MANAGEMENT
Leadership and a discussion upon it is rampant in societies, cultures and nations. Look at the TV talk shows, sitting among the panellists are usually two opposite groups, one who riles and rakes the current leadership while the other indulges into adulation and praise. Leadership is critical and hence the focus. The entire living kingdom, inclusive of those who fall in the zone of humans, has need for leadership. They need to be shepherded otherwise they are a lost entity. Without the ‘Queen bee’ the honey comb can never come into existence. The queen bee gives purpose to every single bee!
Since the subject of leadership is so vast therefore for the purposes of this write up, I will restrict to what followers expect of leaders and take some examples from the annals of history to draw significant lessons.
Firstly, leaders must recognise that mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be ignited. Every leader must have a precise mission and vision. It should be shared and not put into the lockers of inner self. The vision must touch the chords of all affected by it with great energy, enthusiasm and commitment. The French revolution was spurred by the vision of ‘Liberty’, Equality and Fraternity,’ the demand for classless society was Karl Marx’s singular objective, the revolution was at the centre of whatever Lenin did and it was Thomas Addison’s obsession to see his lamp lighting every home. Followers emerge only when they see that amongst them is an individual who can see, what they and others can’t see. Those who are in quest of seeking opportunity in adversity, converting defeat into conquest and never displaying loss of faith towards their goals, ideals and commitments. Such people become leaders because no routine work ever satiates their energy levels. Mr Jinnah and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto always put in more than 18-20 hours of work, into their daily lives and yet were unsatisfied. Leaders are always finding and searching for answers to the higher purpose of living! The mundane never interests them; it is the extraordinary that acts as their propelling vitamin and in an advanced stage of leadership, this becomes their intoxicant.
Leaders, good ones, practice what they preach. Look at the published vision and mission statements of various corporate entities and then compare how the ‘values’ they enunciate are cut to pieces by the managers of the organisation through their words and action. The mere coining of high sounding vision is insufficient, inadequate; the credibility to it comes only when they are practiced in earnest or even in a worst case scenario, be at least seen to be practiced. Successful leaders follow their words and not chew their own words every other minute, by back tracking upon them. Just scan our country’s political landscape and you are amused how those who claim to be leaders forget through guile and convenience what they say a minute back. We are also witnessing through the handy use of technology how TV anchors corner such ‘leaders’ by replaying for them what they say and forget! ‘To be persuasive we must be believable, to be believable we must be credible. To be credible we must be truthful.’ (Edward Murrow) Now, pause and measure the corporate manager and the political leadership against the basic yardstick of ‘credibility’ and ‘truthfulness’! Embarrassed!
Keep fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others (RL Steveson). Inspiration is not a process of long years but sudden and immediate marriage to action. A leader’s vision has to be seen as the vision of those led. Each individual wants to hear how his problems will be addressed. Our home brand demagogue, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the charismatic leader talked incessantly about ‘Roti, Kapra aur Makan’, because he knew that’s exactly what the masses wanted to hear. No leader must attempt to sell his idiosyncrasies but instead he takes all, along the route of shared glory.
Leadership conceptually identifies itself very closely to the element of charisma in a personality. Napoleon is known in history for his magnetic charisma, he could convert his worst enemies to ardent followers; to the extent that Marshall Lannes wrote, ‘I have always been victim of my attachment to him.’
In the post war era, it is again the French, General Charles De Gaulle who stands out as a leader who shaped and gave vision to France’s growth and reconstruction. His personality traits were amazing. He made people feel, he was close to them, yet was distanced. A little aloof. A little reticent. For personal mystique, De Gaulle had no friendship with any cabinet colleague. He preferred them to address him as ‘Mon General’. He shuffled staff because may be he subscribed to the adage familiarity breeds incompetence. He wasn’t fond of small talk. He hid his competence. He wasn’t fond of small talk. He hid his emotions.
Richard Nixon in his book, ’The Leaders’ sums up Charles De Gaulle’s personality in the following words, ‘he was stubborn, wilful , supremely self confident, man of enormous ego and yet at the same time enormous selflessness. He was demanding not for himself but for France. He lived simply but dreamt grandly...’
Leadership is about being a trapeze artist- jumping and swinging from one platform of comfort to another and in between taking those calculated risks for organisational growth- this is possible and done through team work. Persistence is their mantra with no room to even be discouraged by possibilities of failure. Leaders create ownership to their thoughts.
Leadership is also about great amount of patience and toil. In doing so they teach their followers, that hard work and struggle are absolutely necessary ingredients for sustainable and sound growth. A man once found a cocoon of the emperor moth and took it home to watch it emerge. One day a small opening emerged and for several hours the moth struggled but couldn’t seem to force its body past a certain point.
Deciding that something was incorrect, the man took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining part of the cocoon. The moth emerged easily its body large and swollen, the wings small and shrivelled.
He expected that the moth in a few hours would spread out its beautiful wings and fly. But it did not. Instead of developing into a creature free to fly, the moth spent its life dragging around a swollen body and shrivelled wings.
The constricting cocoon and the struggle necessary to pass through the tiny openings are God’s way of forcing fluid from the body into the wings. The ‘merciful snip’ was in reality cruel. Sometimes the struggle is exactly what is needed. All managers must allow for the struggle of their colleagues and resist the temptation to give the ‘merciful snip’.
Another major aspect of leadership is that no matter how precise intelligent preparation has been done for any business plan, and regardless of how many colleagues have bought the plan, the leader has to follow through. There is need to check on every initiative, for it can fall through cracks of lack of attention, the pursuit has to be consistent. Ask and only then you as a leader get to know the stage and progress of any initiative, action or project.
Finally, drawing the distinction between the great and ordinary leaders, Henry Kissinger, wrote: is less formal intellect than insight and courage. The great man understands the essence of a problem; the ordinary leader grasps only the symptoms. The great man focuses on the relationship of events to each other; the ordinary leaders only to a series of seemingly disconnected events. The great man has a vision of the future that enables him to put obstacles in perspective; the ordinary leader turns a pebble on the road into boulders.’
As managers we must develop leaders. It can be done only with goodness of heart and a purpose that has morality, integrity and fairness as the bed rock of all effort.
The writer is a senior banker and freelance columnist
