The UnLeadership Manifesto – making of the 21st century leader – part 1
The UnLeadership Manifesto – making of the 21st century leader – part 1Prolog
Leadership of every hue and cry has been covered in over 437, 869 book titles available on Amazon.com alone (Search for Leader). Not to speak of countless blog posts, magazine and newspaper articles on the subject.
Judging from the reams of material that has been written and from personal experience, Leadership is a tough topic and it is clear that we don’t understand it that well. Therefore, it is seductive to boil leadership down to a set of formulae:
- Try this small exercise with me – think of any number N from 1 to 50 and search for N leadership traits and you are likely to find an article(s)/book(s) like the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 36 traits of leaders,10 characteristics of leaders, 21 indispensable qualities of leaders …
- It is also inspiring to read about great leaders and insights drawn from their experiences. Therefore, you get to read the leadership wisdom of people starting from Sun Tzu to Steve Jobs.
It is all about the Leader
The one unifying pattern that emerges from reading the popular leadership press is that it seems to be all about the leader and his/her skills. There is some wisdom bandied about – on choosing the right people , making sure you eliminate the people who don’t fit your vision, etc. But for the most part, leadership is about seeking to become the ideal leader with all the N qualities depending on whose N you believe in. With all this talk about the Leader, if becoming a leader seems like a Herculean task, you are not alone.
The 21st Century Leader
Having been in leadership roles for the past 18 years, i don’t think it was ever about the leader 100%. Now, in the 21st century, with the latest and greatest communication and management tools, the leader is much much less important. Only those leaders, who grasp this counter-intuitive insignificance of themselves, are going to succeed. John Chambers, The legendary CEO of Cisco recently articulated this shift:
“The CEO role at Cisco going back over the last five to 10 years has been very much ‘command and control’ and I think we do it pretty well, and if we say ‘turn right,’ 65,000 people turn right,” Chambers said.
“That’s very effective when you’re in a couple product areas or one or two major cross-functional initiatives per year. It is not an effective leadership style or organization structure if you’re moving into a lot of market adjacencies and you have a lot of major cross-functional priorities.”
This whole obsession with, who the leader is and what his/her personality is, is a vestige from the command and control era of management. The 21st century leadership will be marked by a totally different style – which i decided to call UnLeadership.
Developing the UnLeadership Manifesto
I would like to engage the community on this blog in developing this manifesto. The community has delivered the goods many times before including the mission impossible – can passion be taught?
Here is what i propose we should do – build a set of rules for the UnLeader and in the next pass recommend the tools that will be needed.
That would be my first one on the manifesto – 1. Instill passion in your team.
No Asshole Rule
One of my favorite authors Bob Sutton has written a fantastic book called No Asshole Rule recently. This is a must read to understand what one should never do as a leader. This would be my recommendation for the second rule – 2. Never be an Asshole.
Inspiration
In order to inspire you all to the task at hand, i would like you all to spend 1 hour and 16 min watching this video from Professor Randy Pausch, famously known as the Last Lecture. I will guarantee you that this will be one of the best 1 hour and 16 min you have ever spent watching a lecture. [Sadly he passed away yesterday]
Epilog
Now for the community to develop the rest of the rules – decision making, dealing with/developing expertise, empowerment, performance management (vision, goal setting, reviews etc) and any other category you want to add. Numbered lists are seductive indeed, so let us keep our list to 10. Most important thing to bear in mind – don’t be held hostage to existing models of leadership, let us rewrite the rules. I am also tagging bloggers that i know are passionate about leadership – Ganesh Vaideeswaran, Arun Sankaranarayanan , Ranjit Nair and Subba Muthurangan . I am hoping other bloggers will also join in and help create the framework.
Is unleadership is like some thing like collaborative leadership? Teams sans leaders or something of that sort ? Shall watch the video and get back to you soon…
p.s: mmm , ‘No Asshole rule’, sounds like a nice book
Sukumar – Interesting post.
I’m a bit wary of charisma. Perhaps Unleaders shouldn’t be charismatic. People always rally around a charismatic person – and think s/he is a stronger leader than s/he actually is. Their expectations sky-rocket & the hype machine is set in motion. People start looking up to the person, instead of realizing that they have to work alongside the leader. In the end, results usually fall short of expectations – people get disgusted & demotivated.
Barrack Obama is a good e.g. of the hype machine & charisma. I still have no clue how he’ll perform if elected. But, you should see the Obama Mania across the world. I saw his posters in Chennai, for God’s sake.
On the other hand, if someone who seems ordinary achieves something – and word of mouth publicity & buzz build over a period of time, that’s good. Because then, the buzz is about the results, not the leader’s animal magnetism.
So, a rule for unleaders could be “Turn the hype machine off”? Or “Let the results speak for themselves”?
@Priya:
Taking conscious effort to overcome charisma is definitely good but then you are spending time to reduce others expectations. How important is that? Expectation building because of charisma is like judging people by face value to a certain extent. Who’s mistake is that ? You wouldn’t blame the charismatic person would you ?
Also at a certain level charisma becomes involuntary, doesn’t it ?
Jass,
Thanks. My main objective is to come up with a model that makes the leader only a component of the group and not be “the” component of the group as we see it today. Collaboration is definitely one element but there are several more. Therefore, collaborative leadership does not adequately convey what the Unleader needs to do.
Thanks Priya. That is a great insight. I agree charisma may cloud people’s opinions about leaders and hence may produce incorrect results.
But i have the same doubt as Jass. If someone is naturally charismatic what should they do? Not sure it is possible for one to turn off charisma if one is charismatic? But i definitely agree that charisma does make leadership more glamorous and in my view we need to make it less glamorous so that we can make leadership accessible to everyone. in other words you can say charisma is not needed at all for the unleader.
