The Art of Leadership

 

“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.”

-         Jim Rohn American entrepreneur

“In the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness; in their welfare his welfare; whatever pleases himself he shall not consider as good, but whatever pleases his subjects he shall consider as good”.

-          Chanakya

 “Leaders think and talk about the solutions; the followers think and talk about the problems”

-         Brian Tracy, Canadian author

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”

  – Ronald Reagan

 

Thousands of articles have been written on leadership and still it always remains discussed as a pivotal topic, when it comes to teams – sport, explicitly – whether at the workplace or the field, families, states and nations, sometimes the world. In any sphere of life, you are expected to lead one day. Atleast most are, due to age and experience, largely.

Leadership is the art of piloting / steering (the closest synonyms I could find to ‘leading’) a team. A leader is a person who takes a team forward. A person acquires leadership by age and experience (organisations), age/seniority (place in society, family, even workplace), being a standout performer (sport, academics) intuitiveness and willingness to lead (multiple fields). But I feel though leadership can be instilled – there are many training programs, role playing programs -  a lot of great leaders are born. The latter have a flair, natural ability to lead a team; it is something innate in them which makes others want to be a part of the leader’s team. There may be, for example, a person who is not a standout performer, but has a gift of leading a team.

We can take a lot of examples from sport, notably cricket, given the cricket obsessed nation that we are. The most famous of captains in men’s cricket is Mike Brearley, so famous that Rodney Hogg, an Australian bowler, once remarked “That man has a degree in people.” Brearley went on to be one of the few sportspersons to be feted for his captaincy. He could lead a not so great English side to victories by galvanising his men and shrewd tactics. His book ‘The Art of Captaincy’ is a must read for all budding leaders. Closer home, Ganguly and Dhoni are supposed to be great leaders of men’s cricket teams.

But for me, one standout example is Arjuna Ranatunga, the Sri Lankan Captain, who led a bunch of no hopers to winning he world cup. There was one particular instance when he made his entire team leave the field in solidarity with Muttiah Muralitharan a bowler who was called for ‘chucking’. This was at the height of the Sinhala-Tamil conflict with Ranatunga being a Sinhalese and Muralitharan being a Tamilian. This was not just symbolic of leadership, but a statement that the leader stands with the team despite differences. A team rallies around a leader who stands up for them.

At the workplace, why do we call someone a great leader? The answer is simple. Ask yourself one question: What do you work for in an organisation? Money, progress (read: ‘promotions’) etc. are enticing enough but initiate an involuntary response in a person to come to office. My take is that one always works for the boss. It is always the boss who makes you come to office involuntarily. Do you find that your productivity is automatically a few notches higher under a boss you prefer to work with?

A leader can get the best out of his or her team when he/she affords the team space, the ability to think out of the box, allow them to come up with multiple options to reach a goal, do not interfere at each step of work,be able to handle pressure and more importantly, not be insecure of his/her place in the team. The last said characteristic is a must important ‘have’ for a leader. Insecurity is the result of the anxiety of a leader of loss of spotlight due a team member is stealing the thunder or. Insecurity also arises due to the leader not being able to contribute as much as one or some of the team members as well as the fear that the team member will outshine the leader. The cause for this is primarily due to the fact that the leader is not equipped enough or plain jealousy. Such a person is not a ‘leader’ in my book. The leader should be more than willing to share the limelight; in fact, the leader should understand that the limelight is only due to the team. A captain, as they say, is only as good as his team.

There are many approaches to leadership – from autocratic to laissez faire. Though there is no ‘optimum’ approach to leadership - it is a multihued art - the best ones are participative and consultative. At the end of the day, what do you want? To reach the goal and where the team feels satisfied and fulfilled. The success of a leader is a paradox - when the team feels orphaned without him / her in an exigency but still performs and succeeds with the thought that it is working for the leader.  

One other aspect that I am not too fond of is being an ivory tower leader – in this, leader does not move out of his/her seat but dictates terms from a cabin.  When you work with your team, as one of the members, the output is something else. Take their ideas, allow them to bloom. A leader, like a family member, will have favorites in the team, but should not use that an excuse to dump all work on that person who delivers – one day, this might lead to the proverbial killing the goose that lays the golden egg. It is the job of the leader to ensure that no team member feels left out - Tap skills unique to each person.

Leadership is purely a team thing. Leaders instill in their people a hope for success and a belief in themselves. Positive leaders have a vision and empower people to accomplish their goals; they, at the end of the day, have to get the work done. In fact, leaders create leaders.

