Leadership and the Person - Qualities of an Aspiring Leader

There is a mindset to being a Leader – a way of being and a willingness to BE.

People on the journey of Leadership, need to prepare themselves for a number of things that will impact them personally. Leadership is personal. Anybody aspiring to be a professional Leader is fooling nobody but themselves. Being a Leader is much more than a lifestyle choice – it is a way of life and one has to choose such a life. As with all meaningful life-choices – Leadership and the journey to become a Leader takes commitment.

This is not for the faint of heart and neither is this a road for dabblers. As I have often said to people who have come to me for advice or direction – “Be careful what you ask for – You may actually get it”.

I personally started this journey based on a conscious choice. Having been in IT and the Technical side of it for many years, I came to a crossroads in my own growth that was driven by wanting to make a difference. As I gradually worked my way through the lessons in Leadership (and continue to do so) – culled from the school of hard knocks, I came to realize one fundamental truth for anybody on this journey. “You wanted it – You got it (Now deal with it)”.

There are very few experiences that can be as humbling as being a Leader. The fact of the matter is that you are not infallible. I call it the 80-20 rule. You can expect to get things right about 80% of the times – the remaining 20% - you are going to make mistakes (Of course there are more colorful ways to describe “mistakes”). The only choice Leaders have is picking and choosing the 20% that we are going to miss on. As long as the 20% are not things that are going to make a material impact to the Organization – this is acceptable.

One of the significant challenges of being a Leader is the fact that we are exposed and vulnerable at every moment of every day. We have to be willing to allow people to look into us, probe us and question all that we do and think. A big part of being a Leader is the willingness to allow others to second-guess us and yet stay the course defined by the Purpose we have set for ourselves.

The example I use with people who I talk to about Leadership is that “If you don’t think that everyday at somebody’s dinner table, you are not being discussed then you are fooling yourself.” Graphically the interaction can be illustrated thus:




The exposure that a Leader has is not just restricted to their immediate organization – but to the members’ families, social surroundings and in many cases the external environment as well. …And they are all experts…

The willingness and ability of a Leader to stay the course (not inflexibly) and stay focused on the goal through all of this takes a tremendous degree of belief, self-confidence and self-awareness. A Leader will usually exhibit such behavior openly when tough times come around. It is a truism that “When the going gets tough – the tough get going”. I have always wondered why we as a Human race exhibit our greatest qualities in moments of crisis.

One of the learning’s that I have got out of Leadership is that it is an intensely personal experience. You wind up growing as a person and most especially as a human being. The more open and accepting we are of experiences that Leadership bring us, the greater is our growth and the richer the rewards. The lasting rewards are those of the soul. The sense of responsibility that Leadership brings with it is far more lasting and universal than many other experiences as a working professional. The only experiences that come close are life-experiences such as living with a partner, having a child, losing someone you love…

Because Leadership is such an intensely personal experience and demands a lot from the individual, many of us are unwilling to go through this crucible beyond a point. There have been at least four separate occasions in my career that I have seriously contemplated stepping off this journey – but usually, there have been affirmations that enable me to continue this journey.

To lead is to Learn – and in my opinion the sheer joy of Learning differentiates good Leaders from Great ones. A Leader has to be constantly willing to learn – irrespective of where such learning comes from. Once, while I was an inexperienced Leader, struggling to find my purpose in life; I met a rickshaw driver – Phupuli. It had been one of those days, where I had been struggling to deal with some senior (in years) members of my team. I myself was a wet behind the ears Manager of a Sales force in a largely rural territory. I had more people telling me what I could not do than I could shake a stick at. At the end of a rough day, Phupuli had come to take me back to my little one-room, kitchen place. I was unusually quiet and meditative. Phupuli did not bother me. Finally, as a vocal sigh built up in me, I rhetorically asked out loud – “Why are people so difficult?” For a few moments there was silence broken only by the creaking of the rickshaw and then Phupuli answered – “Why are our five fingers different?”.

Everything just stopped and suddenly I realized that I was learning something. The “Something” was beyond the truism that each person was different – but that common-sense is really quite uncommon!! I have rarely seen commonsense either being used or revered. What I have found is that most people miss the obvious in the quest for a more complex explanation or solution.

One of the keys to successful Leadership is the ability to keep things simple. Relationships are usually simple, business problems are usually simple. It is the solutions that we naturally try to get to that are complex. I always say the “What” is always easy to get to and understand. As human beings who seemingly always want to get complex, the “How” usually gets out of hand.