As usual, thought provoking post sukumar..
In a typical software environments, infusing passion, team building is a must.. because it requires innovation, and smartness..
But how does we follow uleadership in works that requires command and control..
For eg, the admin department has to provide all infrastructural services.. and many times i have watched, the admin manager just blasts at the employees when there is a delay or shortcomings.. (probably in one way, this is justified, because, next time the employees will promptly finish the job for fear of his anger)..
Senthil,
Thanks. That is a good question. In my view, command and control is needed in very few places – military, surgery and maybe a few other esoteric areas.
It certainly not needed in admin.abandoning Command and control does not mean everyone can do whatever one wants and there is no accountability. I am not able to think of business corporations where we will need command and control. Command and control is obsolete.
Hmmm, In this model the conventional leader still exists? I thought when you said unleadership, you meant a council/team of sorts doing stuff each one is accountable for but without blindly following a certain someone. Lets take up the case of a sports team, the captain does have a say, but everyone knows in the team that the captain is just someone they work with and not the only element of the team. Would this be an unleadership model? I am sorry I am not too sure of what you were trying to say. Just trying to get things clear.
Jass,
Please do ask the questions. I don’t yet have a well-formulated opinion as of now. I am hoping we can get there with the help of the community.
You are right. Sports is a great example of a limited role for leaders. But then most of them have coaches who have the real leadership role.
I think the leader’s role is still relevant. I am just saying that by fixating on the leader we are missing the point that we need to modernize the leader’s role to keep up with the times we are in.
Thanks, now I get it. The word unleadership got me off the mark. I assumed you were talking of things like collaborative leadership without a particular individual acting as a leader. I did not realize you were talking of modernizing the role of the leader.
Thanks Jass. The other formula in leadership is to use adjectives – principled leadership, heart centered leadership, abc leadership etc. So i wanted a term that would directly modify the word leadership.
Jass & Sukumar – I’m not saying that a charismatic leader should take effort to become less charismatic. What I mean is, unleaders should not focus on generating hype. especially, hype about themselves.
Sukumar says – “If someone is naturally charismatic what should they do? Not sure it is possible for one to turn off charisma if one is charismatic?”
What is charisma? Its the aura around a person, which is mostly cultivated. It would do us good to think about that. MGR in his early movies has no charisma. He was just another good looking guy in the movies. They carefully built his image. The charisma came later.
If Leaders spend time working up their magnetism, that’s a waste of time. They should be spending that time in figuring out how to make their team successful.
What people need to achieve great things is a healthy dose of reality, a vision & just a tad of hype to make them get interested. Mainly, this tad of hype should be more about “What are we gonna do?” & less about “Who are we gonna work with?”.
Is anyone naturally charismatic? Some sociopaths are – and they have a defect in the central nervous system which makes them innately charming. They are also natural felons.
Jass Says – “Expectation building because of charisma is like judging people by face value to a certain extent. Who’s mistake is that ? You wouldn’t blame the charismatic person would you ?
”
It is normal for people to moon over charismatic individuals. When given a choice of food or gazing at a photo of a popular chimpanzee, fellow chimps chose to gaze at the photo. I’ll look for a link to this study. Anyone who claims to be a leader should be aware of this reaction & not spend too much time in cultivating an image. So yes, I would blame the leader for this.
Jass Says – “Also at a certain level charisma becomes involuntary, doesn’t it ?”
Don’t know what you mean. Please elaborate this point.
People confuse charisma with competence, so their expectations of the leader increases. So they may choose the wrong person for the job. When the rubber meets the road, results may not (will not is more like it) be all that great. Even company boards may not be immune to personal magentism.
Not just that, a very charismatic leader can make people lose their moral, ethical & logical compasses. Think Adolf Hitler. Please note that some of the most charismatic leaders are cult leaders. Which tells me that charisma is built on 1 layer of success, confidence – and several layers of arrogance (I can’t make a mistake) & over-confidence (I can do anything). And eventually, dissociation from reality. To be a great leader, one needs some self-doubt. Only then would we listen to nay-sayers.
Look at what Obama has done – he isn’t the president yet. But, he wants to speak at the Brandenburg gate in Berlin where JFK & Reagan spoke, after they became presidents. Looks a tad arrogant to me.
Unleaders are people with humility. And ability to do some causal analysis. Every victory scored by the team may not be directly attributable to the leader. It maybe because of the team, decisions made by higher-ups, propitious circumstances etc. Arrogance builds when 1 doesn’t analyze clearly what caused the success.
I can go on & on.
Thanks Priya. I understand what you meant now. I agree, this ought to be a rule – don’t do image management and don’t assume you are the reason for the results. Or simply – practice humility, eschew hype.
@Priya:
Very true, charisma can give definitely give a whole new inflated image to the leader which maybe far from the leader’s real ability. Like you say the leader should probably be aware and not spend time cultivating such an image.
When I said “Also at a certain level charisma becomes involuntary, doesn’t it ?” I simply meant that charisma can be innate at a certain level although it is something that is/can be ‘cultivated’ later on like you say. I assumed that charisma is more of an innate quality but now that I read about it and think again, I feel it certainly is something that can be learned. Charisma seems to be a combination of a set of traits that come together to broadly form this thing called personal magnetism. Hence I feel that charisma is certainly something that is naturally present in everybody in varying degrees by nature of upbringing, early modeling of those around us, later modeling of others, and just plain going to a really powerful seminar and learning to be charismatic!
