What is adversity? It was best defined by the famous British Prime Benjam Disraeli as: “adversity is education”.
To flow with the current is easy; the toughest call is to use your oars against the tide. It requires not only dexterity, skill and talent, but also an enormous amount of faith and confidence. A belief necessary to develop such attitude is that temporary setbacks are not to be condemned as permanent failures.
Characters are built in the furnace of adversity. The tenacity to deal with changing economic patterns is the real differentiating factor between a leader and a manager. Personally I subscribe to the two being synonymous, but in practical life we do find and get to see, managers and leaders, as two different individuals -certainly not a good management spectacle. Managers respond to manage changes, while the leader is essentially the agent of change.
It is an inbuilt trait of nature that we all enjoy our respective definition of success, only when they are consequences of application, toil, and hard work. What comes easy does not create thrill and excitement for better performances. Anything in life, taken for granted, is never long lasting. It fades or decays. It is creating the right quantum of strength in one’s character that will allow for building up resistance to the demands of succumbing to events or negative forces of inertia and complacency. Lack of challenge creates a frigid inertia and the inner-self starts to suck, that what you are getting from life is easy and effortless. Being a cricket buff, let me illustrate, hitting Dennis Lillee or Andy Roberts, over the fence, was never the same for any batsmen of standing, as punishing the greatest of spinners like Shane Warne or Muttiah Muralitharan. The sheer pace was the challenge that brought the best out from those who dared. There is far more delight in gaining against ill-winds. In our daily life of complete naivety, the tendency is to look at small setbacks as utter failures of ambition and effort.
As leaders it is important to have faith in notion that guides you to believe that there is no permanent failure, defeat, or setback. Defeat or even a sense of it can be very destructive. A leader’s attitude is ‘never say die’. The fight must be on. Only those leaders fail who accept a single event as defeat. Adversity and defeat are usually, nay mostly, stepping stones or blessings in disguise. Angela Morgan, in a poem, puts it out beautifully: “When nature wants to drill a man, And thrill a man, And skill a man; When nature wants to mold a man, To play the noblest part; When she yearns with all her heart, To create so great and bold a man; That all the world will praise —Watch her method, watch her ways! How she ruthlessly perfects, Whom she royally elects; How she hammers him and hurts him, And with mighty blows converts him, Into trial shapes of clay; Only nature understands—While his tortured heart is crying.” Metals are melted and moulded at very high temperature.
What should the quest be? Or what is the quest? Leaders, who are prone to measuring their success in nothing except money, will most likely discover to their chagrin, that it is one commodity that does not reside, for long, at a single location. By its very nature, it ceases to beget, if it stops to move. So a pursuit of an objective that you will ultimately relinquish is no great noble pursuit. It therefore in isolation renders itself unworthy for the sustenance of leadership. The objectives of leadership have to be more sublime and long lasting. Some great leader had once said, “Kindness is more powerful than compulsion”. In the most difficult of circumstances and times, discern to associate yourself with the “truth” and you will never be a loser. Leaders neither should get branded as failures, nor should they indulge to brand others or even their own teams. If at any point despair pushes you to feel as a failure, remind yourself of the words of the wealthy philosopher, Croesus, who was advisor to Cyrus-The great (?), King of Persia: “I am reminded O’ king and take this lesson to heart, that there is a wheel on which the affairs of men resolve and its mechanism is such that it prevents any man from being always fortunate”. There are good days and bad days in life -but never suffer from loss of hope and courage.
Leaders must learn from history. When filling in shoes, do find time to reflect, why your predecessor, was a success or a failure. Recall to use, Aesop’s Fables moral, “better be wise by the misfortune of others than by your own”. I keep as a guide to my everyday corporate life, a copy of Aesop’s Fables to learn from the morals, that are eye-opening at the end of each story, which have been to me, always a turning point in life and thought. Leaders smile in adversity. They have to. Otherwise a frog during periods of elephant’s misfortune, believes it can kick it.
“All honour to him who shall win a prize”, the world has cried for a thousand years; but to him who tries, and who fails, and dies, I have great honour, and glory, and tears; Give glory and honor and pitiful tears; To all who fail in their deeds sublime; their ghosts are many in the van of years, they were born with time, in advance of time” (Joaquin Miller’s poem). Only with a heroic stature and temper can any leader/manager withstand adversity. Lord Byron says, “Adversity is the first path to truth”. Any affliction must go to refine the manager’s personality and not consume him/her.
As men, who lead organizations, do not allow yourself to be bogged down by sudden market changes or the emergence of unexpected challenges; never allow yourself to have a dark cloud placed upon yourself, because of short tenor failures. Never fear to experiment with the new. The history of mankind is full of men, and who dared to go through the merciless mill of life, and who ultimately emerged victorious and vindicated, for standing resolutely against adverse conditions. Let the challenges always be the spur. Success is always commensurate with obstacles, difficulties and challenges, Hurting can be instructing, downside in life, flee, when you decide to take them on. Adversity shouldn’t be paralytic. It must impel you to discover your true strength.
The roughness of the path chosen will smoothen your rough edges-only dark clouds are rain bearing. Declining sales, lower profitability, and diminishing morale -such challenges give impetus to creativity. The effort to find what are the changing needs and trends of the market get due significance. These hurdles are not to be seen or treated as marks of failure but as jumping boards to gather information of what consumer/client preferences are.
Face the darkest periods of market slow down, without wanting to flee from them, for facing it up front, you will bring to fare, as a leader, the grandeur of your visionary mind and by running away, you will provide confirmation to those who may have viewed you, as a coward. The mother of Quincy John Adamswrote to him, at the height for the struggle for an independent America, “It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of a pacific station that great characters are formed”. Face difficulties, contend with them. Great purpose will always ask for great virtue. “Fire is the test of gold; adversity of strong men” (Seneca). In a similar view, says Rumi,” Gentle flames are insufficient for iron, it requires a fiery dragon’s breath -only then that iron is the dervish who bears hardship under the hammer and fire, he happily glows red.
When, as a leader you find your strategy not working, it is best to evolve a new one, instead of sulking over the past. In the process, never fail to examine with keen sense of introspection, what elements contributed towards, the former not making headway. Tall men in history, like Abraham Lincoln or even writers like Charles Dickens, who spent a large part of their lives trapped in exitless poverty, turned corners through perseverance, uprightness, honesty and strong convection.
Handle adversity through awakening. Manual labour gives strength to the muscles of the body and adversity strengthens the mind. Horace had recorded, “Adversity reveals genius; prosperity conceals it” . . . . . adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant. Leaders never forget, stars shine only in darkness. Success must be viewed as a rainbow, which can only follow a heavy downpour.
The writer is a senior banker & freelance columnist