“Action without vision is only passing time, vision without action is merely daydreaming, but vision with action can change the world”
– Nelson Mandela
What is leadership?
Leadership is when a person or an individual has an influence over a group of people or community to achieve a common goal in a coordinated manner and shared focus.
You take the responsibility of your team and people. You guide them.
Now let’s consider that there’s a pack of wild dogs walking over a frozen lake and one of them notices a piece of cracked ice with a small gap to drink water. As there are 7-8 of them in the group. So everyone will have to drink in turns. One who noticed the gap keeps drinking until it quenches that animal’s thirst. Looking at this instantly one of the wild dogs goes to the other side, looks for a piece of weaker and thin ice and breaks it, let’s other dogs drink and then he drinks.
What we take from this is – a leader should take responsibility, seek and create opportunities, support and care about your people.
Know the power of effective leadership
Effective leaders support their followers and also challenge them to grow beyond their comfort zone, now some leaders might get too much supportive or too much challenging or impossibly demanding, which is again a problem so balancing is important,
You have to challenge them so that they can grow beyond what they thought is possible but you also should recognize and support them so that they feel comfortable sharing their perspective and investing their talents.
A leader should also learn to maintain the balance between your culture and your people or team.
What is must-do for a leader?
Nelson Mandela said “action without vision is only passing time, vision without action is merely daydreaming, but vision with action can change the world”
To make your vision and actions work you have to set a destination otherwise you are lost, get and give a target, a vision, make it challenging (since it can’t be easy because people would have already done it), competitive, compelling and make it exciting (have some stages in between the process, arrange events and activities because it is difficult to stay motivated for months or even years) this will help you in achieving and reaching your goals.
Role of a responsible leader
Social responsibility -to explain this point let’s consider shareholders who are present in every project and organisation – (you should understand why they invest in you and live up to their expectations).
Integrity – means what a leader says, what a leader does and how a leader acts consistently -working towards the goal.
Role modelling – a leader must be a role model and be the right person in the right place at the time.
Sustainability – being able to manage work and personal life also and being resilient, which means you have to balance between work and personal life so that this site doesn’t affect the other side.
Long-term orientation– this is about what happens next after the achievement of a certain target. Meaning that you should have a vision of the future and understand, what must be done further in future and plan accordingly.
Where are you looking to anticipate change in your life?
To know the answer ask you’re self-following questions
- What is your daily habit?
- What are you reading?
- What are you listening to?
- With whom you communicate?
Know yourself
Self-reflection/ self-regulation –Self-reflection is nothing without self-regulation if you cannot regulate your response when your emotions tell you something else then,
We have a problem. (You should have a small ego, everyone has an ego we cannot change that), have a healthy and open climate. So that people can give you feedback.
And then comes connecting yourself with people as a regulated personality which gives rise to the formation of creativity within you and around you which is essential in this world.
Self-perception-your perception of yourself must be as close to the reality which people around you see, meaning that if your team or people think that you are open and clear but you are not, then it is a disconnection which needs a fix.
Safe environment – now we know that feedback is important and it helps us grow but also hurts. (Like I said everyone has an ego). A friendly environment is important for everyone to work with their best effort knowing that all are together and supportive.
What is the diversity measure of your network?
We all have people in our network with whom we are comfortable, but that also hinders the process of thoughts, imagination and collective decisions.
Not always it is the case the people we are comfortable with giving the best of opinions. Now, these people can be of different categories such as political, cultural, physical, biological or socio-economical type. And with these people, you have to connect and they should trust you and are ready to work with you for the accomplishment of the common goal.
Why to have diversified network?
A great leader understands that connecting with diverse people will give you a better pattern, judgement and understanding because they are different than you and have different thinking. A leader needs to have knowledge of the local culture and match it with international culture (Indian leaders can have teams from us and UK so he/she must understand the culture of us and UK and try to merge and make the balance between them).
How to maintain your team?
Frame your vision, draw your vision, write down where you are today and where you want to be, put it where everybody can see and know, let them see what they are working for every day, we might forget our birthdays but not what we see daily.
A leader without enthusiasm and passion lacks credibility – you must have that thing in you which drives you with energy and motivation, like other emotions for example when we see someone smiling we feel like smiling too, in the same way, your motivation, passion and enthusiasm will spread and help you and your team grow.
How to increase team performance?
A leader is always improvising, growing and developing himself and there’s a point when a leader starts developing people around him/her, helping them grow, gain motivation and succeed and this in return makes you happy.
This is how you start making connections and getting high-performance teams.
Balancing is the key, sometimes giving rewards to people as an appreciation for results is also needed to keep everyone motivated.
What defines a team’s productivity?
Now in teams, team members can get together, list down what things have an impact and what not, share it and come up with the most effective strategy of all. (individual decisions are not made, collective decisions always produce the best results ) and to avoid conflicts among members they shouldn’t focus on what they think is needed and instead think about what is needed for the target or result, trusting each other is important so that any conflicts should be healthy conflicts.
Great leaders must look into all aspects trying to create a positive change and a future. Not just listen or simply react.
Treating people unequally also affects (egg. An experiment was done on monkeys who were given two machines with food and so when they pull the lever one gets banana and one gets nuts, and they go on strike or not use the machine completely, because of unequal treatment. “So treat everyone equally”.
Are you courageous?
Willing to take a calculated risk and let go of the past strategies which comfort you into things that it always works and stops you from evolving.
Do you have the courage to hear or accept that your idea is naive or stupid?
If not then you should, and when you do interestingly the people who will join you are the ones who think differently and have that courage like you to walk the same path and take that leap not a step but leap along with you.
Have set smart goals – have effective fixed goals.
Measurable -you should have the ability to track your performance and make changes whenever necessary.
Achievable & relevant-For achievable and relevant overly ambitious sometimes is demotivating and some expect over-ambitious goals which make them work more effectively but the idea is “balancing”, your goals and objectives should be realistic and alien with long term plans We have to maintain balance in the expectations of stakeholders, consumers, and also team members .
Time bound-should have a fixed period or deadlines for any task.
Leadership and team-building is a skill and it can be learnt. Even a human can make his or her presence felt, it all depends on your skill. Hone your skills and you will see the difference. Believe that anybody can be a great leader, this is a skill and everyone can learn it.