I certainly agree with you when you say that an unleader should not concentrate on building his charisma but my point was that should he go the extra mile to shed off his existing level of personal magnetism, something that he has acquired probably subconsciously over a period of time? Looking at examples like hitler and osama bin laden it is clear that charisma is certainly something powerful that can woo people into following you blindly. When you say “a very charismatic leader can make people lose their moral, ethical & logical compasses” I think you mean this extreme charismatic domination.While charismatic domination/charismatic authority is certainly bad, charisma itself is not a negative quality i think.
“Practice humility,eschew hype”, I think that should help you look through things clearly for sure.
Humility is certainly something an unleader should possess but I somehow feel humility is independent of charisma, that is it is possible to be charismatic and humble at the same time unless it is some sort of fake humility that is put on as to enhance your charisma. If you are truly humble you will look through your charisma, for only you know what you truly are. I don’t think it is possible to be humble if you are in a state of charismatic authority.
Sorry if I sound confusing. I am.
Sukumar
Brilliant one, and thanks for tagging me here. Leadership is complex and critical one for all organizations. I think organizations around the world, are spending large amount of money for leadership training and improvement year over year. My humble opinion is, leadership is something required common sense and practical experience rather than reading theory.
Command and Control Leadership
I think this leadership is from old school and better works to manage unskilled workers. Unskilled worker doesn’t know anything about budget, mission value and business impact of any work, which they involved. So we need command and control model to make them work very hard to complete the work. A better example is, construction workers, they don’t want to know building value and how many business are waiting to occupy this building and how it will contribute to our economy, there we need a tight command and control model.
Other places, I can think of is, as you said Army, war zone, NASA missions etc…but not definitely for day by day jobs.
UnLeadership
This is the way all business adopts to manage skilled workers. Skilled workers can understand better about mission critical and business value, so they don’t need command and control. Skilled workers just need unleaders, who can induce passion and make them work creatively. Skilled workers are professional degree holders, as soon as they come out of college, they are skilled to perform any work, which required higher degree of intelligence. What will happen if they undergo command and control model? They loose their creativity and works out of fear, ultimately we are wasting our organization money to produce an incompetent worker over time.
How to instill passion
1. Trust, trust, trust. First trust all in your team as team mate. We are assembled a team to accomplish a task. Leader’s first job is to give, all team people comfortable with each other and with them.
2. Each one is different, induce passion different ways to induce passion for each one. Leader should do some home work for this; he/she should make a different medicine for each one, for their team members to make them passion. I think here most of the leaders failed because they try to induce passion by making false statements like salary hike, promotion, which are not a real passion inducer.
3. Decrease the gap between leader and a team member. A team member should freely meets his/her team leader and discuss something. Here team leader I mean is who can take decisions, change team’s destiny (if you will) etc. Based on my experience, most of the team members want to talk with their leader freely and that allows them to feel comfortable and make them passion about the job they are doing.
4. Communication: A passionate team member may loose his/her passion over time because of over communication or no communication at all. Over communication is such as management is thinking about selling our company is an over communication to team member, or a well known VP is planning to quit this company because of some political issues. At same time, there is some time, there is no communication from leaders to team members, make them impassionate, and because passionate team member thinks that he/she left out of woods.
I can go on and on, first I want to open for discussion for the above points and willing to change/update some of my thoughts.
Sukumar, Brilliant.
One quality a leader should always have is – know when and how to step down. This I came across when I was reading an article about Nelson Mandela in the latest Time edition. I think if we see the great leaders like Bill Gates, Narayana Murthy, Rathan Tata they took this decision in their hay days. Not when they are forced to.
It can be miniaturized even in day to day scenarios. When an expert opens mouth, a good leader should shut his mouth and let the expert say what he wants to say. I may know 10% of what he says, and by interrupting and giving fundas, you are getting only 10% which you already know. And you dont need expert. It may correlate to other points Subba already mentioned.
This doesnt mean that he should stay away from the problem and leave it to expert to do it all. Be there to support him, talk to him, check progress, motivate him.. (or her.Priya might kill me for using masculine gender in all places)
What do you others think of this quality.
Sukumar,
Can we term “Strategic Co-ordinators” as another name of unleadership?
Btw, one of the important aspect is to encourage the team to own up the task.. In a typical organisation, people just come and do what is given to them..
But, if we create a sense of ownership in each of the team member, i feel, rest of the things (like passion, trust) follows..
I am not clear with “Charismatic leaders” .. is it leaders with charming face??
My opinion is that any performing leader with open and polite communication would automatically become a charismatic leader..
‘Constantly prepare your team members to replace/succeed you some day’.
One big reason why I feel the ‘Command & control’ structure was practical in earlier days (& in military today) is due to the existence of some noticeable traits/credits for the person who is chosen to lead. Most of the times it used to be just the number of years of experience the person had or an additional credible university degree. It could also have been an exemplary track record or some significant achievement in work that marked him seperate from the rest of the crowd.
Compare this to the situation today. There is just a small, hardly noticeable trait that distinguishes the leader from the rest of the pack. Almost everyone in your team is well educated, is aware of whats happening around him, can talk & engage clients, send status reports or in other words can run the show or give the whole process an improved outlook. Firms today are no longer worried about handing out leadership positions to people who demonstrate that small, hardly noticeable trait of leadership. So in most cases you might be actually reporting to someone who is far younger to you or in some cases has less experience in ‘number of years’ terms (would definitely be having a richer experience though). [Exception: Pls don't consider Indian IT service companies when you think about this... Unable to manage burgeoning employee numbers, they seem to be refering to old GoI promotion rulebooks these days, at least for junior employees. Number of years & age do matter for them these days. The small hardly noticeable trait being the resignation threat !
