Leader - the flawed individual with thick skin

A call prompted me to write this posting this week.  My friend talked to me of a situation in his organization where one of his peers got pulled up by their manager's manager (boss's boss) in front of every one.  He told me something that hit me quite hard, "Ravi, after witnessing this incident, I lost faith in the leadership of the organization.  That person fell in my eyes."  I realised that it takes just one incident and one slip by a leader to fall in the eyes of the organization.  Years of hard and probably very good work get blotted out by one slip in behaviour.

While talking to my friend I told him that all of us are flawed individuals.  More importantly, we need to know and appreciate that our boss is also a human being and is, therefore, both vulnerable and flawed.  If we put the person on a pedestal, it becomes dangerous.  The first mistake will result in a fall that will damage his/her image permanently.

We tend to think that our leaders are super human beings. Incapable of making mistakes.  We need to appreciate that they are human beings like us and, therefore, will make the same mistakes that all of us end up making.  Only difference is that their mistakes could be more costly than those below as the impact will be higher.  For that, they pay a dearer price.

It is also important for leaders to understand that they are flawed individuals and are vulnerable.  Only if they show and accept these vulnerabilities and the fact that they are flawed, will they be successful leaders.  Leaders who believe that they are these fortified beings who cannot be penetrated easily, cannot be farther from the truth.  The only fortification that I have seen as we move up the ladder is a thicker skin.

So, what is this thick skin?  Our egos get pricked when we are pulled up in front of our colleagues or even if it is one to one with our manager. However, as we grow older, we tend to manage these incidents better - both internally within ourselves, and, externally.  We swallow our pride.  This is what, I believe, we call thick skin.  However, to grow this thick skin, we need a huge amount of maturity and life experience.  If we begin to understand that whatever be the comment from our manager or colleague is only a feedback from a different point of view, such comments hurt us less. Over a period of time, each of us decides as to how to accept these comments.  Many tend not to react.  To not react needs maturity and I see this as the life experiences.  This is necessary for senior leaders.

It is also essential for senior leaders to ponder their actions.  To show your might to someone well below you in an organization may satisfy your ego immediately but then will get you nothing in the long run.  It will only destroy your credibility and all your hard work.

As we move further up the ladder, we need to definitely understand how to align better, execute better and have trust/faith in our managers. We need to appreciate that leaders are flawed individuals and that their skins are probably thicker than ours!!! 

Never alone in the Journey of Life

I remember watching a TV program with a 4 year old.  This program showed the Wilderbeast of the African Plains crossing the Savanna Region. The wilderbeast is an animal that keeps moving...it is constantly running to places where there is food and water. They move in thousands and so along with them travel their predators.  This TV program showed how a pregnant wilderbeast (I am calling her Gowri) gave birth to a child.  From the voice over by the commentator we understood that while a human child takes close to a year to start walking, a wilderbeast calf starts walking within 2 minutes of birth and running within few more minutes.  I said, "Wow...God has really fast forwarded its life by months."  Quickly, I realised that this was needed because on came few cheetahs and attacked the calf.  Gowri tried to protect her young and started calling for help. While few others came to help, it was too late and the calf was killed and carried away by the cheetahs.  The 4 year old who watched this episode with me was shocked and she was crying for almost a week feeling sad that this new born's life had been snuffed out within minutes of birth.  I was wondering as to why should this new animal be born to die immediately?  Maybe, God had provided food to some very hungry cheetahs who had not eaten for few days now and were desperate for a meal.

Gowri, after trying her best to protect her child, gave up the fight and ran away to save her own life.  I am not sure what Gowri would have felt to lose her child to predators.  Since, we dont know, we believe that Gowri was not grieving - we rationalise that animals cannot think.  She was busy running away from the predators.  Maybe, God fast-forwarded this grief in Gowri's life.  If a human loses his/her child, the grieving goes on for years. Maybe, God felt that someone like Gowri should face the same pain for few minutes only.  Or maybe, Gowri is still grieving and I dont know it because she cannot speak or express it.

As they say, the only certainty in life is death.  Yet, when it happens, we feel shattered.  Especially, when it is one of our loved ones.  There is an ancient Indian story that says that a king had gone to seek the blessings of a sage.  The sage blessed him, "May you and your siblings perform the last rites of your parents and your children perform your last rites."  The king wondered why the sage was talking of death while blessing him.  Later he came across a couple who were grieving their child's death.  When he noticed how devastating the emotions were, he thanked the sage for the blessings given.

