Organizational Science, Change Management, Cultural Intelligence and Organizational Learning Intelligence. He is also the Founder & Executive Director of Research Lab for Learning Innovations, Learning Culture and Culture of Learning - InnosolvLearn, Creative Solutions (http://www.innosolvlearn.com/). He is currently a practicing C-Suite Executive Coach and Management Consultant, whose provide expert advice focuses on Leadership, People & Culture and Change Management.
He has a Ph.D. with Distinction in Business and Management (majoring in Leadership, Cultural Intelligence, Organizational and Learning Science). As an acknowledgement for his quality performance, he was nominated for the 2012, 2013, 2014 Emerald Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards. He has received multiple competitive school, university and national level research grants and awards on topics related to pedagogical innovation and leadership competencies. He has guest-edited papers in Academy of Management Conference (Tier 1), European Academy of Management and journals including “Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal”, “Asian Case Research Journal” led by National University of Singapore, and “Higher Education Research & Development Society of Australasia”; “Journal of International Education in Business” (Emerald); “Management Teaching Review” (SAGE); “Journal of Education for Business” (Taylor and Francis). He had served as an Editor in Singapore Management Journal. He has published articles in leadership, management education, learning science, learning culture in multi-disciplinary context, learning analytics and internationalization of business education.
Dr. Rajaram has written 4 books and 2 book chapters with established publishers like Springer, McGraw Hill, and Routledge and co-authored a self-development book on Time Mastery. His current research focus is on leadership and change management for transforming future organizations. He was instrumental in transforming and implementing the flipped-classroom pedagogy, adopting problem-based and team-based learning in the course that he chairs. Dr Rajaram is also the inventor of many innovative learning interventions (http://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/learning-innovations). He was nominated for the Outstanding USQ Academic & Research Alumnus 2014, 2015 and 2016. He was awarded the John Cheung Social Media Award 2016, NTU EdeX Grants 2016 & 2017 and MOE TRF National Level Grant 2017.
Dr Rajaram has over 20 years of corporate leadership and senior management experience in organizational development, change and strategic management and organizational learning & training development and management consulting. He is an expert in leadership & international management, change management, cultural intelligence (business culture + culture of business and learning culture + culture of learning), internationalization & business development, management consulting, organizational learning science and management education. He started his career as an Engineer, had served as Section Head, Engineering, thereafter transited to the corporate world where during his last stints served as the Head, Director of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice-President Leadership, Strategy & Business Development for Asia Pacific where he championed evolving issues of corporate governance, internationalization and had implemented change strategies and then as the CEO and Executive Chairman of a global leadership and change management consulting firm where he has travelled widely to execute business consultations which has diversified his experiential horizons, especially in the cross-cultural context before he made a transition as researcher and educator. Organizations that he has offered his consulting services includes Microsoft, General Electric, Energizer, Siemens, NCS, Sim Global Education, Ferrero Rocher, SINDA and many more. During his entrepreneurial stint, he was interviewed and featured in SPANs magazine in 2008 for being an exemplary and outstanding young entrepreneur, USQ Alumni Newsletter in 2009 – ‘Alumnus achieves professional training success’, Inspire magazine in 2010 for being an exemplary role model as a business practitioner.
Despite his busy schedule and heavy commitments, he is a staunch believer of work-life balance where he disciplines himself to exercise regularly, spend quality time with his family, write and read widely. He is an active jogger, plays street soccer, swims regularly and occasionally involve in adventure sports. He enjoys good music and plays the flute. He is passionate and has a keen interest in personal development, an advocator on the art of motivation and time mastery as he strongly believes that adopting a winning mindset with embedded motivational strategies and effective time management is a vital skill for anyone who aspires to achieve greater success and happiness in life. He believes that leadership is empowering and enabling others to be committed in achieving a vision embedded with the nuances of cultural intelligence.
The secret of my high energy and motivation, imperatively the ability to re-ignite to sustain it in the most challenging and unprecedented times
When I was growing up as a kid, I was known for my high energy and wanting to be always engaged in varying activities. My curiosity in wanting to find out about things happening around me leaves me with an inquisitive mind. As I grow up progressively attending high school, university and transited to my workplace, one key aspect I realized that energizes me was the challenging circumstances bestowed on me that enables me to turn them into opportunities and excel. The values that are so strongly ingrained in me since young is to have a growth mindset, focused and fully committed in the task that I undertake. Importantly, the courage that motivates me to stand up stronger and fight on after every failed attempt. The situational circumstances and varying challenges that I had to face while growing up literally make me rise to numerous occasions to set clear goals, be motivated and work towards them with a focused mindset.