]
Everyone wants to grow in life . The desire to take up higher responsibilities and lead others I believe is inherent in a good number of ppl. Now when the the team members do realise the fact that there is not much difference between themselves and their leader , managing them becomes all the more difficult. That I believe is one of the core reasons why the command & control mechanism falls flat on it’s face.
For the new age leader, what I would recommend (or rather what I would do myself) is to make sure I constantly groom/prepare them to replace me one day. The time period for this task should be decided based on careful analysis of the traits of each member. Someone might be able to replace you in a day, someone else might take couple of years time to grow up to that level. And just in case you discover that someone else is more smart than you in the team, I would suggest the leader should graciously make way for him & discuss with seniors to accept another position or consider working under him if he feels theres something to learn from the other person. Sometimes you might truly need to ‘UnLead’ to lead.
Apart from that, I feel Subba’s point on bringing down the gap between the leader & the follower is important, particularly in hierarchical societies like India. Borrowing a bit from my learnings in US, I guess we all should understand that being a leader is a role and it should not end up becoming a position that demarcates/alienates one from the rest of the team.
Since we are talking about leadership, I definitely cannot skip putting the lesson learned from our ex- president’s book, Wing’s of Fire. Though most of you have read it time & again… Kalam says “A good leader should always try to give credit where it’s due, escpecially when it’s due on your team. More importantly, when something fails, you have to take up responsibility for the failure and insulate your team.” We do practice a lot of the first one these days, but then standing up to own up responsibility for someone else’s failure still requires a lot of spine.
Good point Jass. Charisma need not necessarily be a bad thing. I think Priya’s point is that one should not be over reliant on it, to the point that the leader has lost his ability to get the team to get things done.
Subba,
Thanks. Great points. I agree, atleast in our industry where we recruit the smartest people, command and control style is really outmoded.
I really liked your point on communication and decreasing the distance between the leader and the team members. Per Geert Hofstede, India is a high power distance index country meaning that we are hierarchical and almost deferential of our leaders. The unleader has to change this to a low power distance culture by reducing the distance you mention. This is really very insightful. well done.
Vamsi,
Thanks. Yes, one should know when to step down. But then for that to happen as Ranjit points out, one should have developed other leaders in the team to take over.
That is a great point on expertise. Once upon a time very early in my career, i used to think that i had to be the expert and help the team. Clearly that is not a scalable model given the complexities and cross functional nature of our work. How to listen to the experts and how to use their expertise for the benefit of the project is a great skill to possess.
I think we need to develop this point some more for it to be a rule. Should we say “Listen to the experts, but know when to disagree” or something like that?
Senthil,
Thanks. I would like to use the term unleadership as the name of this new style.
You are absolutely right, creating a sense of ownership is something the leader has to do.
How does one go about creating this sense of ownership? Any thoughts?
Senthil,
You may want do lookup charisma in the dictionary. Barack Obama is a recent example of a charismatic leader. In our context, MGR was one. i don’t think being polite and having an open communication style makes someone automatically charismatic.
Ranjit,
Thanks. Those are great insights. Preparing your team to succeed you one day is a great rule. i really like that. On the flip side of it, you can only do this if you can respect each of your team mates for who they are. I think this will automatically serve to reduce the distance, to Subba’s point.
Your additional points on why command and control does not work are good.
Now how does one build the spine to own up responsibility when the team fails? We should be considering that as a rule as well. As you say, people are pretty good these days at sharing the credit.
Great post Sukumar.
My two cents for the unleader.
The leader should treat the time of his team members as valuable as his own time.
I have one good example. I am working under a professor called Dr. Gray for the summer camps and I get an “hourly salary”. Even if I take the students out for lunch, Dr. Gray pays me salary for the “lunch time” saying that your time is as precious as mine.
Not all professors do that. They usually think a “students time” is less valuable than a “professors time”.
Thanks Sukumar. I just keep reminding myself of 4 small rules that I made for myself to take up others failures. Don’t know if they are perfect, but here they are :
1.Re-direct all communication regarding the failure to the lead. Since there would definitely be questions from ppl above & others, proactively take up all such questions and address them yourself. In other words, let’s not allow anyone outside the team to question the team member, the buck should stop square at the lead. I believe this is what is meant by ‘Insulate your team’.
2.Never question the person immediately on why he committed the failure. The priority now is to fix the issue and not to put the blame. Having said that, it should be absolutely fine to take the person’s help to fix the problem.Let’s not forget that the person who committed the mistake might be the best bet to correct it (most of the times).
3.The discussion to dig out why the problem happened should be postponed to at least 1 week after the problem settles down. This discussion is needed as we might need a process fix in the system at times. But seriously, I would try my best to not involve the person who made the mistake. I know this sounds a bit wrong, but I believe no one essentially likes being questioned on why he did a mistake. To err is after all human. Again, here is where a leader might have to demonstrate a unique quality : ‘To make the wrong doer realise his mistake without questioning him’. A bit difficult, but very much possible.
4.Forget you ever had a team when something goes wrong : Assume that I never had a team working behind me when something goes wrong.Assume that all the work was done by me alone & I myself am responsible for all the pros & cons of it. This assumption should be good for everything except fixing the issue in which case the teams expertise could be brought to use.
Unleadership sounds like an oxymoron Sukumar. I think, only leaders who are confident about themselves are capable of this kind of leadership. Controlling kind of leaders are incapable of adopting new ideas and hence stick to their own. A leader who is willing to let his people think and welcomes their ideas, has to be intelligent enough to understand & handle these ideas.