The challenge for any Leader is to simplify the “How”. And if the exploration of the “What” is intensive, the “How” usually winds up becoming simple. Many aspiring Leaders spend very little effort in exploring the “What” and usually, being problem-solvers, jump to the “How”. This leads to complexity and a movement away from commonsense. The tendency to move towards complexity is usually caused by people dynamics. Questions such as, “How do I convince X person?”, “How is Y going to perceive this”, “How are we going to carry the people along on this path?”.

My thought is that “What” and “How” are two sides of the same coin. The challenge is to be able to balance both. Leaders often have a tendency to lean towards one or the other. The two must go hand-in-hand.

The willingness to explore these dimensions is the key to successful, differentiated Leadership. The difference a Leader makes to both themselves and the people they lead is this consistent desire, thought and action to improve and grow. This wanting to be different and to make a difference is critical to continually growing and evolving organizations.

Finally there is a little spice that needs to be added to the pot – Charisma. The ancient Greeks said that people with Charisma were the beloved of the Gods. I believe that every one of us has Charisma. Many of us simply do not know how to tap into it. I believe that the greatest surge of energy that comes from us is when we are true to ourselves. When that happens, I believe Charisma emerges. The struggle for many individuals is to allow that Energy itself to become visible. The only factor holding that back is reticence and conditioning. When you have grown up learning that “children must be seen and not heard” – you have a tendency to carry that forward as adults too.

My advice to all those who aspire to Leadership – be passionate about your Purpose and ensure you communicate that Passion. Once you do that, nothing can stop the charisma and energy from emerging and being visible to all.

Most times people mistake charisma for charm. Charisma is lasting and charm fades. In the highly short-term oriented times we live in, I think we all have a tendency to believe more in charm. I have seen it happen so often in organizations that are short-term focused that perceptions about people based on the “Charm factor” sometimes has a tendency to overpower substance.

This goes back to the old discussion of Form Vs Content. My take is that it is Form AND Content that is essential and lasting. As Leaders, all of us have to strive towards accomplishing and attaining both. This is an essential part of our roles in making a positive difference.

As you can see, there is a mindset required and a willingness to acquire that mindset in order to sustain this journey of Leadership. All I can say is – it is worth it.

Leadership and Competencies

While large aspects of Leadership are about Values, Ideals and Humanism – I believe Leaders must establish and develop a core set of competencies. As we have discussed earlier, a Leader is all about Change – Positive Change. The process of making change and leading through that process requires a Leader to have a certain set of competencies and expertise that enables and enhances the change process.

From what I have seen and experienced, Great Leaders usually have either one of two characteristics:

Firstly they either have all of the competencies necessary and have the expertise necessary to establish the change process from start to finish.

Alternately, they surround themselves with People who have these competencies which demand a great degree of self-awareness, humility and openness. Not too many Leaders have these attributes or the willingness to acknowledge that there may be others who have greater competencies than themselves.

I once asked my boss in one of my earliest Leadership roles a question. This person was known to surround himself with extremely talented people. And not just that, but also had the ability to grow and groom these people and then share them across the Organization. I asked him why he surrounded himself with such people – and what enabled him to pick such people.

He answered very simply – “I surround my self with people who make up for my deficiencies”. He very clearly recognized that he had gaps in his own abilities and traits and therefore ensured that he picked people who had those competencies and skills. Further, what enabled him to do this was a clear recognition of what he did not have that also enabled him to look for and find it in others.

For anyone, the challenge is not just to find and surround oneself with such people, but to also allow them to do what you picked them for in the first place. Many Leaders I know fulfill the first part extremely well – that of picking the right people – but there are very few who are able to follow-through on allowing the people they pick to do what they are best at.

The primary competencies any Leader needs to be aware of are:

These sets of competencies when put together create a spiral that is infinite. I call this the “Value Spiral”. These competencies when taken as individual elements come through as very basic skills that any aspiring professional needs to develop. While this is true – a Leader is able to pull these together and have them feed off each other in a continuous spiral that creates magic. The analogy that comes to mind is a music conductor of a symphony orchestra. Each instrument and piece of music taken in and of itself is good – but put together and conducted well makes magic and a Symphony. A Leaders role in working with a diverse set of competencies is in making it work as a continuum.

Most aspiring Leaders I have worked with usually have possessed one or two of these competencies. On many occasions, I have noticed either of two tendencies with such people:

In order to compensate for the lack of other competencies, people have a tendency to focus on developing them and their own strengths become rusty with disuse and neglect.

