Top 5 leadership necessities

In my over 11 years of working in various corporate houses, I have concluded on the top 5 things that make a leader. A leader is not a manager and vice versa. Given the aspirations and the mindset of today’s young professionals, a leader must display the following.

1.       Practice what you preach

2.       Focus on people’s strengths and not their weaknesses

3.       Celebrate failure

4.       Compassion

5.       Make the company’s vision a shared space

Much of my learning has been influenced and shaped by the lighthouse of my life, my guru, Aniruddha Bapu. While he is godlike to many, my greatest learning has been seeing him as a leader, as someone his people love and respect at the same time. Someone everyone looks up to and draws inspiration from.

Read on to read more about my learning in vast subject of leadership.

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There have been reams of text written on leadership. Yet, there are very few practitioners who can be classified as leaders. What is written about leadership is read for theoretical pleasure and not for practical application.

There is often this debate between the 2 terms – manager and leader. A quick look at the etymology of the word manager would reveal its origin in the industrial revolution when the owners of manufacturing units needed someone to look after their factories, especially in their absence. These people were supposed to “manage” or control the business and the workforce on their behalf and therefore, they were managers. That is the precise reason why the term manager is no more valid in most corporates in today’s world.

The world today is of enablement and empowerment more than control. A leader is someone who facilitates just that. A leader drives people to give their best. He is not someone who would ‘manage’ work, he would ensure his people get what they need to deliver their best. Thus, theoretically, the leader may not have any functional knowledge of his subordinate’s area of work but he will definitely know what makes the subordinate click and perform according to the expectations of the organisation. A leader is a provider and not a controller.

Best leadership is learnt by observation, not so much by reading. Observation on 2 counts – become the good examples and avoid becoming the bad ones. Bad examples are mostly those of the ‘bad bosses’. Based on my observations of more than a decade’s working life, here are the top 5 things that I consider make a good leader.

1.       Practice what you preach

Role models really work in the corporate world. Role models for executives could range from extremely successful entrepreneurs to successful leaders within the organisation. While a youngster today would like to be Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, he knows his best chance is becoming the CXO he admires in office. Similarly, he looks up to that successful boss in his team. That could very well be you! You have to be the successful role model.

The first step in becoming the role model is to practice what you preach. You may talk for hours on some management funda or a behavioural trait to have, but if you don’t demonstrate the same in you, you will not be able to impress the same upon your team. There are the theoretical managers who would read a lot about these traits and behaviours and counsel their teams but will themselves never practice any of those. That is where one loses his/her team. A demonstration always works best. There has to be a reason why demo is regarded as a critical phase in product purchase decision journey, especially for complex products; leadership is a complex product!

2.       Focus on people’s strengths and not their weaknesses

Did Steve Jobs have no weakness? Did Mahatma Gandhi have no weakness? How about Martin Luther King?

Everyone has at least one weakness. Improvement or undoing of a weakness is a hard task. Something that may take years. A better way out is to make the strength so powerful that it shadows or outshines the weakness. It is like the sun; the dark spots are not visible to the naked eye because the rest of the sun is so bright.

A leader will know his people. He will know their strengths and their weaknesses. He will push his people on their strengths to help them make the strength even stronger. A manager, given his nature and inclination towards control, will try and correct the weakness. It is a wasteful exercise. Correction in weakness will bring a person to a par level. Making the strength even stronger will ensure he/she shines above all else.

3.       Celebrate failure

When failure comes to people with the right attitude and those who display sincere dedication in what they do, leaders celebrate. They wouldn’t call for a party but will acknowledge the failure and motivate the person to do better the next time. This definitely does not mean that the leader would celebrate failures many times over. Managers like to ‘control’ failure not realising that there are bound to be failures. When failures do happen, managers turn defensive and look for who to put the blame on because in their minds, they had ‘controlled’ the failure and if it has happened, it must have been someone else’s fault.

A leader acknowledges failure and doesn’t blame a person. He takes the blame on to himself or the entire team. He would then figure the root cause and train his people to avoid such failures in future. The reaction is not defensive but constructive – plan to undo any future occurrence. The biggest learning from failure is ‘how something doesn’t work’; a very valuable lesson indeed.

