Do
you feel insecure and make your juniors also feel insecure, thereby stalling
and stifling their growth and development?
Do
you feel scared of the imminent fear of failure (or of your boss or whatever)
and thereby fill the whole environment with (your self-created) tension (just
short of terror) and thereby make your people hostile towards yourself?
Do
you (really) hold yourself in not so high (in fact, low) self-esteem and
instead, (outwardly) hold your juniors in low esteem and give them the
impression as if they are (all of them, or at least most of them)
good-for-nothing?
Are
you often (if not always) on your ‘most beloved’ mission of ‘catching people
doing something wrong and fix them’ because it gives you a feeling then (and
only then) that “you are O.K. and others are not O.K.”? Little do you realise that the very feeling
in you that “others are not O.K” stems from the hidden (though real) feeling of
“Not O.K” ness in yourself?
Do
you reprimand your people often enough, much more than it is necessary (mostly
unnecessarily) hardly realising that if a right reprimand can mend a person, a
wrong and misplaced reprimand can mar him for long, and may be, for ever?
And,
do you reprimand your people (instead of their acts of omissions or
commissions) and thereby let them feel humiliated and looked down upon,
demotivated and frustrated?
Do
you willfully inculcate in your people a false fear of punishment, by way of
missing their promotion (or even their pay packet - of which you are yourself
frightened) instead on the plea that, it alone keeps them at the peak of their
performance, perpetually (nonsense, though really it is)?
If your answers to all, or even one,
of the questions is ‘yes’ (but I’m sure.
It is ‘No’ in all cases), you may consider yourself to be one of those
leaders who are leaders not in reality, but in rank alone: who are leaders not
in reality, but only in form (in the hierarchy). And who are not real leaders are real dangers
to the very organisation they serve.
Because it is mostly they who draw the doomsday of their organisations
on a firm and fast footing. “This kind of manager can cripple an organisation”,
as F.G. “Buck” Rodgers rightly remarks in his “the IBM way”. Therefore, to grow and bloom as a real
leader, you should, unceasingly and meticulously, keep on doing just the
opposite of all the aforesaid ‘de-motivators’.
And many more positive things, too.
Be
ever ready to learn from others (from
the ‘mobile library - as the author calls them)
from your seniors as also from your juniors. From all.
From some you may learn the ‘Do’s’ of management and leadership. And I do practice all those to
perfection. And from a few others you
may even learn some ‘Don’ts’. And
remember and be on guard never to repeat any of them yourself. This is important for your growth and
development for carving out a real leader out of you.
Love your people. Talk to them.
Listen to them. And, above all,
hold them in high esteem. Ever. And let them know it too. Let them know that they are competent and
capable. Let them know that they can
produce magnificent results by performing at the peak of their potential. Let them know that the can achieve
excellence. And they will. Surely and steadily. In the words of Field Marshal Montgomery “the
leader must have infectious optimism”.
He must enthuse in his people “a feeling of uplift and confidence”.
And this you can afford to do when
(and only when) you hold yourself, too in high esteem. And in high spirits, too, always. Because, it is the high self esteem alone
that helps you to scale sky high. And
that is why the famous Urdu poet Iqbal has so forcefully and touchingly
put it: “You should raise your self
esteem so high and high enough that even Almighty God may be compelled to come
to you, first and foremost, well before all others, and ask you personally
“what do you want, my son? (I would give
you everything, just for your asking)”.
Don’t shirk responsibility. Welcome it.
Welcome it as an honour, as a reward and recognition. Don’t avoid it. Grab it.
Grab it as the golden opportunity for you to prove your worth, the real
worth, to the world. Otherwise, your
diamond would never shine; it would just remain disguised and lost in the
dust. Remember. Responsibility is challenge. And the chance to shine and show your real
merit and mettle.
Don’t conceal problems. Confront them. Don’t shun problems. Solve them.
A work gets done when (and only when) you begin to work at it. And so, a problem gets solved when (and only
when) you begin to solve it. Don’t look
to have a trouble free tenure of your service.
It is not possible, anyway. And,
if at all, it would be really boring. It
would be like leading a life sans any event whatsoever. And then you die unwept and unsung - you soon
sink into oblivion. Would you like
it? No. Then, begin to face problems.
And you would solve them surely. Because
F.G. “Buck” Rodgers did “believe that
any problem that can be uncovered and articulated can be solved” (the IBM way).
Don’t defer a decision. Take
it. Don’t unnecessarily take a stance
that all your decisions must necessarily succeed. It is not necessary. It is not possible. In the game of management, as in sports, your
performance is judged on the basis of how well you played the game rather than
who won or lost. Remember. Your over-anxiety and obsession with success
(stemming from the unnecessary and unhealthy ‘fear of failure’) stifles the
natural, free and full flow of your energy, your full potential, whereby you
fail to put forth your full force, might and mettle, in the task at hand. And that is how it is important and
imperative for successful managers and real leaders to remember, practice and
pursue. ‘Karmayoga’ propounded in the
Geeta : “their concern is with work only, but nor with the fruit (of
work). Let not the fruit be thy motive
for work; not let thy inclination be for inaction’.
“The leader has got to have vision
of where he plans to take the company” as Tom Peters and Nancy Austin rightly
observe in “A Passion for Excellence”.
And they go on to opine that “…we’d all be better off if we spent more
time articulating our corporate plans and less time on perfecting them”. But the vision should not be fabricated or
concocted’. It should be felt
passionately and thus should come spontaneously and freely from within.
And, most important , develop the
courage and dexterity to delegate effectively and thereby help your people
increase their self-confidence and the sense of responsibility. “Coaching is the essence of leading”, to
quote Tom Peters and Nancy Austin in “A Passion for Excellence”. As a leader you not only have rights, but
certain duties and obligations, too, most important of which is to take care of
your people - to take care to coach them, (which also includes counselling,
sponsoring, confronting and educating, as Robert Dyer puts it) so as to make
them grow and develop as leaders - not be rank but in reality, too, so much so
that they could, ultimately become your own ‘mirror image’, in the near
future. And then, and then alone, you
could call yourself a leader - a real leader in the truest sense of the term. If you are one, make yet another one, begin
to become one, sooner the better. Amen!
xxx
