leadership

The more you read about leadership, the more puzzling it is. Every Manager latently believes that he is the best leader, the team ever had. Or is He ?

Leadership has to be captured out of Politicians, State Heads, History , Sports and Science.

History is the open secret and the first source of information as to what kind of people finally became leaders. The more you dig , the more you find that most leaders were those who had a large following. And most of these of these followings was that of actually foolish, ( Better term would be Blind ) but goal driven and motivated to fall behind their leader , no matter, how much wrong or right that person may have been.

The key elements of all the leaders were.

Exceptionally Good Orator
Selling Dreams, ( which of course will never come out true)
Wielding Power with Iron Hand.
Keeping the people in a stage of Idealism. ( Idealism as per the ideas of the leader)

In Management, the situation is actually not any different. Depending upon, how well you can exercise the above four variables to your advantage, the better leader you would be in the long run.

Rest you should be able to speak tons and tons of words , which no one can understand, but sound very impressive on initiatives, economy, markets, policies, government, technology, IT etc etc.

In a world, where One Up Manship is the rule, then exception the leader has to find his position out of strength. And remind himself consistently on Darwin's Corporate Theory on " Survival of the Meanest"

If I was to design a leader, I would still count on the following variables.

1. Knowledgeable : Meaning well educated and with hands on experience.
2. Kind : Meaning shows sensitively to the needs of his team, not necessarily meaning extra incentives or bonuses or rewards , but providing the required resource for a fair growth opportunity.
3. Powerful : Covers risk adequately and takes quick action against any human, capital or plan failure.

By default, if you are leading a team without the knowledge and the resource , then the only variable, which works is the " Power " There are situations, wherein a person is advised to take up a job, where he has zero knowledge and is given low resources. In such an event "Power " is a very good tool to keep the place going.

Leaders are Borne, not Made. Give Birth to your leadership now.

The best leaders, which History remembers are still those, who have their profile cut out on Oration , Power, Idealism and Dreams. Rest is all ideology and self satisfaction. For a commercial enterprise, the value of a person is only till he is contributing to the shareholders wealth. His value to the society is when he has contributed to the uplifting of the society at large.

It is somewhat strange that people from middle class rarely become leaders. Either in corporate sector or social life. Middle class continuously pushes a person towards follower ship and idealism. Rarely ever breeds Frontal Lead Players who can take risk and reap the rewards. Middle class is totally risk averse simply for the reason that they can never afford to loose the little that they have to keep up a social well being face before the Consumer world. And leadership is about loosing a ton, before rising to take over the world. The lower class has nothing more to loose and the Higher class don't care much, if some gets lost. Therefore, technically ,these are two basic classes which come out with the Best Leaders. Whether it is Obama to be cited or Lincoln or Bush.

Middle class leaders like Mr Man Mohan Singh ( PM of India ) can be best seen as Line Man in Leadership. If only Lalu Yadav was made the PM against him, he would have still taken many drastic decisions, whether good or bad. But Mr Man Mohan Singh, a professor of economics himself and in the highest position of the country, yet could not dismantle the bureaucracy and corruption. Simply because Middle class is not just risk averse, but within its own heart a very coward species . And leadership demands Leading From The Front with Valor and Strength.

Hence, first step to leadership is to Break Off from the Middle Class Thinking.