Traveling the 20 Yards within…

I lack nothing but myself…
Franz Kafka

Perhaps there is no topic on the face of earth which is researched to the extent of brink barring Leadership. Thousands & thousands of books have been written since the moment mankind decided to be blessed with ambition & resolution for redefining the World. Yet if we look back on the progress made on Leadership, all we can do is pity the trees that were cut to paper the leadership books. Corroboration of the fact is the passion with which we argue over “Whether Leaders are Born or Created.”

Leaders & Leadership was never as pervasive & yet as elusive as it is today. On one hand we count it as a singular honor of life to be born as contemporaries of the larger-than-life leaders with the likes of Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Ross Perot, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Jeff Bezos and many more who could see the big picture & paint a compelling portrait of a dramatically different future yet the other hand is at complete loss to decipher the same visionary contemporaries.

Why everybody wants to understand leadership so desperately? Is it because we ourselves want to become one! If that’s the case, most of the people are just lost in the perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory forgetting that there are no formulas of becoming a leader. Using Victor Frankl’s (founder of Logo Therapy) analogy for Happyness, we should not aim at being a Leader. The more we aim at it & make it a target, the more we are going to miss it. There is never a surety, never a path which leads to Glory.

And ironically, this lack of surety & ambiguity regarding the outcome is the best thing to happen.

Turns out that we are never dedicated to something we have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to some social, political or organizational issues, it's always because they have something to prove. Something which is not a system, yet not an organizational culture. That’s why “What makes the fire smolder in the belly of a Leader is not a sense of duty toward others but the duty towards himself.” Leaders like Ford who wanted people to have better means of transportation, Jobs & Gates wanting a knowledge driven generation, Stiglitz wanting open markets all were inspired by their dream & vision to do something, to prove their belief ultimately resulting in their growth & well being of People.

Rather than focusing on the Leader which is latent within us, we just focus on the charisma of Leaders who surround us. We passionately debate about the various styles of Leadership & always question, ‘which one is the best?’ Freud told us, narcissists are emotionally isolated & highly distrustful. They’re usually poor listeners and lack empathy. Caesar, Patton, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Steve Jobs & Larry Ellison are all considered narcissists. Consider how an executive at Oracle describes his narcissistic CEO Larry Ellison: “The difference between God and Larry is that God does not believe he is Larry.” Point is “Yet the so called narcissists translate their dreams into Great Institutions by paving their way out of complacency & inertia which prevails in every corporation.” On the other hand, Goleman & Boyatzis define the virtue of leadership in terms of Empathy, i.e., ‘possessing a high degree of emotional intelligence.’ Some of these are Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Narayana Murthy.

Interestingly both these extremes i.e. Narcissists & Emotionally Intelligent Leaders are examples of productivity & innovation. Both are gifted with different personalities towards the attainment of a common goal. Both fight for freedom, challenge the existing status-quo, create & nourish great institutions. They abhor Incompetence, discourage Imperfection, build capacity & what Welch describes as “Provide opportunities for personal & professional growth, changing the implicit contract from a guarantee of employment to a commitment to employability.

Fortunately, ‘The Leaders’ of our generation do not reside in castles (e.g. Marcus Aurelius, Caesar & Pompey) or in shackles (Mandela). They sit very next to us in glass cubicles within our sight but perhaps way too far from our vision. And then suddenly one realizes, ‘Physical Distance was never so infinitely disproportionate to Intellectual Distance.’ The journey from the corner cubicle to the glass cabin is not more than 20 yards but intellectually the distance is more like thousands of light years. All we are supposed to do is to just lift ourselves (defying the gravity as well as justifying the vision) & introspect how & when the leader within me will be there.

After understanding all shades of leadership, it becomes difficult to single-out a particular trait and emulate it to attain self-actualization. Hence, it’s imperative to understand that there is a unique personality trait that characterizes every Leader & that’s why it’s more important to explore the Leader who lives within.

We are not supposed to travel those 20 yards to reach the cabin from the cubicle. All we have to do is travel 20 yards within.