4.       Compassion

To understand this aspect of leadership, one has to consider the case of Captain Swenson. In a raw footage on Youtube, Captain Swenson was on what became a rescue mission for his forces in Afghanistan. When he landed at the site, he noticed one of his soldiers badly injured. When this soldier was put into the chopper, Swenson kissed his forehead. Why did he do so? Isn’t the army supposed to train soldiers to be tough? Isn’t this gesture just away from conventional thinking of how the army operates, and that too the US army which is regarded as one of the toughest armies in the world?

Captain Swenson is an example of the modern day leader. He gave his team mate an assurance that he was there for him. His team looked up to him and when he showed that kind gesture, not only did the injured soldier but every team member watching would have been reassured.

In corporate world as well, leaders need to be compassionate. The team needs to know that when everything would be out of their control, the leader, their ‘manager’ would make it right. Leaders need to make their teams feel safe. That is exactly what Simon Sinek mentions in his TED talk – Why good leaders make you feel safe. This quality would be most useful to promote the culture of ‘celebration of failure’. If the leader is not too moved by compassion, no team member would be bold enough to take a dig at something new or audacious; the fear of failure would haunt his/her mind.

5.       Make the company’s vision a shared space

This is among the most important pieces in making a good leader. More often than not, the company’s vision is a well-kept secret and in a language that even the CEO would have a tough time decoding. For a company to stand above the rest, every employee needs to connect with the vision and for that, the leader plays a critical role.

Many a time you would hear employees say that they do not know why they are doing what they are supposed to do. There is a strong chance that they think so because they have been directed and not involved in working towards the company’s vision. There is also a chance that the company’s vision may just be for display on the website and that the company may not be working towards the same. In that case, the leader’s job is tougher and even more critical. The leader needs to create a vision for the function or for the team and work towards it. He/she needs to ensure that the team works collectively and complements the efforts of each other towards a common goal. This keeps the team energised.

Being what would be considered a good leader is not easy. One needs to keep eyes and ears open and observe well positioned people in the organisation and it would be clear what makes a good leader and what doesn’t. Many a time, it makes more sense to see what doesn’t make something happen. Those are the things to avoid. As long as you avoid those, you have a good chance of making a good leader.

The problem is us...

There have been so many discussions around what happened recently in JNU that I have lost track. One thing is for certain, everyone has a different perspective to the whole issue and from that person's standpoint his/her perspective is THE perspective and the only one possible. That is my biggest worry. We are not looking at things objectively but just as how we would like to see them.

The most irksome behaviour is to target and malign parties and individuals and not offices of responsibility. Similarly, people have developed loyalties to parties and politicians that blinds them from an objective and unbiased analysis of the work those parties and politicians do. The result is catastrophe. Detractors will continue to see the wrong and blame the person/institution. There will always be detractors for everyone. In the end, everyone will be wrong and bad.

We need to learn be objective in our evaluation. Recognise and laud good 'efforts' and criticise the not so good 'efforts' – not the person/institution, but the work he/the institution does. If there is something wrong that the person does, criticise, as vehemently as you can. If that same person does something good, recognise that as well. Most of us fail miserably at that.

For instance, I have many friends on Facebook who are anti Kejriwal. They attack him for the slightest wrong. None of them laud something good that he or AAP does. Ask people of Delhi about the odd-even formula and most will say it was a great initiative. Yet, the anti-Kejriwal camp would find flaws in it. More so, those who have no link with Delhi at all, would also comment on the initiative and try and rubbish it. The vice versa is also true. Everything not so right that Kejriwal did, people who like him as a person or those who stand by his ideology, kept silent about it or found logical explanations to prove that it wasn’t actually so bad. They used the Red Herring method to divert the discussion.

Similarly, there are haters of Modi and ‘worshippers’ of Modi. Even when Modi does something right, his detractors start with finding flaws in it. When he does something not so right, his admirers adopt red herring and divert the discussion. They try to protect his image and his honour even if it is by insulting or maligning others.

It isn’t and must not be about Modi vs Kejriwal or any other person against another one. It is and must be about India and people who live in this country. Anything that goes against it, we must all stand together and condemn it. Anything that works in favour, we must all stand and applaud.

We need to learn to become fans and haters of acts and not the people behind those acts. It is easier said than done, but it is the need of the hour. In the past few months, I have witnessed so much hatred in this country, it just makes me sad. Hatred for the sake of hating people; not looking at the bigger picture.

