Leadership: the answers lies within

Excerpt from article published at The Financial Express by Rajul Garg, Director,

Sunstone Business School

The quintessential heroic story in books and movies goes like this:

Everyone is happily chugging along

Some crisis happens

The hero gets pushed into a corner

The hero makes a resolve

He takes actions to resolve the external crisis

Everyone lives happily ever after

From Ramayan to Dabang, from Lord of the Rings to Batman Returns, this is a

tried and tested formula of heroship that authors and screenplay writers have

used ad infinitum. The seminal moment of this formula is when the hero makes

a new resolve, within his heart, i.e. Step 4. Whether its Aamir Khan deciding to

take up bicycle racing in the 90’s or Batman climbing out of a hell-hole without a

rope in 2013 or Arjun finally resolving to partake in the Dharamyudhha 2,000

years back, this is the coming of age moment when the hero grows to a new

level of consciousness and finds the strength to deal with a new impossible

challenge. Movies and books are very much a reflection of our society and the

swriters understand human psychology wonderfully well. A watcher/reader can

relate to the seminal movement and likes to think of himself as a resolute

person who can rise to the next set of challenges.

If you study leaders from society and business, you will find many similar

stories. We know of Mahatma Gandhi’s experiments with truth. We have seen

Nelson Mandela finding the resolve to create a Rainbow nation. We have seen a

Dhirubhai Ambani having the belief to create the massive empire that he could. I

teach entrepreneurship at Sunstone Business School and while studying dozens

of entrepreneurs including myself the thing that clearly stands out is the

entrepreneurs’ ability to dig deep within themselves and finding the conviction to

keep going and ultimately going from level of success to another. Every time an

entrepreneur is raising funding, they are finding a belief that they can achieve

that next level of growth.

We are in the Knowledge age today in an increasingly connected economy. This

puts a burden on every employee to do more. Whatever level you are at, you

are expected to demonstrate “leadership”.

Most appraisal forms have this parameter. There is an expectation that you have

the ability to do more for your team, your organization, your customers and your

world. The key to demonstrating leadership is to dig deep to find your own

strengths and bring them to the fore. There are 3 things essential for this:

Self-awareness: Great leaders are extremely self aware. They know what they

are good at, what they are not so good at. If you can learn about yourself and

understand your strength, you can put them to work.

Sense of experimentation: In a quest for self-awareness, leaders are not afraid

of getting out of their comfort zone. They would take on experiments and

challenges, understand it, find the necessary resources and make a real attempt

at them. They would learn and grow in the process. Hence you should always be

experimenting and pushing yourself into new areas.

Commitment to a cause: When some of the experiments start working, leaders

have he ability to detect this and commit themselves to these causes and make

them into real projects. You may discard some buy you commit to some and

then carry it through.

If you can find a way to study yourself more deliberately, observe your actions

as a bystander does and develop a deep understanding of your own behavior,

the leader in you will shine!