Mike Brearley has the last word on leadership:

“We’re all interpreters of each other, some people more than others. Some are more able to use it in a practical way than others, because it’s one thing to be academically shrewd and quite another for that to enter your behaviour with others and help them do better — those things need to be taken into account. Leading a side is about two things — tactics and strategy and man- or woman-management. If you give a bowler a ball and give him options he didn’t think of before, then that may spur his performance.”

 

Acceptance

“I’m not okay, you’re not okay, and that’s okay.”

– William Sloane Coffin

 

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”

– Mark Twain

 

“It is easier to make our wishes conform to our means than to make our means conform to our wishes.”

– Robert E. Lee

 

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”

– Lucille Ball

 

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”

– Dalai Lama

 

“Acceptance doesn’t mean that life gets better; it just means that my way of living life on life’s terms improves.”

– Sharon E. Rainey

 

The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”

– Stephanie Perkins

 

Around a couple of years back, a friend and I were having one of our deep discussions on life - the seeming unpredictability of the future, and impact of situations and thoughts on daily living. During the course of the discussion, she posed, “have you ever thought of accepting where you are?”

 

We all have heard of ‘accepting’ things in life. Well acceptance is something we all read about, casually use in conversations and hear philosophers speak about. Accepting something is understanding that the situation, the person, the time is what it is and not looking at these through coloured prisms i.e. sans resistance. We are mortals and we want things in life, the way we want and the time when we want. Disappointments surge when we don’t get these. But when we are able to look at these through a dispassionate eye, the discontent is marginal.

 

Acceptance is of two types:

 

i.             Passive

ii.           Active

 

Passive acceptance is accepting people, situations etc. as they are - when you see something, and believe that you cannot do anything to change it and move on; active acceptance is when you try to do something about it. An example can be a chain smoker in the family. When you believe that the person can never change the habit and you live with it, it is passive acceptance. When you accept that smoking is an inseparable part of the person but you try to help him or her kick the habit, you exhibit active acceptance.

 

Acceptance involves a very important thought – that we live in an imperfect world and we are also epitomes of imperfection, as much as the others. We all have our own ‘Achilles heels’, our own pitfalls. We want people to think like us, live like us; that is the starting point of dissatisfaction and a muddy mind. When you are not disturbed, you are clear when you make a decision.

 

Do you know why? It is because acceptance actually results in making you see a clearer picture; it sharpens your intellect.

 

One facet of acceptance is diverting oneself from situations one can do nothing about. A very common example is being caught in a traffic jam. What do we do when there are vehicles in front of us, to the back of us and to the sides of us? Is cussing and cursing and being exasperated about the jam going to change the situation? No. So we do things to divert ourselves from the seemingly static situation we can do nothing about - play music, chat with a co passenger etc. By these actions, we are also unconsciously accepting the fact that we have to lose time in the traffic jam.

 

Accepting situations, people needs an open mind, which will help you tide over things. It ensures one is not disturbed or angry. One needs to reassure oneself that acceptance doesn’t mean resignation and the consequent morbidity, but only means that one has recognise that something is what it is.

 

Live in the present moment, they say. What does that mean? Worrying about yesterday or tomorrow is one of the walls to acceptance. It is important to think, but not question the present moment. It is inevitable, whatever happens can never happen differently. The heart is precious real estate. Don’t give this to people who don’t deserve it. I remember writing once on letting go. There is a time to recognise that one has to let go; this is one of the stages of acceptance. Learning to live with things is acceptance; you do that by letting go too.

 

Unrealistic expectations are a barrier to acceptance and one has to pluck them out. It is important to learn from the present as one will never get it back. One of the symbols of needing to invite acceptance is seeking validation from others for who you are, your actions. Trying not to do that is difficult, but not impossible. It is a slow process but an important facet of acceptance.

 

The present moment is not just a fraction of time; it is much deeper than that. It is very deep, very vast. One has to remember that there is a time for everything to happen and it will happen at the right time; if not, there’s always something bigger waiting. This makes acceptance a breeze. The result of acceptance is peace and more importantly, happiness.

 

Opposite values are complementary, stay stable in life. Make peace with yourself. There is a very profound quote by Charles Fulton Oursler, an American journalist (1893 – 1952) which I recommending framing in our heads:

 

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.”  

 

That’s all about it!

 

Pradeep Ramakrishnan