I was reminded of an anecdote that I read long back. The R&D department of Xerox has invented a Windows like OS much before MS or Apple. Yet, they perceived themselves as only copying machine makers and did not know how to fit this technology into their business. If the leaders had had the ability to recognize the greatness of this technology, imagine where Xerox would have gotten to?
Sukumar,
“WE”, “OURS” are the key words that can bring about the sense of ownership. Trusting our people to undertake tasks on their own, assigning tasks and demanding only responsibility more than output, are the other ways that come in my mind.
Getting personal with the team, will help a lot in bringing ownership. Because, when a leader have some sort of personal touch with them, the team will see him as their leader rather than the leader appointed by the company. This will create a sense of “our leader”, and any task taken by “our leader” is “our task”.
In short, there should be multiple connecting points, other than just boss-worker relation.
sukumar,
I was aware of the meaning of charismatic.. i was looking for what are the core traits that make a man charismatic..
I referred Performing leader, that probably you have missed out.. In my experience, i have seen some people talking a lot, but doing very less, and some talking less but doing a lot.. the second category may sometimes be charismatic in the long run..
A leader with great oratorial skills, become charismatic in the first run, and when he maintain this through his prompt, smart & strategic action, then he becomes a great leader..
Personally, i feel, Modi is one of the charismatic leader in today’s india.. His single win in Gujarat, has created a wave across the country.. even in small towns, there were his cutouts & posters, after his victory.. the former CM Jayalalitha, sent an unusual and strong wishes to Modi and even invited him for a special pongal at her home.. she has not done this to any one else..
And all these happened, out of numerous mudslingings, character assasination, false negative propagation, right from his starting of tenure.. and he has done this overcoming the anti-incumbency .. these are possible, because he is the top most performing leader in india, in terms of development..
Senthil, you must be kidding right? I am glad that people in Gujarat had chosen their CM based on development. But Modi has to bear the responsibility of riots in Gujarat which has serious repercussions on the entire social fabric of our country.
Babri Masjid demolition, followed by Bombay riots, serial blasts, Godhra carnage, followed by the serial blasts as we saw last week are some key cause-effects one should note. In all these cases state governments are managed by one party. And that party blames center for everything. Law and Order are state subject and that is where all these governments failed.
CM JJ calling Narendra Modi is nothing but an ego-centric autocrat leader calling on another such fella for winning and wishing.
Vamsi,
I feel, it should not lead to another heated debate here.. I just expressed the leadership attribute of Modi, where he raised from ashes and converted every dirt in to stepping stones. i admire that quality in him. Also, when he won, it was just a reverberation across india.
i remember, my father, brother and many of my friends keenly watching the gujarat election. And almost all of them felt the same like me.
And JJ in her press meet said as below..
“Your spectacular victory has brought hope and cheer to the vast majority of people in this nation who now believe that all is not lost and that India can still be saved from the clutches of unscrupulous power mongers,”
And she exactly relected what many, including me, felt after the victory.. i would emphasize the line “all is not lost and that India can still be saved from the clutches of unscrupulous power mongers” .. this is very true even now..
His victory was stunning that even the opposition congress admired and congrajulated him terming it as remarkable victory.
L.K. Advani Summarised his victory as below..
“I cannot think of any other leader in Indian politics in the past 60 years who was as viciously and consistently maligned as Modi since 2002,”
Its very true.. and no other leader has been as vilified and maligned like Modi, and Modi has defeated everyone with his silence, and remarkable performance.. and remember, all his achievements were never carried over by any of the english speaking media.
Some of the remarkable achievements are:
1. Effective management of Earthquake.
2. Bringing down school dropout rate from around 36% to just mere 3%
3. Reliance chief ambani praised “There was no strikes, protests in gujarat, and not even a single working day has been lost due to it”..
4. Interlinking of more than 14 rivers and tributaries in gujarat.. particularly, bringing narmada water to kutch, inspite of intensive agitation. Today, gujarat is the most investment friendly state.
5. Bringing agriculture to a profitable one, when farmers in the adjoining maharashtra are committing suicide..
6. Laying out Fibre Optics cable through out gujarat, and its the second largest network in Asia. This high speed connectivity is available even in remote villages.
7. Actively promoted gas exploration in godavari river basin and achieved success in it..
8. Its the only state where private rails are operated.
There are much more that i dont remember..
And by any means, these are pinnacles of indian development, that none of the other states could match.. But yet, none of the english medias gave coverage, and infact, they tried to suppress these facts as much as possible.. Even Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, released a report mentioning gujarat as #1, but it was quickly withdrawn..
I will give you an incidence during gujarat election.. NDTV Burka datt, conducted a debate on Modi and Gujarat.. In that, one of the muslim said “He lost all his business during riots”.. and then he was asked about his present status.. he said “He again started and developed his business in to good profit”.. by his own admission, its an indication, that everyone had the equal rights to do business and come up in life..
But burka datt forced him to say “Minorities are suppressed”..
And at the last one of the participant told “any girl/woman can freely travel even during midnight and return to home safely.. show any other state where its possible”.. Everyone accepted.. and till now it was the situation there..
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It is these observation, that made me conclude, that a truly performing leader is the real charismatic leader..
Sure. Let us not spoil this wonderful thread. Sukumar, request to delete my comment. I find it odd for the context we are discussing.
Vamsi
Saraswathi,
thanks. that is a great insight. I advocate a rule that expands on your point – “treat everyone on your team as a peer” – this means that you will automatically respect everyone which includes respecting everyone’s time. What do you think?
I find American leaders practice this to perfection for the most part – which is why you can walk into a CEO’s office and provide your inputs and you are taken seriously.
Ranjit,
That is a great set of rules. I simply love them. These should definitely be a part of the unleader’s repertoire.