With others, I have observed overindulgence in what they are good at. This then leads to a comfort level that then holds them back from their own growth.

I was in the habit of meeting the Global CIO of a major corporation at least once a year to hear directly from the horse’s mouth as to how he felt I was doing and also to get some career advice. This was a person I respected a great deal and this year I was eager to learn where I needed to get better and grow to the next level.

We got started talking about skills development and what we all needed to work on. At that point, I asked him as to what he felt I needed to get better at. He said that he had not seen me be very creative and constantly full of ideas. He also gave me an example of one of my peers who he felt was an “Ideas person”. Now, of course I bristled – but held my own counsel. One thing I have noticed is that developmental feedback makes us bristle or feel hurt – only because we already know that to be the truth – but the feeling comes because we are hearing it from somebody else.

What I realized was happening was that I was getting to be pigeon-holed as a terrific Execution and Follow-through person. What rankled was that I had always felt that I had Ideation and Creativity and that I was unfairly being compared to another person.

On cooler thought, I realized that I had been unconsciously doing some things. As I had been rewarded for my Execution in the past, it merely reinforced my behavior – instead of encouraging me to explore other aspects of the Value Spiral.

I would like to believe that it was at this point that I started to become aware of the Value Spiral. The key to a Value Spiral is the acknowledgement that it is all these aspects working in concert that actually create the Value, not one or the other.

The second aspect of the Value Spiral is the acknowledgement that all the aspects/dimensions may not reside in any one individual but actually could reside in various individuals.

The Leader him/herself may have one or more competencies required in a Value Spiral – but most critical of all the capabilities a Leader brings is the ability to pull all of these together and get them to act in concert. However, it is simply not sufficient for a Leader to be a facilitator. They are not passive in this process but extremely active and have a great clarity of how each of these aspects comes together.

Further, much like a conductor in a symphony orchestra – not only does the Leader ensure that all the musical sections (Winds, Brass, Strings etc.) are in concert – but also brings in their own knowledge, experience and most important of all their own “Feel” to the music.

It is this “Feel” that distinguishes being good and being great – being motivational and being inspirational. The ability to infuse into a group the concept of a collective Value Spiral and the difference that it can bring in peoples lives is a significant part of being a Leader.

The individual components and competencies of a Value Spiral make organizations good – but what makes them different and great is the recognition and belief that all of them in concert make them meaningful - meaningfulness, makes the difference that make Organizations and Leaders Great. Exploring each of these competencies is critical in understanding how they work together and the positive differences they can make to the whole rather than a part.

Ideation – The ability to imagine and create a Vision or a Concept that is unifying and Positive Change oriented for the greater good.

Strategizing – Moving from the abstract image to a more concrete “How” to realize the image or Vision through detailed analysis of the forces that could impact the realization of the Image positively or negatively.
Planning – Breaking down the strategy that is broad and far-seeing into discrete and tactical What’s and How’s and Who’s, Where’s, Why’s and When’s yielding a defined outcome.

Analysis – Understanding of the risks, resources, pros and cons of each discrete step to realizing the Plan.

Execution – Actioning of the Plan and leveraging the circumstance to drive the Plan to accomplishment of discrete goals.

Follow-through – Ensuring the Execution actually happens – and more critically – actually “sticks” and finally ensures that the Positive Change happens and that is has an impact that is favorable to and in-line with the Idea/Image/Vision.

Most Leaders I have worked with have always exhibited a tendency to be focused more on the Strategizing and Planning aspects. That being said – an underlying competency that all of them have exhibited is Execution.

Traditional and modern organizations have always had a tendency to focus on Execution as a core competence and therefore develop Leaders using roles that are Execution heavy. Most of the Leaders in Organizations today have cut their teeth on Execution. I am not aware of any Organization that focuses on the growth of Leaders through the continuum of the Value Spiral. If they do so, I posit that it is more by chance/circumstance than a result of effort or clear focus.

Great Leaders have usually stumbled upon their own native abilities rather than a result of their respective environments engendering these qualities. Leaders must practice each of these competencies, much like they work on perfecting their traditional skills. Where Leaders must pay attention to is on the establishment and focus on the recognition of the fact that it is all of these competencies that create the Value Spiral and not just one or the other.

Please Comment on "Need for Leadership"

I am seeing a set of comments on the earlier Blogs and the latest one on "Types of Leaders". I had posted another Blog on "The Need for Leadership", which introduces a Leadership framework that I am working on. Please review and comment on that as well.

Thanks.