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Leadership – Persuasion and Communication

Every leader is an entrepreneur, in the same way as every entrepreneur needs to be a good leader in more ways than one. Similarly, as I see every leader needs to be a visionary; in the same as every visionary needs to be a good leader to channelize her/his vision.

Being an entrepreneur – in the sense being enterprising and resourceful, or for that matter being a risk taker – and being a visionary – in the sense of demonstrating foresight and ideating the map of tomorrow – have significant overlaps with being a leader. But more I delve of on the topic of leadership, the more it seems obvious is that a leadership is distinct from entrepreneurship and being a visionary. There are definite overlaps, but they are different. Both the entrepreneur and the visionary, need to focus – as an end in itself - on the leadership dimension to live up to their entrepreneurial skills and vision.

I am defining leadership as continuous alignment and re-alignment. Aligning the energy & mental make-u - to the organization’s/cause’s macro and micro interests – of one’s own self and all the participants. A successful leader is one who does this right. It is worth emphasizing, that this needs to be a conscious exercise and not a coincidence. This bit of leadership, is what will make an entrepreneur will make an entrepreneur a successful entrepreneur and help the visionary create a new world.

This probably becomes the crucial and most difficult part, because any larger cause requires people with dramatically different skills and temperament to co-exist. These distinct personalities need to build trust, trust others and contribute within a common framework. As a result the natural tendencies, self-images, comfort zones of different people can run counter to the common cause – that is where the role of the leader comes in. She/he needs to be alert not only to ones on mis-alignments [and fine tune oneself continuously – and make oneself subservient to the common goal. Hence make successful leaders have been those with spiritual leanings who continuously look inwards and evolve everyday] but also to the idiosyncrasies of key members in the eco-system – so as to ensure an alignment.
In the initial days, this effort needs to a conscious and [to the extent possible] a non-intrusive process. That is what would set the culture. The culture of consciously aligning the organization to common goals. Wherein, each element of the organization intuitively aligns oneself to one’s own interest and the common interest. Building a good [read effective] organization culture is creating awareness about what is in self / common interest and creating an aspiration to relentless align one’s own energy and mental make-up to the self/common goal. In that sense, every element of an organization evolves continuously in right culture and concomitantly every element becomes a leader herself/himself.

Over a period, institutional mechanisms of reinforcing this culture would develop to create the upward spiral. Till that happens, leadership needs to be conscious – as an end in itself – the only way of doing this effectively is through persuasion and communication. This itself will be a process of self transformation to the leader of keeping an earpiece to every element of the organization and leaving a mouthpiece at every nook. Both in a post modern, welcoming paradigm – that will generate greater self motivation amongst each element to align themselves. And not with a big-brother perspective of pushing and prodding – that may give a secret satisfaction to the elements to surreptitiously not toe the line and hence take the people away from any alignment.

My current state of evolution, tells me, that leadership is the most critical element of success and leadership is about choosing the right team and them right aligning them. Though a mixture plain old school listening and sharing; and use of institutional tools and techniques. All to create alignment and re-aglinment

To be able to do this, a leader needs to constantly evolve – in terms of values, self knowledge, team knowledge, domain knowledge, people knowledge to be able to listen well, communication well, persuade well. The leader would need to understand proactively and patiently the embedded excellences and mediocrities of team members within the context of the expectations of their role and aspirations. And for this to be possible, the potentially most powerful mantra is the humility of spirituality that kills arrogance and ensures a continuous quest. Evolving everyday - by identifying and eliminating one’s stubborn convenience traps and comfort zones - encouraging others to evolve every day. Becoming a better leader and unlocking the leaders in others every day.


March 20, 2011
Bhubaneswar

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