Archana,
Don’t you think the status quo is because of the way leadership is currently defined? Your point simply puts the onus back on the leader – that is, the person needs to be confident. Whereas, the model we are trying to create is one where the leader’s qualities and talents are not that significant to leadership in the 21st century. Besides, i would think the unleader should not be too confident. If you are too confident, why would you listen to other’s ideas?
In the famous xerox example you quote, it corroborates my point, a company’s leadership is the unlikely place to understand what is the next big thing. That is why an Unleader is important, s/he has a way to defer to the judgement/expertise of the team.
Ironically, the original Xerox founders worked in IBM and presented the idea to IBM for a copier which was quickly rejected and the people left to form Xerox and the rest is history.
Senthil,
I liked your point on we/ours and the sense of ownership. those are valid points.
Senthil/Vamsi,
On the issue of Modi being a great leader. I would not be able to accept this. Someone who deliberately exploits the differences amongst people that too in a negative way, no matter what the accomplishments, cannot be a great leader. It is Modi’s minority-bashing policies that is going to be his undoing one day. If he took a more egalitarian, equanimous approach he can easily become a PM one day. Since we are talking about leadership, a discussion about Modi is fair game. So i am not deleting this thread.
Dear Sukumar Uncle,
I don’t know what to comment about your blog. But I thought I should comment on your blog as you always comment on mine. Thank you so much.
Sukumar, I should thank Shreya for directing me to your blog, I sure have missed out a lot. A very interesting topic and wow ‘Unleader’ what a name. The very name suggests that leadership is a selfless attitude. I agree with you on the passion component of leadership. Leaders should be passionate and should instill passion in their team members. Subba has suggested good points here. Passion is different for everybody. However people are predictably different and leaders should take the effort to identify and kindle that passion.
Priya has made some great points on how charisma plays havoc on the team members. Often Charisma is used for capitalizing on human emotions and many times followers are created instead of leaders. Fidel Castro, Adolf Hitler, Rajiv Gandhi, Bill Clinton the list sure is never ending. This is probably one of the leading contributors to having movie stars invariably becoming politicians or so called leaders in India. Charisma however, if used wisely can bring in transformation. This may not totally agree with the webster definition of Charismatic leader, however if creating an image so powerful that people are drawn towards the leader is what charismatic leadership is all about then Gandhi did play his role well. He was unassuming yet brought in a transformation and always advised people to not follow him instead he walked with them.
To add to the attributes of an unleader, purpose should come right after passion. I feel purpose is often ignored. The leaders who have brought in transformation have had a clear purpose and this also helps in aligning the purpose of the team members.
Thanks for including the link to Randy Pousch’s “last lecture’, unfortunately I have not been able to listen to this due to my internet connectivity, We will have high speed Airtel broadband connectivity in a week and hopefully streaming videos will no longer be an issue. This is the price we pay when we live in a developing community.
Thanks Shreya. Nice surprise to see you here. Welcome to sastwingees.
Shoba,
Thanks for stopping by. You are right Purpose is definitely a key ingredient. I would make a small correction. Since in Unleadership i am trying to move the pendulum away from the leader, i think purpose should be defined jointly with the team as a shared purpose. Hope you will agree on that?
Please do view the Randy Pausch lecture. I read the book as well on my flight back to India and i was crying uncontrollably. Wonder what the fellow travellers thought of me.
Can’t agree with you more on ‘the last lecture’. While I didn’t read the book yet, the lecture itself was enough to move me to tears. Have been recommending it to all & one I am meeting these days. Hope you have also caught up with one of his early lectures on Time management. He used to take that series of lectures even before he was diagnosed with the disease, that just shows how clear he was with his life even when life was going normal. A sign of true greatness I believe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0
Thanks Ranjit. I have seen the time management lecture as well. You must read the book. It has a lot more details making the last lecture even more powerful than what it is.
I certainly agree with you Sukumar. Purpose sure is a joint effort. I got a forwards today comparing leadership to floks of gheese migrating. It seems the whole team together has one common purpose and the leader often moves back to allow one of the team members to take over the position, wow what a wonderful way of learning to delegate and to groom successors. Nature is always teaching us something and it is we who miss to see it.
Today much of the charismatism, leadership are created by media. and the same media greatly undo the leaders at their will..
Bush is mocked by most of the medias.. But, for a typical american, what he did so far was just for the welfare of the america.. whether, he did in iraq or anywhere else is a different story of debate.. recently (i think in International Herald Tribunal news site) i read an article, about how bush was successful in taking the war of terror to the very root of its origin.. ie afghanistan and iraq.. Because of this, there was not even a single terrorist attack after 9/11.
To my knowledge, i think most of the media had created a negative atmosphere around him..
Here is my take on this, some of them based on my experience. Obviously, some of these could be very obvious
. There is a difference between a leader and a manager. We often confuse the two. Managers simply manage people and/or projects.
Leaders push people (note I did not say pull) and teams such that sum is greater than individual parts. In certain situations, leaders can also be subject matter experts, but that is not a necessity. However, they need to be able to grasp the problem projected before them efficiently and then make an effective and decisive decision. Now, typically good leaders then allow the managers to take over with appropriate checks and balances. They have to ensure that such checks and balances exist, however do not have to micro manage it and probably cannot afford to do it.
In certain areas, such as technical leadership, leaders can be pace setters and “lead by example”. However, this does not scale as one moves up the chain.
Do leaders have to be consensus creators? My opinion – in most of the situations NO. They do have to listen to all sides of the story, get the facts, make a decision and be able to articulate the reasoning’s behind the decision which should mostly be facts based. This is part of the “push”.
Should they be good communicator’s – preferably yes, but not necessarily vocally.