“What the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” – Napoleon Hill. This has been my mantra in pursuing academic and professional achievements. I commenced my PhD studies in Business and Management (majoring in Organizational learning, learning culture and science) as a personal growth journey in 2006 and graduated with Distinction in 2011. This is an achievement which is extremely rare and only top 1% of the PhD Candidates in average attain this outcome. As an acknowledgement for my quality performance, I was nominated for the 2012, 2013 and 2014 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards and my research achievements were featured in UniSA Research 2010 magazine and USQ Alumni Newsletter 2011 respectively. I will say with conviction that my winning formula is the ability to be highly focused on the tasks at hand, deflecting the varying distractions and determined to overturn any challenges into opportunities through a growth mindset. These achievements would not be possible if I have not sustained my energy, especially when met with varying challenges, hurdles that came about in this arduous and long journey. I remember revisiting and reminding myself on the purpose and why I set these goals in the first place whenever there are times when things become overwhelmingly challenging to handle.
My passion and aspiration to make a positive impact, by leaving a legacy in my own rights as a well-respected published author motivates me to continue my journey of authoring academic scholarly books and of those in the self-improvement genre. The journey of academic writing requires high discipline and focus as the demands in terms of its rigor and quality is very demanding. Nonetheless, I motivated myself by adopting varying customized strategies for keeping me engaged, inspired, and imperatively enjoy the process by eliminating the hurdles that come by. The hard work and efforts paid off as when I had successfully published two academic scholarly books as the lead author, in Internationalization of Business Education, titled “Educating Mainland Chinese Learners in Business Education: Pedagogical and Cultural Perspectives, Singapore” and Learning Science titled “Evidence-Based Teaching for the 21st Century Classroom and Beyond: Innovation-Driven Learning Strategies”. These two of the books were well received by global research scholars as they rave on the scope of contents, evidence-based scholarly discussions embedded with practical recommendations. My formula for this success could be unfolded to primarily the efficacy of the varying motivation strategies and nuances that I adopted along the entire writing journey that enables me to stay highly energized despite the high demands and time-pressure that I had to manage. To inspire and have many others benefit, I partnered with my close friend, Eugene who is a medical doctor by profession to co-author the self-improvement book titled ‘Street-Smart Strategies for Time Mastery’, that contains the essential yet vital, tested and proven strategies that enables me to manage my time and energy in an optimal mode with sustainability.
As a professor at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, my mission that keeps me rejuvenated could be unfolded in three key dimensions: a) inculcate positive and nurturing learning environment; b) stimulate learner’s interest for learning; c) Ingrain a mindset of life-long learning. I motivate myself by consistently and mindfully attempting to comprehend the nuances embedded in students’ learning preferences as well as the course’s key learning outcomes. This allows me to customize the teaching techniques to meet students’ expectations so that effective acquisition of knowledge will be achieved. I believe teaching is a form of exchange. Hence by endeavoring to appreciate the varying students’ aspirations, I can facilitate a conducive learning environment that inspires and encircles everyone’s aspirations in the class. An instructor should be creative to utilize varying instructional approaches that stimulate optimal learning in the students. I trust collaborative learning enables one to grow intellectually, develop internally and enhance their individual personality. It is imperative for me to develop a culture of innovation and creativity. This encourages students to not only optimize their inner talent and potential but also nurture them to be enterprising, enabling them to be critical thinkers with diverse perspectives.
Being a ‘change catalyst’ and exemplary role-model is essential to influence, inspire others, build trust and bonding with my students. I have been enhancing my pedagogy skills as a university professor for the past many years and this embryonic journey has been an incessant process of exploring the best teaching strategies across cultural and social complexities as I aspire to nurture future leaders and effective business managers who are reflective and critical in their thinking, can challenge norms, apply knowledge creatively and learn independently. In this fulfilling endeavour as an educator in higher education, my secret of being able to be highly energized is the ability of me to see a strong purpose in what I am doing with a focused and highly disciplined mindset, which I strongly hold as a personal value and principle. This goes together with the ability to identify and quickly remove any hinderances, imperatively to intervene with sustainable motivational support mechanisms that re-ignite the “fire” in me to continue despite the most challenging circumstances.
I am grateful, humbled, and delighted to share the well-validated and proven strategies that has enabled me to be highly motivated which is the source for my happiness, mental well-being, accolades, and achievements.