It is only when this death happens and when it happens to someone we love very much, we tend to lose our balance. Thoughts cross our mind that this God has not stood by us.  That despite us being such a good human being, He has punished us severely...and, if this is the God that we have been worshipping for so many years, there is no point in doing so any more.  God really takes a beating in our minds.

It is precisely at this time in our lives that we should look to help from spiritual leaders.  We need to look deeply in to ourselves and bring the courage from inside.  As for Gowri, even our life needs to go on.  While we will be sad for years to come, our own life has to be lived.  We have other relatives and loved ones who care for us.  Our sorrow should not reach a stage that it puts others in to severe stress and sorrow.  In my earlier blog I had discussed as to why our Health is a social responsibility.  Likewise, our grieving is also a social responsibility.  It must happen, will happen and then while it continues to happen, we must also realise that life has to go on and get a good hold on it.

They say that time is the best healer.  This does not mean that as time passes by, you will forget the person who died.  It is only that the impact is lesser than what it was when it happened.

I chanced up on a book called "The Laws of the Spirit World" by Khorshed Bhavnagri.  This is the story of a couple who lost both their sons in a car crash.  Life came down crashing for them and they lost faith in God.  There was a message that they received from the Spirit World.  The life that they had lost interest in changed dramatically and sent them off on an incredible journey.  More than whether we believe in Life after Death, whether there is a Spirit World, etc., the book is one that shows how a couple re-built their lives around a belief.  The book shows how they reached down in to themselves and brought out that inner courage to live.  The book is about courage and fortitude as much as it is on what the Spririt World is all about.

Like for all of us, I believe that Gowri felt tremendous pain when she lost her child within minutes of birth...cruelly mauled to death in front of her eyes.  But, she knew that she had to live and her life must go on.  She summoned all the courage from inside her and ran towards her herd and joined them in their journey.  Our journey does not end with a death of a loved one. 

A new chapter begins when a loved one passes away...the Cycle of Life begins and instead of the loved one being with us physically, he/she is there in our thoughts and our memories.  I believe that this new journey is thrust up on us because Life knows that we are strong enough to handle this situation and can start off on a new mission and objective.  And, as in every other journey of our Life, we are never alone!!!

Diversity of thought...

I heard someone say, "When my grandad dug the earth, he got gold.  When my dad dug the earth, he got coal. When I dig the earth, I get landmines/bombs.  I am worried that when my children and their children dig the earth, that they would end up getting skeletons."  This makes me wonder whether this is the price we have to pay because of intolerance to diversity of thought?

We fight wars in the name of rogue countries with weapons of mass destruction, in the name of religion, in the name of terrorism, for territories that originally belonged to some country, etc.  If we analyse many of these wars, they are because of economic reasons or because of intolerance to diversity of thought (including religious ideologies).

In an organization this takes different forms.  I have noticed that if we profile members of a team, we will find people with similar skills and capabilities and orientation towards work as that of the Head of Team. This is very true if the Head has himself/herself handpicked the teams.  That is why we will notice poorly balanced teams from a work orientation perspective.  We will also notice changes happening to teams as a new Head takes over. While some of it would be due to disappointments in existing team members when a new head comes in or perceived differences of opinions, many times this happens when there is no tolerance to diversity of thought.

Many organizations try and get in diversity in to teams. More often than not, this tends to be focussed on gender diversity.  Some look at diversity related to countries, related to regions in a country and some related to languages spoken or religion.  Most organizations do not put in much effort in to handling diversity of thought.  This is probably one of the most critical aspects that many companies should look in to.  There is an excellent story that explains this aspect well.  There was a very bright and creative architect. He realised that the demand for his work was increasing and so decided to form a company. He did that and selected a good management team.  This team soon realised that they started getting work.  However, after a year, they started noticing customer problems and the number of contracts started reducing.  They hired a consultant to figure out what was happening.  When they were profiled by the consultant, their work preferences were very similar.  All of them were very creative and spent a lot of time on creating lovely concepts and buildings. However, collectively, they were poor at execution of their concepts and designs.  So, while they got contracts initially, since they could not execute these well, they started losing business.

