A lesson in leadership

Even as reams are written about and spoken on what makes a great leader, the question still does not get answered convincingly. There are myriad of views which have confounded it further rather than clearing the haze that surrounds the idea of leadership. It is against this backdrop that the story paraphrased below makes a lot of sense. Though there may be many variations of the story, but the underlying lesson is driven home rather succinctly. The story is that a young man finds his primary school teacher at a wedding party. He goes to the teacher to pay his respects and show his admiration. His first question is whether the teacher was able to remember him. But the teacher is not able to do so as decades have elapsed since the young man had left the school. The teacher however asks the student to introduce himself. The student narrates the story that he was studying in standard IV when an incident took place while the teacher was taking the class. A boy of the same class had come with a beautiful new watch. The student, tempted as he was, stole the watch which the boy had kept in his bag during the lunch period. On finding the watch missing after the lunch, that boy started crying and went to the teacher stating that his watch had been stolen. The teacher had then asked all the students to close their eyes and face the wall while he would search every student’s pocket. This boy who had stolen the watch was now worried that he would be found out and be exposed in front of the class and his character would be shattered. As the teacher went on searching the pockets of the students of the class, he found it in the pocket of the boy. Still he continued with the search till the last boy. After this, the teacher had asked the students to open their eyes and take their seats. The teacher showed the watch to the class and gave it back to the boy it belonged to. But he never said who was found in possession of the watch. All through his life in the school, none of the teachers or students ever came to know who had stolen the watch. It was this teacher who had saved his dignity. The reply that the teacher gave was more remarkable. The teacher said that he himself did not know who stole the watch that day because while he searched the pockets of all the students, he himself had his eyes closed. Protecting and reforming is much more important than exposing and expelling. The punishments are envy and ego driven while forgiving is compassion driven. Even classical psychology recommends that praise in public but reprimand in private. It is this that works. Abraham Lincoln’s words quoted here make a lot of sense. He said: “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice”. Well, many may disagree but I too have had a similar experience. As myths about efficacy of strong leadership are blown out of proposition, we need to understand that it is important to influence a behaviour by love and compassion rather than power and punishment. Punishments may work in the short run but their deterrence value has been found to be rather transient. Punishment may deter but it is love that transforms. Compassionate leadership works better.

Man is not man, yet

Progress is the law of life; Man is not man yet. These famous words from Robert Browning once again stand vindicated as Kenya’s Kipchoge breaks the Marathon record by running 42.195 km in less than two hours. It was a good 75 years ago that Roger Banister had achieved something similar by running one mile in less than four minutes. Banister also had broken a record that was held for centuries. Human feats are like that. Burning desire to break barriers that create mental blocks is what does the trick. Psychologists call it achievement motivation, poets call it fire in the belly and management gurus call it “Kaizen” or continuous improvement. But the basic grammar is the same. Intense desire to better a past achievement. Though there is a rider. This intense desire has to be backed by a double intense effort, almost to the extent of obsession. As student of psychology for more than four decades and a half, I can still swear by the observation of the classical psychologists that a normal human being expends somewhere around ten percent of his latent capabilities, the rest being lost in the tedium of routine. This ten percent is a self-imposed barrier of the mind that makes us believe that the limits are here — this far, no further. But the truth is something different as has been proved time and again. For those who still remember Kapil Dev’s fireworks against Zimbabwe in 1983 World Cricket Cup, an innings that changed the course of the event single-handedly, those 175 runs were something beyond imagination in a limited overs cricket match. But the year 2010 saw the first double century of a limited over cricket. And now, we have our own Rohit Sharma with three double centuries under his belt in one day cricket. Rohit in fact has come up to 264 indicating that there will be a triple century in a cricket one dayer sooner or later. There have also been centuries and 175 in T-20, just to suggest that a double ton in this format is also not an impossibility. Human potential is immense, only they are not harnessed in the right way. The three important parametres on which there is need to work is productivity, potential and competitiveness. As someone very aptly said: beat yourself. But why do humans not do it. For the simple reason that they direct their energies on beating others more than improving their own performance. An old story from the popular Akbar Birbal tales sums it all and is paraphrased here. Akbar was often told that his admiration for Birbal was misplaced. Once he decided to prove the detractors of Birbal wrong. He drew a straight line and asked the courtiers to shorten it without touching. None of the courtiers had any clue. Then, he asked Birbal to try. Birbal simply drew a bigger line by the side and said, “Sir, your line is now small”. This is what we need to understand. Focus on our own performance and continuously try to improve upon it. Every time we try, there will be improvement because the potential is immense and seldom do we reach the limits. However, the trick lies in sincerity and dedication. The mantra is that to be what you want to be, you need to be what you want to be. And in order to be what you want to be, believe what you want to be.