Leadership is about positive change – initiating, managing or following. With Change, there is always Energy that is either gathered or dissipated. The management of this Energy is ultimately what Leadership is all about.
If anybody were to try and write a Job Description of a Leader, they would find themselves listing the positive attributes of a human being such as:
Courageous
Visionary
Honest
Influential
Change-agent etc. etc.
Therefore, we can safely conclude that Leadership is not a Job Title, but an attribute. And as with any attribute, you just have to Be it or simply Do it.
The mystique of Leadership primarily revolves around this vagueness, this squishiness. After all, most of us recognize Leadership in others, why then do we find this so challenging to find in ourselves?
The answer as always is simple – Self-awareness. Any of us are able to recognize attributes in others, outside of ourselves. This person is honest, this politician is courageous, and that lady is influential. Yet, when we turn that beacon on to ourselves, suddenly the clarity vanishes.
In my opinion, one of the key attributes/qualities of a Leader is the willingness and ability to constantly look into themselves – either on their own initiative or due to the ability to listen, reflect and act upon feedback from their environment.
The qualities required of a person on the quest for self-awareness are primarily – Humility, Listening, Reflection, Thought and Action. The primary quality though is Humility. For, this quality brings with it other positive attributes such as openness and honesty.
In this blog I will be taking on some of these topics head-on as I believe that the process of peeling the onion through the hindsight of experience is a great way to learn. What I have consistently found in my experiences is that there are essentially two ways to learn: One is to use a map and guideposts on the journey. The other is to forego the map and the markers – but to keep the goal in mind while experiencing.
Both are critical and both are rewarding. This book while providing some of the maps and markers will nonetheless use Questions that are meant for the traveler to explore by themselves.
Leadership, like Life is more about the journey and less about the destination. There may be material goals and other tangible results that a Leader on the journey may attain – but Leadership at its pinnacle is about the journey and the quest for learning - the growth through positive change.
1) Leadership is about initiating and actively participating in positive change.
2) Leadership is primarily about serving the greater and less about directing.
3) Managing is about maintaining through the change process.
4) Change is about the changes in Energy – Leadership is about managing Energy.
5) Leadership is a personal journey – not a professional destination.
6) Leadership is about Thinking and Doing – It is an attribute, not a job title.
9 comments:
Amazing Stuff!! Truly inspirational.....Highly appreciate the Idea!
Simplified, very thoughtful and transformational description ...once again you are engergizing us Bharat. Thanks for initiating this.
Leadership without vision and imagination is not leadership at all. 'lead' implies a direction. If a leader doesn't lead into unexplored territory then they are simply taking us where we have already been, and thats not a leader, its a tour guide.
Some leaders believe they are taking you in a new direction, but they often fail to yield to the more experienced travelers that they lead. And the worst leaders are those who have fought tooth and nail to attain the title of leader, but really bring nothing else to the table.
I adore to the fact that this blog bring out real insight into leadership. It is great to hear from Bharat like motivating leaders. Thanks for your time on this!
This is a good start! I think you are absolutely right - there is no good handbook on Leadership. I liken it to parenthood - it does not come with a user manual!! One of the things that you can talk about is definitely inspiration. Maybe one article on how to inspire people coming from you (and I have seen you do it very well) will really help a broader audience.
I personally feel leadership is mostly about how inspired you can get your audience to accept your thought in attain a common goal.
This inspiration in the true binding glue between a team that helps achieve your goal in a much more holistic way than being a leader by other means.
A leader should inspire and lead by example, examples are Gandhi Lincoln and King. These are leaders the world will never forget. But if you call Alexander or Ashoka a leader, yeah it is true they are leaders but they are more managers than leaders, they managed their teams in achieving their own personal goals.
This is a very noble endeavor Bharat. Leadership is one of the most talked about yet at the same time gray zone (as you have word it correctly).
I would like to pose questions about leadership that I hope gets covered in your future blogs and stimulates meaningful discussions.
Also, I would appreciate if you can share some of your experiences that led you to your observations.
To keep it simple, will pose this one at a time :-).
"Can someone be a leader without being charismatic?"
Bharath,
What I liked the most in this post is 'leadership is a personal journey' - how true! I don't think there can be a better definition for leadership than how you have described in this blog.
However I have a question - we always talk about being positive and influential in leadership. Do you agree that sometime we get influenced in the other way, that too in the negative direction with the attitude of people. Can we still be leader when that happens? Believe me, anyone loves to be positive & highly energetic all the time. But I feel there is a threshold for that especially when we deal with negative energy.
A person is called influential when they change the world. My question is that will that person be considered as a failure when the world changes them for bad?
Your blog is very inspirational and it provoked lot of thoughts in me. And I felt that with the time, the velocity of positiveness is coming down in proportion to the negative energy you meet every day! Unfortunately you can't ignore those people, because you have to deal with them. The question is that do you want to change them for better or do you want to let the negative energy take on you or do you just want to ignore and be what you are. I know that the answer to be a leader is by adopting either first or third option. But I just don't know how realistic and how feasible it is.
I am sure you would have dealt it with numerous times and I am very curious to hear your inputs on that...
Truly incredible. I feel it's a heart who is sharing such valuable and thought provoking guidelines to become a successful yet simple and promising leader in the field of ours. I feel just by observing Bharat once for a while in a client visit at Ness Bangalore office couldn't help me gauge his persona as today I feel privileged to know him as a passionate Leader and a continuous Learner.
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