Like this story, I have seen many stories of very good teams failing.  This is primarily because of lack of diversity of thought.  Implementing it in a team is very complex given that the needs of business are so varied and demanding.  However, a well balanced team in the only one that will produce sustained results.

At work and in life, it makes a lot of sense to be tolerant to many things and most importantly, different thoughts and thought processes.  India, as a country, has this diversity and takes this diversity in its stride. This tolerance comes out of our spiritual practices. That is why we still see the cows strolling along with the latest motor cars in our streets!!!

Faith

I visited a place of pilgrimage called Palani in Tamil Nadu in India yesterday.  It was another day at the Palani Temple - 450,000 devotees coming from across the country. As the chants "Vel Vel Vetrivel, Vel Vel Veeravel" filled the air, the atmosphere was just electric.  It was charged with absolute positive energy. The pilgrims had to wait 4.5 hours in a long queue that snaked around the temple to catch a less than 10 second glimpse of the idol.  As I was talking to few there I heard how they had walked over 50 to 60 kms to visit this temple - and they got a less than a 10 second glimpse of the idol.  Got me wondering...why do so many people do this?  What makes them walk these long distances, get jostled around in the crowd, keep chanting the name of Lord Muruga and finally see the idol for few seconds but walk out feeling absolutely thrilled?  One of them told me that while they may get only few seconds to take a look at the idol, they have only thought of good deeds and thoughts and lived with God for all the hours that they waited to see the idol.  The fact that they all walk out happy is what I call faith.

Faith, like love, is not driven by the brain but by the heart.  They say, both faith and love, are blind.  There is a lot of emotion attached to faith and so, any amount of rationalising does not really change too much of the outcomes.  Could not these devotees who walked for hours and waited for hours to catch a few second glimpse of the idol of God not have done this at home? Could they have not just prayed to a photograph of this idol which I am sure they will have at home? Are they fools to go through this arduous exercise? No, definitely not. This has to do with the emotion in each person...with the feeling of being one with God.  And it is this faith that makes them do these acts.  I saw people of all ages at this temple...from the really young to the really old.  I saw people in wheelchairs.  It was just amazing to see so many people - all looking towards the Almighty.

Faith makes us do such extraordinary acts.  It drives us in many ways.  In the Tamil Movie "Dhill", the director builds a very strong character who defies all physical odds to start walking again after he is beaten up and many of his bones are broken.  The character in that movie displays extraordinary faith in himself to be able to do anything. And when he wills, he finds the way.  As they say, "Where there is a will, there is a way." 

The dark side to this faith is what I see in terrorism.  Just imagine the courage it would take to give up your life for a cause. That is what these terrorists do.  From the suicide bombers to those who kill thousands of innocent people, it is faith in some cause that drives humans to behave like this.

What this shows me is that this faith in a cause or in someone or both results in extraordinary acts.  This is because this faith drives an amazing attitude to make things happen for the cause and/or the person.  This is the faith that leaders in organizations can harness.  A good leader with a clear vision can instill tremendous faith in the people and that translates in to a very positive attitude.  I have experimented with this concept where I have worked on a clear vision with expectations that are easily understood by all.  I have then empowered people to achieve this vision - i.e. put faith in people.  Once people saw me put faith in them, they in turn put full faith in me, the vision and the expectations.  This created positive energy all around.  And this positive energy resulted in a multiplier effect that is not easy to put in words - it has to be experienced...felt inside each one of us - very much like faith!!!

Tolerance

I was discussing with a friend of mine whether the Indian family system of taking care of elderly parents and grandparents at home was better than letting them live on their own or in an old age home.  Whether the Indian system of taking care of their physical, emotional and financial needs by making them stay at home till they passed away was better than letting them live alone and fend for themselves.  Societies in the US and Europe and Australia seem to have got a clear way where each one cares for himself/herself.  Some are less fortunate and so the Government has to pay for part of their bills and so, the condition in which they live are not always the best.  In India, we do not have a social security system and the family takes on that role.  Somehow, I see this as equivalent of self-help and people do not need to depend on the Government to take care of their elderly.

With life expectancy moving up all over the world, elderly care is something that needs thought.  While they may need help on the physical and financial fronts, they will definitely need help on the emotional front.  More so, if they have lost their partner.

