The Missing Ingredient

New Delhi has scarcely succeeded in bothering the analytical musty corner of my brain. Something must be wrong with musty; Delhi has inspired many a writer, poet, painter, conqueror, diplomat, statesman and businessman to try the untried and reach the unfathomable. College students, I remember you too. But, I never liked college much, so I remembered to forget you. Oh, so New Delhi this time focused its cacophony and disorderliness towards me. It was a seminar, maybe a lecture; I think it was a conference, to discuss ‘leadership’.
Wow! I thought. Not another one! Ever since I fell prey to the worldly trap of following a ‘profession’ that I may or may not profess, just to earn money, just to be one of everyone else, who were also prey to the same trap, ‘leadership’ had been introduced, induced, taught, re-taught, revised and engrained... everything short of forcing the centuries old rules down my throat with a toilet pump. Then the enlightened masters would look at you with a tired smile, a bent back, drooping shoulders, drawn and dull eyes and say ‘lead from the front, lead by example’. Pride and happiness would overwhelm, pride of having learnt the importance and the art of ‘leading by example’ and happiness of the ordeal being over. The uninspiring man at the street who decided to run the traffic light was repulsive, how could he ever lead from front or by example I thought; such losers. His Honda CR-V was impressive though.
Next day I wanted to receive the ‘lead from front, lead by example’ professor myself. He drove in. His Honda CR-V was not impressive anymore. I wanted to take over the stage myself that day. Civic sense needed more emphasis than leadership in our nation, I thought. Then I saw the newspaper, the suave girl next to me was holding. She seemed perfect, beautiful hair, big green eyes, a nice business suit, tall and slim, lovely hands. The hands then went inside the newspaper and out came a local ‘deep-old-oil-fried’ snack and flew straight down her food pipe. The perfection vanished sooner than it had dawned. Civic sense was a bridge still too far. The newspaper bag landed at my shoes. People who had better civic sense would crumple it at least. But the littering looked better if left un-crumpled. Some political leaders had been arrested by the police for embezzlement of public funds, murder, sabotage and extortion; the newspaper said. The names of the leaders were smudged with stale oil. Their statements were still oil free... “even Mahatma Gandhi went to jail many times”. “Leaders do not demand respect or following, they earn these with their inspirational presence and actions”, Mr. Honda CR-V was ranting away. What a waste of eloquence. Leadership for sure was smudged with oil.
After the enlightening two day seminar on leadership, the undiscovered leader within me arose from slumber, and landed at Cha-bar. Cha-bar happens to be my favorite hang-out place at New Delhi. Sorry to disappoint, but it’s a coffee house-cum-book store in Westminister’s building at Barakhamba Road. The hunt began. Next four days were lost in searching everything available on leadership in the book store. At the end of day two, Tina, the owner, had realized my agony and led me straight to the section marked ‘Leadership’. I immediately asked her for the section marked ‘Common Sense’, there was none. She smiled the perfect smile, lovely black hair, a beautiful pink dress... I didn’t want to notice more. I had become wary of oil soiled newspaper bags.
The leadership section was resplendent with all variety of leaderships. Spiritual, political, emotional, corporate, military... Tina was happy. She knew this meant lot of business for her; like always. I wasn’t, I was nearly broke. New Delhi has that effect on people. Next couple of days, hence, were spent having every variety of iced tea and cold coffee Cha-bar could offer and going through the astoundingly unimaginative, un-inspirational and de-motivating prose I had encountered. Tina didn’t mind my reading the books and not buying them. ‘Being a leader is boring’, was my first inference. If learning about the process was such a drag, how could anyone fathom its implementation? I was already shedding tears of sympathy for the millions on whom these principles would be applied; I think experimented. These lowly worker class employees, the scum of the earth, were like guinea pigs on whom the researchers; their managers and leaders, would carry out trials of leadership, using formulae formulated immediately after the big bang millenniums ago.
People had thought of everything about leadership. Right from motivation, leading by example, leading by hanging the carrot of ‘success’ on the stick of meeting deadlines and delivering the targets. Leadership was losing its charm in a jiffy and so was the motivation to meet goal for ‘leaders’. The book failed to inspire. It was promptly thrown back from where it emerged. Another iced tea rekindled the curiosity. ‘Spiritual Leadership’, I thought the novelty would keep my mind engaged. Lessons from the Bhagvad Gita, where lord Krishna motivated or inspired or talked the unwilling Pandav prince Arjun into fighting a battle were intoxicating. Lead by awakening the sense of ‘non-doership’, of karma, of faith in the highest power, of just being an instrument of the universal will. The concept was admirable, intriguing as well. I could imagine being the perfect leader. Of leading everyone I was expected to lead, to unscaled heights of glory and selflessness, to the ever so evasive goal where they would sacrifice themselves for the organizational good. It happened! There I was, inspiring my team to stand and deliver, because they were just God’s instruments of manifesting what needed to be manifested. Motivating them to hold on, push on, when nothing in them was left, except the will to hold on and push on. “Coffee?”, Tina woke me up. The leader and the led dissolved. The rich, enterprising and beautiful book store owner had just asked me out on a date! Who had the time for leadership, I thought. I hadn’t finished rubbing my eyes, the coffee was there. Some date!! Just a shop owner doing business. Spiritual leadership was not my cup of coffee..tea, either.