When with the people we love most - spouse, parents, children - we can be so objective in our evaluation (“What you did was not right”, “I don’t agree with you”, “This could have been done better”, “Let me help you improve this”), why not with people and institutions who run our city, state, country? Only when we applaud the good and condemn the bad will they also become more accountable and get to know what is right and what is wrong. Till such time, they will be right for their lovers and wrong for their haters. And in such a case, who would you listen to more? In the end, it is a stalemate and a cause of huge concern for the country!

You haven’t achieved much!

He is 45. He is yet a Senior Manager. He hasn’t really achieved much!

Even I have found myself involved in such conversations at times. Now when I look back, I was immature. Success and achievement are subjective terms and are heavily dependent on points of view. When you walk on the road, you see so many luxury cars. Would you term the owners of those cars as successful people? Most probably you would and in all probability you would be right. But that doesn’t mean that the person occupying the small cubicle in your office, way above age for his designation and role, is unsuccessful.

As individuals we have career goals and life goals. It is a fine mix of the two that determines how you would like to shape your life. It is like the temperature control knob in your car; just replace the extremes with the two goals. The ideal balance would be to have the knob in the centre – ideal work life balance. Those who have worked even for a short while in the corporate world would know that such a phenomenon is utopic. In reality, the knob would be biased towards one side.

There have been tonnes written about work life balance. There are theories that suggest that not every day can be balanced. There are times when you have to focus on work more than your personal life and the other times it’s vice versa. One has to make most of the crests and the troughs. When work demands more time, give work more time. When personal life demands more time, give personal life more time.

Today’s stress on professional success and growth has resulted in limiting the definition of achievement only to professional life. Also, that is the most visible and tangible measure of success. Companies and organisations stress on competition and the result of competition is a winner – often times termed as an achiever or a successful person. This is the reason why that old guy in the small cubicle seems as an underachiever or, in harsher words, a failure in life.

Step back a little. Why did men start working in the first place? To earn a livelihood. Why did they want to earn a livelihood? To feed their family and fulfil their necessities. Was there a work life balance principle then? Perhaps, but not stated as such. Though the cases in which there was an imbalance in work and personal life would have been more for survival than for “success”. The first instance of usage of the term “work-life balance” was in 1970s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, it was not until 1986 before this term was used. So, the term is not too old. What brought about the rapid proliferation of the term in board room discussions was the woman workforce. They were the ones that really needed that balance between work and home. As we travel into the deeper realms of the 21^st century, the term has taken a more universal relevance and every individual debates whether he/she has work life balance or not.

So, coming back to where we started – the dichotomy between work and personal life. Increasingly, we find people wanting to climb up the ladder of success in the corporate world faster than their peers. Good for them. Being ambitious is the first step towards success in the dog-eat-dog corporate culture. Others also get inspired or infected by the success of such people and also want to achieve success as they have. There is but one flaw. If everyone becomes successful, there would be parity and “success” would lose its competitive meaning. That brings us to what I call the osmotic pyramid of success. There are the success idols – people who have achieved much in life and much earlier than others. There is the mass of successful people and this is the largest group among the three. If this wasn’t the largest group, then the world would not have moved on; success drives growth and forward motion and this mass drives overall success in the world. Then the third group is that of success chasers. They are not consistently successful but are chasing success, wanting to catch up with the successful masses, inspired by the success idols. All three are permeable groups. These are not hard coded silos; each group has a membrane separating it from the other and under certain conditions, transfer to and fro is allowed (osmosis). People move among the 3 groups; more to and fro movement being in the bottom of the pyramid. This model is also in line with the bell curve definition of performance appraisal.

Why do people move up or down the groups? One reason is because their calibration of work and personal life changes. When there are important landmarks in their personal lives for which they have to sacrifice a bit of success at work, they move down. When they are gunning in their work life and are dedicatedly working towards driving success, they move up. There are also factors like burn-out, skill-out (not upgrading skills to meet the ever-changing world), etc. that contribute to the downward movement.

Among all this, there is a group that resides in its segment forever. They would mostly be seen in the bottom 2 groups. Everyone in the organisation feels they have no ambition, they care two hoots about success and at times, the manager even thinks of asking them to leave. However, managers are helpless as their performance may not be exemplary but is always found “meets expectations”. Let me introduce you to the successful lot of personal life.