We seem to not have tolerance for the lack of speed of reaction of elders.  This causes stress both in us as well as the elders living with us.  While some of the elders come with years of baggage in their heads, I have always found it useful to set clear expectations without hurting the person.  After all, when we were young, these same elders set ground rules for us.  It is now time for them to follow ground rules.  This is where problems arise.  Some see us as children setting ground rules for them and some learn to accomodate and live, though with a lot of disagreements.  So, how do we handle this situation? Is it better to make them live on their own or would it be good to be with them?

These are difficult questions.  The advantage of having our elders live with us include tapping in to their experiences so that we do not re-invent the wheel everytime.  Others include the fact that they enjoy spending time with our children, telling them bed time stories, playing with them, helping them in their studies, talking to them about our culture, teaching them a way of life that is fast disappearing in India.  The problems that come along are that the elders find it difficult to adjust to some of the modern day realities and could become sarcastic, some do not want to do anything but sit and watch TV all through the day, some have physical or mental disabilities that are better looked after in a hospital or through full time care.  Apart from all this, some of us believe that they have become a burden on us.

I have been observing situations that many have faced and come up with my conclusion that it is best to keep them with us if possible or to get them to stay with their age group relatives but keep them close to our homes so that we can spend time with them daily.  We need to spend time daily with our elders, listen to them with patience, not to be judgemental and heed their advice as it comes with years of experience.  For this, we need not only to love them as our own but also have tolerance as their physical and mental abilities are not as quick as they used to be.  This tolerance is absolutely critical in our lives for as we grow up, we need to be tolerant to our next generations.  If we show this tolerance, the Universe will come back and pay us back with the same tolerance that we deserve when we become "the elders".

Spotting Leaders...

My wife never refers to a plant as "it" but as "her".  We had a plant that had been re-potted and was struggling to come back to life.  My wife kept talking to "her" for over a month and kept encouraging her to spring back to life.  She kept telling her, "I want to see your flower."  One sunny day my wife and I returned home and as we stepped through the gate, my wife let out a squeal of joy.  She pointed out to the plant that she had been talking to for over a month..."she" had a bud.  To me, the one month of continuously talking to the plant and showering the love "she" needed is seeing the unseen and hearing the unheard.  This is leadership.

Many a time we pass existing leaders in our teams and bring someone from outside.  This happens for few reasons.  It is like our child who is growing up in front of our eyes. We struggle to imagine our little daughter has become a teenager.  Similarly, we struggle to see the leader that has grown in front of our eyes.  The other reason is that since we have been closely watching the people we work with, we know their strengths and improvement areas.  These improvement areas are familiar to us and they breed contempt.  We do not notice the improvement areas of the new leaders that we interview and realise that, many a time the leader inside the organization was better than the one we just brought in.

Many organizations and leaders in organizations struggle to spot leaders. What has worked for me in spotting leaders have been few qualities that I notice as I begin to work with people - these include "the can do" attitude, negotiation skills, collaborative skills, taking ownership and being accountable, ability to take decisions and more importantly living down wrong decisions, willingness and ability to communicate expectations very clearly, ability to be on the dance floor while bringing in a balcony view and above all, being a human being.

Spotting leaders is an art and it is often the small deeds or acts that bring forth the leaders in us.  As I stated above, the act of talking to the plant to bring "her" back to life and bloom, to me was leadership at its best.

I was talking to this 10 year old child who was the leader of a gang of girls in her school.  This was a small gang of 5 and they all had decided that she should be the leader.  Other gangs were trying to poach members from this gang so that they could grow their gang.  So, in order to protect her gang, she made one of them Vice-Captain of her gang.  She then made another member the Stand-In leader when she was absent and another member the Stand-In Vice Captain when the Vice Captain was absent.  This way, she negotiated positions for each person and they all were so happy that they decided not to leave the gang.  When the time came to go in different directions, she did not think twice to disband the gang.  These are clear signs of leadership of a 10 year old who is ready to take decisions based on the circumstances on hand and not take a stance based on her own position or a decision made earlier.