I should have been reading a book on dating. There were many. Leadership won with a small mental struggle though. Why can’t we ever think from our hearts? Mind was a better leader, so leadership was the winner. ‘Practical Leadership’. This was it. I love practical. The two hundred page gibberish had a twenty word gist. “Suck up to the right guy, crush the competition and be a star manipulator so that your slightest inch forward seemed a greater leadership miracle than this creation itself.” Great! I thought. Down the sewage drain went my aspirations to assimilate leadership. If one had to strangulate ones conscience and fool the world and ones team into thinking that you are successful and a follow-able leader, the book would have replaced the Bible as the most sacred around. The despicable Americans, I thought. The author turned out to be an Indian. Hail America!
‘Rommel : Desert Leader’. Ah! How dumb I had been. Of course, what other than military leadership could be profound? They had taught the world the concept of leading men, to victories, to triumph, to death. The book managed to dilate my pupils. But was Rommel’s success an effect of his leadership or was his leadership a result of his success? I scratched my head. I needed a haircut. I was looking for lessons I could use. There were too many, too confusing, too verbose, too unconvincing. If I had to win the respect of the command, it was still not a guarantee that they would follow every direction, what was the need to ‘enforce’ discipline and obedience if respect was already won? Is leadership just about commanding respect or just about ‘enforcing’ compliance or both? How can I enforce compliance? Isn’t it ironic? Where did I pick up this book from? It was replaced irrespective.
My mind went numb. Too much reading for one day it had been. The exotic cars speeding into the dusk on the road were a pleasant change from static black letters on white pages. I knew for sure, leadership was boring and being led was worse. I kept gazing out of the fifth floor windows. The sight was monotonous. All kinds of vehicles speeding to a traffic signal, then waiting for it to turn green; then speeding again to the next one. I didn’t move a muscle for an hour. I don’t remember what went through my mind in that one hour. But I was awake, watching the traffic.
Day four was no longer fun or curiosity. It was a tired man’s stubbornness to find answers to unknown questions. Tina was on leave. That didn’t help. Some more leadership books flew from under my eyes. There were numerous methods and approaches that were discussed. These boiled down to either exploiting the ambitions of promotions, better pay or better reports to motivate the work force. The carrot and stick approach where you pat the back of one who ignores his personal life, health and his kids to work like a bulldozer and boot the ones who chose to go easy for reasons whose merit could never be greater than meeting the deadlines. The healthy competition nonsense, where you pitch different players against each other to meet deadlines and deliver the goods. Invariably this ends up in filthy politics and waste of energy and time. As such, the novelty of the game wears off too soon. Management gurus had also cooked up a theory where establishing a personal rapport with the led could rare them to go. Some thought that making them identify with a higher common goal could also give them the drive to deliver. Leading with an iron fist as in most armed forces was autocracy by my standards not leadership. Day four was over.
Even before having gone through this monumental mountain of words, I had had the opportunity to apply many of these, age old principles. Some, I applied after my Cha-bar adventure. But there was one commonality in all these approaches, principles or methods; none of them were effective. They failed because this was 2010, I couldn’t superimpose five hundred year old templates on today’s work force. The work force which is so much more aware, so much more ambitious, so much more vibrant with eagerness to contribute meaningfully, so much more immune to emotions that inspiring them is like putting life in machines. We are so much more goal oriented, so much more lazy, and so much more dependant on technology that human values and spirit to win have scanty influence over us. We are so much more monetarily oriented, so much more materialistic than older generations. This was something that was realized but comprehended in an erroneous manner. The interpretation of all these changes was simple, ‘Huge pay’. It works most places. But this is not leadership, it’s a bribe. What works?
The greatest quality of a leader is to diffuse tension, stress, pressure and anxiety. There are no rules that can ensure this. No particular set of orders or directions that can guarantee this. It’s possible only if the leader has the attitude to see the bigger picture, to realize that there is so much more to a person’s life than meeting deadlines for his boss, to know that the most efficient employee will be the one who is happiest and to know that leading means being followed not being pushed behind you. The missing ingredient in leadership is the attitude to let go; to let go of restlessness, perfection, haughtiness, ego and the insatiable insane greed to win every time and everywhere, to dictate the what, how, when, where and why all by your own viewpoint. Goals, deadlines and results are important. These can blindly be chased even by a robot. But leaders cannot be made, they are born. Born to change work from being a profession to a passion, where work, play, fun, happiness, growth, deadlines, contributions and goals, both personal and professional, intermingle into a vicious network. Where I could be proud of doing what I was doing and do it willingly.
The cell-phone buzzed. The report on the seminar was due yesterday. I was late. A previous assignment was ‘atrocious’. It was ‘too’ modern. My boss’ boss hated change. I had overstayed a day at New Delhi for which I had to give a written explanation so that disciplinary action could be initiated. My pay had not been credited this month as the documents required were in a wrong format. The boss was furious. I knew I was in a soup. Darn leadership...