This is an animal that is growing in number in the world. This species does not care about quick success that comes by sacrificing family time. This species will continue to do what it is expected to do. Mind you these people are not those who will not demand what is due; they are smart people. They will extract all that the company owes them, commensurate to their effort and results they drive.

Many may consider them primitive as their work principle is aligned somewhat to that of the ancient man – work to support the family and fulfil their needs and dreams. For them success is determined more by what they do for the family than what they do at work. They are not failures. They always exhibit the spark. They are late bloomers. When the early achievers burn the midnight oil for their professional success, these people work as much as is needed to make them grow professionally at a steady pace. They know that the needs and dreams of the family will grow and that they need to themselves grow to keep pace with that. They plan their professional lives according to their personal lives. Many end up exactly at the same place as the early success stud – the difference being, the early success stud has by then earned a lot more and has enjoyed the pole position for a longer time. Neither achievement is significant in the eyes of this species.

The personal success chaser is always there for the family – every important landmark of the child, every parent teacher meeting, every emergency situation, every doctor’s appointment, etc. For him, family comes first. He believes at the end of it, family matters most and if he is unable to devote time for the family, it beats the purpose of working. Many a time, this species looks down upon the early success achiever who, in most cases, sacrifices a lot of family time for the ambitious plan for success he has. There is one problem though. When the personal success chaser is made to compromise on family and personal time, he starts showing a slump in performance. The reason is that he comes under stress – stress that makes him falter and this results in poor performance. To get the best out of the personal success chaser, let him have his personal time and he will deliver the best at work.

There are examples in which the early success studs realised later on in their lives that family is important. They pause, look back and recalibrate their lives. In many cases, the recalibration leads to more family time. In some extreme cases, recalibration results in bidding adieu to professional life to maximise personal life before resuming professional responsibilities. Of course, quitting is an extreme step and not everyone can take such a drastic step but they would not have needed the extreme step had they calibrated their lives suitably, right from the beginning. Take the example of two CEOs - Mohamed El-Erian, the former CEO of the global investment firm Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) and Max Schireson, ex- CEO of 10gen (the MongoDB company). Both these gentlemen achieved professional success very early in their lives. They focussed extensively on their professional lives before incidents that changed their calibration. These are names that we know because they are renowned people who took the extreme step. There must be many more people taking these decisions about recalibrating their lives due to realisations about what life and family demands from them.

There is a third kind of people. These are people for who, making a difference in the world is most important. They chase their dream so aggressively that they sacrifice their professional success. Take for instance the youth that has taken up education of the underprivileged children as their challenge. They strive hard to achieve success in their chosen cause. There are so many instances where youngsters have quit their high paying jobs to seek what gives them the most joy. The list on this page mentions just a fraction of the many who have taken the road less travelled. I know of people who work to bring cheer to old age homes. There are others who work to bring joy in orphanages. They may not climb the ladder of success at work but they are way more than successful in what they aim to achieve.

Every individual has a different goal in life. He strives hard to make it successful. More often than not, he is able to succeed. Judging others from our point of view is being very immature. The only thing that we should judge is if we have been successful in what we set out to achieve.  Achievement is not defined only in terms of size of wallet or designation or the height in the corporate ladder. Success is very personal. I set my targets – if I achieve them, I am successful. Many are also pulled back by limitations; limitations that we may have no clue about. That guy in the small cubicle may be one such case. He, in his evaluation, may be a super successful person given his limitation.

My guru, Aniruddha Bapu tells us a similar principle. One must not compare one’s devotion with others. Often, we hear people compare the time they spend for Pooja versus what the other person does. And still, the other person seems to be getting all favours from god. Bapu says, there cannot be any comparison. The only comparison can be versus where one was the day before. Moving forward in devotion and ensuring you are better off than the day before is the only comparison one must indulge in. The queue to god does not have many people in it. We all have our own queue. And we must move ahead in our queue, closer to god. Exactly as everyone’s aim in life is different and we must never comment on their success or failure basis our definition of success and failure.

The next time you say, “He is not that successful”, pause and think. He might be looking at you and saying exactly the same thing. From his point of view, you may not be a success story to tell!