In my earlier writings, I have discussed what it is to be a human being and what it is to have a "can do" attitude.  I would like to talk today on living down the mistakes that we make as leaders and not beating ourselves up.  In our daily lives, all of us wear the leadership hat.  Many a time we don't know we are wearing the hat but actually do.  We take thousands of decisions.  Many of them do not work the way we thought they would or have un-intended consequences...consequences that we could not imagine when we took those decisions.  As they say, we are always smarter on the hindsight.  Many of us are ashamed of the decisions that we took and beat ourselves up and live with the burdens.  There are others who are willing to accept the errors of judgement made and move on in life.  True leaders don't beat themselves up continuously.  If we are humans, we will make those errors - it is after all human to err.  The leader is not above this maxim.  If we understand this and take the errors that we make in our stride, take accountability for those errors, face the consequences and not let those errors stop us in lives, we are on our way to becoming true leaders.  When President Nixon accepted his errors of judgement, in an interview on television on the Watergate Scandal, he showed what it is to make a mistake and live down that mistake.  He showed courage, grit and leadership.

Money

Jeff Crowther said, "Some one really lazy would have created money".  He was correct.  Money serves a dual purpose of being a unit of value and also a medium of exchange.  Before money was invented the rice dealer would have struggled to exchange his goods to, say, buy clothes or utensils.  Barter would have been a huge issue for society and some lazy person, who had all this time in the world, would have been thinking how to resolve the problem and would have come up with the concept of money.  Once money was created, kings started wondering how to physically make this money without being in a situation where everyone created this money. Hence, gold was used.  Over a period of time, gold gave way to silver, then came alloys of cheaper metals and now paper.

Man tends to over extend everything in life. Our greatest strengths, when over extended, become our greatest weaknesses.  We end up losing whatever we thought we would get out of these strengths.  To reduce problems in society being able to access everything it needed in life, we created money.  Slowly, greed took over and since we wanted everything that this society had to offer, we started trying to make more of this money.  We hoarded money and when we did that, we started robbing from each other.  When we started robbing from each other, we started keeping them in safe locations.  These safe locations, over a period of time, became banks and these trusted people became bankers.  Banking, grew over the years, and used this money to lend to those who needed this money.  So, money started circulating around.  It could do much more than what it was originally created for.  Thousands of years after money was created, in 2008, we saw one of the biggest crisis take place with millions of people being displaced from their homes, lose jobs, commit suicide, etc. and all this happened all across the world.  We called it the Global Financial Crisis.  Our solution to resolve the barter problem landed us in one of the worst crisis that we experienced. 

As Santosh was about to step in to the cab, I asked him, "Santosh, would you be willing to leave Rs.25,000 in this cab and go out shopping for an hour without worrying that it will be stolen either by the cabbie or someone else?"  He said that there is no question of trusting a cabbie who he did not know with Rs.25,000.  I asked him as to how does he trust the cabbie with his life by getting in to it and taking an one hour ride back home?  What if the cabbie drove rashly resulting in a fatal accident?

We go through life without thinking through so many things.  Money, they say, is the reason for most of the ills of mankind.  I have to disagree.  We have only ourselves to blame.  Money has never asked us to over-extend its use.  It has never asked us to become greedy.  We have become greedy.  As the actor Rajnikanth says, "So long as we have adequate quantities of money, it will protect us.  Once we stock excess quantities, we have to protect it."

I read two snippets of news that actually shows the power of money. One was about a very rich businessman selling some of his equity holdings to contribute a significant amount to his foundation that focusses on education.  Education to millions of Indians will result in a stronger India in the future and is clearly the only way out for Indians to come out of poverty.

The other snippet was about a wayward son who had gone in to drugs.  After his parents died, he realised that they had willed away all their money to a charity.  Left without any money, he is now living in a charity home outside of Bangalore.  He now realises that his misuse of money and his disrespect for it is what has resulted in the lousy situation that he finds himself in today.  Money seems to have taught this young man a real tough lesson in life.

In India, we worship the Goddess Lakshmi and many say that we do that so that we can get more wealth.  What our ancestors wanted us was to respect money and so created this Goddess of Wealth, Lakshmi.  This would ensure that we give money the due respect and treat it well so that it helps us.  Clearly, our ancestors seem to have known more than us...wish we learn from the lessons they have taught us and find peace with our lives!!!

True happiness seems to be in sharing the wealth that we have with others than in hoarding it.  There is the story of a very rich farmer in the US who sprayed not only his farm but also the ones of his not so wealthy neighbours.  He did this for 2 years till his neighbours became rich enough to afford spraying themselves.  But, what this did for him was that his farm started yielding more and he made more money because he had rid himself of the problem of insects coming in from the unsprayed neighbouring farms.  This example is true for us in all aspects of life.  The more we share, the more we end up getting!!!