Should they be good motivator’s – depends. Depends on the team. Some teams are self-managing and leave them alone, while others need goading.
How about vision? I am still ambivalent about this. IMO, vision is a long-term statement that is needed for an organization to understand where they would be few years from now. However, on a short-term basis, every team needs to understand why what they are doing is important and how it fits into the long-term vision. Even if the vision does not change, how one gets to the end-goal could.
Be effective delegators – I would think, especially as you move up the chain. Find the right people, T
Looks like I pressed some wrong key and my partial comments got saved … continuing …
Be effective delegators – I would think, especially as you move up the chain. Find the right people, TRUST them and let them do their job.
A lot of what I have mentioned above are gleaned from experience at IBM which I believe does a good job of whetting leaders.
Another area where I am not sure. Do leaders morph their style to suit the team? I think yes. Any good leader needs to be flexible and adaptable and this is part of that.
Talking about managers, managers and leaders in this day and age and across the globe, need to understand generational, cultural and gender differences and be willing to accommodate those differences well into their project and/or organization. Of late, I have been interested in understanding how Gen Xers are reacting to the Gen Y coming into the market place, and how they would co-exist. Of course, the world being flat, cultural differences and how you turn that into a positive is a pet topic of mine too.
I read some statements about team building etc. In my mind, team building is where a team has been formed and then they are forced to build some kind of cohesiveness through various mechanisms such as “team building exercises” etc. At this point, I am not a big fan of such things. I would rather be good at team forming than team building – put the right set of folks in a project, set the expectations, establish guidelines (not rules) and let them run with it.
Well, reading back my comment, looks like I have rambled!!. But this topic interests me a lot. Thanks Sukumar for bringing this up and nice comments/
Ganesh
Ganesh,
Thanks for those pearls of wisdom.
1. I liked the distinction between manager and leader that you covered.
2. I agree you need to flex your style depending on who your team mates are.
3. Consensus i think is important because otherwise it is difficult to get the buy-in. I have often found that doing a facilitated workshop is a great way to build consensus/buy-in without making consensus building a tortuous process.
4. As for vision, yes it is important as you say to communicate the big picture. I would like the Unleader to develop a shared vision. Shoba is calling this Purpose – somewhat similar to Vision.
5. Push is an important idea as well. It really helps to get people to think beyond their abilities and rise up to it. If the vision/purpose is powerful enough, people tend to push themselves.
6. GenX-GenY, cultural, ethnic differences, i believe we need to consciously build a diverse team. Diverse teams do risk management and innovation much better due to the varying perspectives on tap.
7. Team building games usually work when you have diverse teams.
Thanks for sharing your excellent insights.
Senthil,
You are right, the media does help creating larger than life characters. In Bush’s case, it remains to be seen what the war in iraq and afghanistan do. Clearly Iraq is a war that should not have been fought. Afghanistan, there is some justification, but Iraq is totally misguided one.
It is not clear yet what impact these wars will have on terrorist activity in the USA. In my view, it is too premature to claim victory over terrorism by fighting one extremely costly stupid war and another slightly less stupid war. Terrorism is a complex problem without a known solution. Majority nationalism is a key contributor to terrorism but is often not dealt with decisively but rather encouraged by the right wing.
Thanks Shoba. I heard the Geese story from Chandra’s in-house blog on ch1. You can look at that. Yes, nature has a lot to teach us especially about emergent forms of leadership.
Great post Sukumar. Let me pass on my two cents. Hope they make sense.
Here they are:
1. Let the members rule the roost instead of the leader
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A very effective way of bringing about a completely different perspective to leadership could be to let the ones under you shine as bright as possible.
The norm is that soldeirs are the ones who do the majority of the work in a warfare but at the end of the day, its their leader who gets the credit. Instead of following the norm, if the ones under the leader are allowed to assume leadership positions (coupled with designations)given full credit for their work, it would go a long way in enhancing the performance of the team.
The leader just needs to convey one simple message to the team-members, “Hey, this is your space. Now do whatever you want to in order to decorate it in the best possible manner. Your space, your responsibility. I’m out of it. In case you are stuck up, I would again be in. Till then, you are the boss.”
The idea is to let the ones under you stroll as free as possible. Let them do the work in their own way instead of imposing strict guidelines. Let them come up with their own innovative methods. Every person has his/her own strengths and if the person is allowed to work to his strengths, results are bound to be fantastic. If the same person is restricted by pre-adopted means, in some ways it cuts down the innovation quotient. Moreover, its worth noting that people always get charged up when they are given power. Let them feel in power and they would automatically act in a responsible manner.
Of course the leader would always be there to regulate the flow of process but let the ones under him decide the working of the processes.
I hardly have any corporate experience to comment on leadership in the biz sector but till date whatever leadership roles I’ve assumed at any level, I’ve found this approach to be highly effective. In almost all the cases, the team has perfomed at full-throttle thereby delivering amazing results.
2. A leader should avoid getting into too many details
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Focus on the minutest of issues is a great thing but not necessarily for the leader. I guess a leader should basically overview whats happening under him. Being involved in every single activity would not only lead to wastage of time but would also be an indirect message to the team members that the leader doesn’t have confidence in them.
3. Let the team-members take the credit but the leader should always take the criticism
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I guess this helps the members build a sense of confidence in the leader as the members know that they have a protective shield in front of them. This helps build a sense of security in the members. Even if if you feel the team-members have gone wrong, as a leader you shouldn’t criticize them in public. And then as they say, appreciation should be public but critism should be private.
