The building blocks to great leadership

A number of proponents, over the years, have elaborated on leadership qualities that can be imbibed by today’s leaders. Be it the ‘level five leadership’ that Jim Collins popularised in his book Good to Great that demand a leader demonstrate humility, grit and a purpose, or, be it Stephen Covey’s prescription of a character that blends integrity with maturity, a combination that deepens a leader’s personal and interpersonal effectiveness. And many more such recommendations!

The author of the book Building Blocks has organised and captured his life experiences and learnings to anecdotally prescribe essential aspects of leadership.

A crucial determinant of a leader is his ability to take risk. In fact, shareholders pay the managers and the leaders for taking a risk. Risk is an opportunity and not a threat, and once mastered, it is ‘competitive advantage’. A leader is lost when he loses his courage and his ability to take calculated, but bold decisions! The author nicely makes the point; ‘Courage is nothing but hiding your fear with practice’; everybody is fearful, but how well one hides it makes one more courageous!

Great leaders sharpen their ‘growth mindset’; thinking big and being ambitious go hand in hand with managing risk and in being bold! It’s the leader’s thoughts that make him achieve what others think of being difficult or impossible. A leader not only practices such a behaviour, but also inculcates it as a culture across the organisation.

Focus, persistence and determination sharpen the core competency of a leader; it is all about improving your craft and focusing on what you do best and control the same. In line with the philosophies of Angela Duckworth’s research findings that hard work and perseverance is far more important than talent and intelligence, Malcolm Gladwell’s point on deliberate practice is on the same lines.

Empathy is the bedrock of empowerment and trust; E. Sreedharan of Delhi Metro used to spend half an hour with every employee who joined the Metro, irrespective of his cadre! It is not a waste of time; it’s investment. Listening, more than talking, helps you to pay attention to the problems and insecurities of your staff and in the process goes a long way in building trust.

Humility hinges on stepping back and reflecting on how we see this world, which is full of surprises. Certain pointless opinions which we would generally tend to discard at the outset, could be the ones that could change our leadership path! A great leader fully understands this!

Great leaders see listening as their top priority; over time, this gives them a unique advantage too: ‘speak to the masses as if they were speaking to individuals’; they get to know what matters to their people and how to encapsulate it in their communication striking an emotional chord linking emotions and the idea through ‘story telling’. However, veracity, timeliness, clarity and consistency in communication plays an important role.

An interesting, but difficult, part of a leader’s attribute is to experiment. Setting aside egos and destroying old habits, beliefs and practices to experiment with initiatives that will develop a better tomorrow is a hallmark of a successful leader.

Emotions are highly contagious; as a leader your emotions, good or bad on any day, quickly trickles down to your team. A conscious effort in controlling your mind to manage your emotions irrespective of your state of mind, provide positive suggestions without hurting egos, providing people with ample freedom to explore, make mistakes and learn will go a long way.

The leader’s role as a ‘conflict manager’ brings in support and signals his or her availability to the team; it is vital for the leader to demonstrate impartiality to a group of people and not get emotionally swayed by a few influencers in decision making without seeing the ‘big picture’ and analysing the situation in its entirety!
The book brings out a number of other attributes of leadership shorn of management jargon truly capturing the essence of leadership.

(The reviewer is Distinguished Professor Strategy and Accounting, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai)

Check out the book on Amazon