Leadership - Making a Positive Difference

There are many leaders who think they are different and indeed they are. Many of them do things differently.  Some of them do different things.  A true leader tries his best to make a positive difference in the lives of people who are around him/her and to those in his/her teams. There will be success sometimes and at times things will not work out exactly the way he/she wanted.  But, definitely, he/she would have tried his/her best.

I remember a story of a farmer who had bought a large corn field measuring hundreds of acres.  He had a problem. His field was filled with insects and so the yield was low.  He was rich and so he got in an aircraft to spray the field.  He quickly realised that while he could get rid of insects in his field, more insects were coming in from the neighbouring fields.  His neighbours were poor and could not afford this aerial spraying. So, they were struggling.  He quickly assessed the situation and decided to spray their fields too.  He did this for 3 years and during the 4th year, his neighbours came up to him and said that they he did not have to spray their fields as they could afford to do it themselves.  The farmer had made a huge difference to his neighbours. By helping them out of poverty, he had improved the yield in his fields significantly.

Every time we make a difference to some one in our lives, we end up enriching ourselves through the experience.  These experiences make us a true leader and these are the experiences that I call as "life experiences".

The recent uprising against corruption in India is an excellent example.  A leader, Anna Hazare, was supported by millions of people across India and because of that he forced the Government of the day to accept his demand to pass an Anti-Corruption Bill in the Parliament this year.  He started a fast unto death and little would he have realised that the support would be so overwhelming.  When it came, it consumed the country, the media and everything around it.  People realised that Anna Hazare was trying to make a positive difference for them and their future generations.  The support was immediate and immense.

The positive difference that a leader tries to bring about is something that the people he leads should not only see but also experience.  Unless they feel the difference, they will not accept the person as a leader.  I remember a very old Tamil Song in which the great leader MG Ramachandran sings (and I am translating this in to English), "The path that you visioned will vapourise as dreams, the words that you said will be forgotten.  Only the truth that people see and experience about you will live forever...."  So true.

Can you and I be an Anna Hazare and make a difference to millions?  It is necessary to make a true difference to just one more person in your lives.  If each of us can do that, we are leaders.  Try it, experience it and you will definitely understand what it is to make that difference to someone in their lives.  You will also see that Leadership has as much, if not more, of the heart than of the brain.

As I watched the two bees happily buzz by in my garden from one flower to another, I smiled and thought, "I am making a difference to these bees by having a lovely garden at home with so many flowers.  Does this too count in making that difference?"  The only answer that came to me was a resounding YES!!!