Being A Leader....!!!

Based on the little whatsoever professional experience I have gained over the past 3 years, I may not know what a leader is or how to become a good leader. But I definitely got some idea, how not to become a good leader. The reason I am sharing this today is that I realize that the professional world is in dire need of efficient leaders today.

The first and the most important criterion of not being a good leader is being negative. Be negative of everything you see. Find out the faults and misfits of the most perfect plan. There are some people who will even criticize the moon for having spots and a dark side. They can only see the dark side of moon ignoring the perfection of the total picture!!! Their negativity is so high that the sun will also appear dim to them!! Their negativity can give inferiority complex to Lucifer himself! Why? Because that is easy! Being negative and stating something is not going to work out gives a cocoon of comfort where you feel safe and easy. But you don’t get to be a leader to make your life easy. It is as hard as it can get and the difficulty level increases as you grow. Its just like the saying, “With great power, comes great responsibility”. Mostly, people ignore the second part (about responsibility) and only think about the power.

Being a leader gives you the power to question people and also to deliberate. But what is the fun if the deliberation is forceful? If my team just does what I say because they do not have an option, how satisfying is that? They would do it anyways just for the sake of doing as they might be bound by organisational boundaries. But will it sound better if they are willing to do whatever you say without any questions asked? Definitely! Now, that would be some achievement. That would indicate that you have the faith and trust of your team. Basically, you have won your team over. The more they trust you, the more they would follow you and help you in every possible way.  That makes the journey much smoother and bump free.

And if I focus on the part where you get to focus people, it is limited to questioning and does not extend out to blaming! Often, it is mistaken to be the power to blame. Be a leader; be responsible and accountable enough to take the hit for your team. If you get the appreciation benefits, you also should be able to accept and swallow the bitter criticism of failure. People grow in years of experience but never mature enough to develop this personality.

The next criteria for becoming a not so good leader, is your ability to criticize your team. It is human to err, but it is inhuman to point out those errors. Criticism breaks down the trust that the team has on its leader. Sometimes open criticism may be taken by few as an insult. If you are a leader, you should have enough maturity to understand this fact. It can be a very sensitive issue at times and should be handled with certain level of subtlety. Criticism just drives away the person from you, and they would stop looking up to you.  And then, you don't actually stay a leader anymore, literally!

A good leader should never criticize his/ her team. Then, how do we reach out to our team and correct them and thus, help them grow? These so called leaders should be able to practice constructive criticism, if they have ever heard of the concept. In the industry today, many “think” that just because they are delivering the project, they are good leaders. This is a very misleading idea with huge quotes around that.  Just because they are able meet the timelines, does not give them free reign. Pointing out someone’s mistakes just blows the card palace that you are trying to build in the air! There is a hair line difference between, being critical and criticizing. But, unfortunately, these two concepts are often mistaken to be synonyms and mostly cause the biggest blunders ever.

I will never follow a person unless I am able to connect to that person at any level. Your leader should be able to connect to you at certain level or understand your style of work. He/she should be your closest work friend. Not in the sense where you would be the first person in their mind to share a gossip, but if you are the first person to know their insecurities and missing outs, my dear friend, you have earned a score of appreciation and thanks.

A leader only grows if he walks hand in hand with his/her team.  And your team would walk with you only if you can reach out to them in their comfort zone and befriend them to open up to you to certain extent. To achieve this, motivation is the mantra. In the corporate world, it is very important to understand the mentality and nature of your team members. Humans cannot be measured on a scale. Unless you are compatible universally with your team, you cannot expect 100% dedication from anyone. Help them smile, motivate them to fall in love with their work and give them a certain degree of freedom, where they are satisfied that you trust them. They will trust you back and perform much better. You will be able to connect more through this window. Smiles bring in a lot of positive energy and simply uplift the spirit of the work environment.

There can be two ways of achieving any set goal of leadership with a team. One where people follow you more out of obligation and fear, and the second one is where people follow you simply because they want to follow you and become like you.  The first will never be a permanent solution. And when the threshold of tolerance breaks, God help you!! A leader is always setting examples for their team, knowingly or unknowingly. It is always under high focus, how the leader reacts or acts. If your team does not want to end up like you, you can assure you are following the first path and you can shamelessly claim yourself to be a bad leader!!

Though there may be many more things to leadership, my humble experience and meager knowledge permits these. So those of you out there, who search someone to blame the mishaps and proudly claim the rewards of success, criticize your team every time, provide immense supply of negativity to last for a year and force work out the obligations, please remember Hitler is dead for more than 70 years now! And you don’t want to end up like him! Otherwise, suit yourself; it is a free world, after all!!

But those of you can see a hearty smile every time you approach your teams, keep it up! You are doing a great job, and there is a lot of need for people like you in this world!!

Keep Smiling and keep it simple!! :) ;)