Simple Example
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This is not quite a typical leader-member scenario but could still be apt. I run a blog http://www.intheorbit.com .Every once in a while I have a guest blogger contributing an article to the blog. I never try and impose retrictions on the guest blogger when it comes to topic, content or for that matter handling comments. The guest blogger is given full freedom to make use of his own space in the manner in which he wants to. Yes during criticism (as was the case during this particular post http://www.intheorbit.com/2008/07/alice-in-cyberland-by-anamika-jain.html) I do try and defend my guest-blogger even though I myself may not concur with the guest-blogger’s view. I guess this approach works very well and ultimately its my guest bloggers who end up attracting more attention (in the form of comments). Ultimately its the entire setup which attracts traffic.
Hi Sukumar:
I’m reading a lot here about characteristics. A person might have all these characteristics and yet not be a leader.
Who is a leader (or unleader!)? Who are the kind of people whom we recognize as leaders? We always seem to connect success with leadership. The people we call strong leaders are people who accomplished and saw success — Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, etc. Hitler was also a great leader. He had done a fantastic job in mobilizing the whole of Germany behind him and almost conquering the world. But he is not often among the top in the world’s list of leaders.
A leader, in my opinion, is the person with “the vision”, and the ability the channelize his workforce towards the vision. To apply this in smaller contexts, a leader knows the goals and steers his team towards the goals.
A leader should be like the captain of a ship. He is not necessary in the front of the ship. However, he knows his destination and constantly steers the ship towards the destination. A good captain (and leader) should know when to take control of the ship (during a storm) and when to leave control with the crew.
Great post Sukumar.
I read an article in hindu business line some time back – Leadership lessons from cricket.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/manager/2008/07/07/stories/2008070750691100.htm
Author talks about two successful Indian captains and their leadership style – Sourav Ganguly and Pataudi
Key traits observed are
1) Meritocracy
2) An eye for talent
3) Nurturing talent
4) Insistence on continued performance
5) Indifference to criticism
6) No personal insecurity
In the end author brings up an interesting point – Problems with authority
Both these captains had problems with selection committee/coach. Does good leaders need complete independence?
What is your opinion?
- Ramesh
Ashutosh,
Those are great insights. I saw the first one in response to Meenaks’ ch1b post on this subject. I really liked the first rule you have – let the team members rule the roost. The 2nd one is also a good one. The third one has been covered by Ranjit nair above already. he has also gone one better giving some specific tips on how to make that happen. Please let us know if you agree with Ranjit’s tips or not?
Sairaj,
You are absolutely right. Vision or as Shoba puts it – Purpose is a critical success factor. The only mod i would make in the context of unleadership is that the vision/purpose is a shared one – developed jointly by the team.
Thanks Ramesh. Long time no hear. Welcome back.
Those are great points from the Hindu article. I agree with all of them.
As for the independence, i think leaders need to be empowered by their management. Without that it is hard to excel as a leader. But then you have to play with the hand you are dealt. Sometimes your management may not be supportive of what you are trying to do. It is still incumbent upon the leader to manage the management in such a way that it does not infringe on the team’s ability to get things done. I know this is easier said than done. Hope you agree?
@ Ranjit
I completely agree with your thoughts when you say that a leader must prepare the ones under him to replace him some day.
However, when it comes to making way for a junior to replace you, I feel it should be done in very well thought-out manner. You talk about working under your team-member because you feel he is smarter than you but don’t you think with the kind of experience you would have already gained by then, you might well prove to be far more useful to the organization in a leadership role rather than working just as a team-member. In such a scenario, the best option would probably be to move on to tougher leadership roles (of course if approved by the ones senior in the hierarchy), roles where you would further be able to test your leadership mettle against the very best and roles where you would be facing far more challenging situation than in your previous stint. This approach should not be misunderstood as one of ego, prestige or selfishness rather all I want to convey is that moving up a notch could probably be the way to go. After all at the end of the day its all about the extent to which you are able to contribute to the organization.
Out of the four tips that you’ve mentioned, point 1 and 2 are simply superb and could do wonders if followed sincerely. However, I don’t quite agree with point no. 3 which says that the ‘why’ of the problem should be postponed for at least a week. If all the issues related to the problem are solved then and there, don’t you think it would help avoid further confusion? Moreover, not involving the person who committed the mistake might not go down well with someone who is seriously dedicated towards his work. This would make the person dwell on whether the leader has lost confidence in him and there couldn’t be anything worse for someone than the feeling that the leader doesn’t find him capable enough of rectifying his own mistakes. Even a hint of this would completely shatter the individual. Instead it would be better to tell him on the face “Hey, you could have done better.” The ones who think logically would take it in a very positive manner. In the end its all about how well you have been able to judge the one under you. If you are able to find out the pulse of the ones working under you and deal with them accordingly instead of dealing with one and all with the same approach, team management would be far more effective.
I also beg to differ on point no 4 which states that a leader should forget that he has a team when things go wrong. I guess this would be like being too good for no reason. Yes, a true leader should definitely take the entire responsibility when things go wrong but not in exchange of losing everything everything he has. Being too good might be an excuse for the ones under you who are not very sincere towards their work. There is a thin line between creating an open work environment and providing excess freedom.
Ashutosh,
Thanks for the detailed response to Ranjit’s 4point formula. Upon rereading the whole thing again, you are right, we do need to involve the person who committed the mistake. However, to Ranjit’s point, you may want to consider the nature of the mistake and the nature of the mistake-maker to decide whether to include him/her in the discussion. A one-size-fits-all may not work.
As for this point no.4, i don’t think Ranjit meant it to be taken literally. his tip no.4 is just to make it clear that ultimately it is the leader who is responsible for the mistakes committed by the team members. Again, this should be done based on the type of mistake and who has made that mistake.