The Third Eye: Modern Leadership

BILKULONLINE
SUNDAY Special

By D C Pathak

New Delhi, Aug 18: Discussions on modern leadership revolve around a projection that ‘traditional’ concepts would not do, that it is all about the leader being able to get along with the people he or she is reporting to and that in a corporate setting what mattered primarily was an enhancement of profitability.

It can however, be firmly stated within the validity of the point about profit through enhanced productivity that the merits of leadership in the times we live in, are basically rooted in three factors — the intrinsic traits of a leader that the individual concerned had, the capabilities he or she commanded of optimising the productivity of the people guided by the leader and the organisational ‘dividend’ the leader was able to create for the long term as far as the promotion of the ‘mission’, ethics and business of the collective body or the corporate, was concerned.

No body was born a leader which only testifies the reality that leadership qualities can be developed and practised in life and that they are a combination of what one received as a legacy and what was built upon that through the experience of one’s own times. This makes leadership a mix of learnings from the past and the insight into the future that the leader was able to acquire on the basis of what he or she was experiencing in the present. In some sense, therefore, leadership in an organisation could be an evolving process that would be judged by the leader’s contribution to the growth of the corporate body in terms of its efficiency of delivery and ultimate profitability.

A leader has a well-defined set of qualities that go with what is expected from his or her position in the organisation. The first requirement of leadership is ‘decisiveness’ since the leader faces decision-making big or small at every step — it may relate to an internal matter concerning personnel or involve a quick response to happenings outside of the organisation. Further, since in the Age of Information, it is ‘knowledge-based decision making’ that brought success, it is the business of the leader to keep himself or herself well informed on relevant matters pertaining to the goings-on within the corporate body as well as in the market outside.

It is for the leader to fix arrangements by which information on the situation prevailing within the organisation or that concerning the competition outside, regularly flows to the top. An equally important prerequisite of a leader is that the person should have the image of ‘reliability’ in the eyes of the people. No leader can be successful without commanding the ‘trust’ of the people he or she leads. This trust is rooted in the leader’s ‘transparency’, reputation of ‘being fair about credit sharing’ and known ‘commitment to a value system’.

A leader has to be a person of ‘courage’ — this was rooted in nerves rather than in physical strength. With this goes the ability to take ‘initiatives’ — the leader has to move ahead and cannot be a passive or laid-back kind of person. He should appear to be ‘leading’ his folks. Moreover, since all business is human activity it is vital for a leader to have a certain degree of ‘interest in human psychology and behaviour’ and the required ‘emotional quotient’ to be able to handle the people under his or her command.

Last but not least, the leader being aware of the importance of ‘time as the new resource’ should ensure that there were no avoidable delays in business operations undertaken by the corporate body. The success of leadership is measured by the enhancement of collective productivity achieved by the organisation’s manpower under the guidance of those at the top of the pyramid. For this three things proved decisive — management ‘style’, ‘communication skills’ of the leader and his or her ability to constitute ‘productive teams’.

The relationship of the leader with those guided by the latter should be ‘nurtural’ — not distant based on mere authority and one-sided orders coming from above — and should reflect ‘participative management’.

Successful leaders ensure efficient compliance but do not shun from providing legitimate guidance to the juniors who sought that. In the Indian tradition in particular, the ‘senior’ is looked upon as an ‘elder’ for this reason — the boss-subordinate relationship here was not impersonal, arid and totally work-place related like what existed often in Western systems where a senior taking interest in the junior’s personal sphere of life may not in fact be appreciated by the latter.

The ability to communicate is always the defining trait of leadership in play and is particularly tested in this era of employees functioning online. It goes without saying that the modern leader has to be a practising user of digital modes of communication available today. Communication should ideally be a two-way affair to ensure that the advice was understood and that it allowed for remedying any doubts. A good communication does not permit any ambiguity of interpretation and is concise while following the principle that ‘brevity should not be at the cost of clarity’.

A leader leads by example and does not promise what he cannot give or do. In today’s competitive world, the prime responsibility of the leader is to oversee the constitution and tasking of teams assigned to deliver on different fronts — designing of products, sales promotion and even security. In a situation where team members are differently located but are online, the very selection of the team had to align with the concept that diversity and inclusivity should be made a source of strength, that the team leader had to bring about complete coordination and that credits had to be transparently shared within the team.

The task of the head of the enterprise today is to produce leaders at various levels through delegation of decision-making, to encourage out-of-box thinking to get over the perceived constraints and to lay down feed back channels that reached the very top. The head of the corporate body should consider oneself as the team leader of all the heads of the verticals serving as the second-in-command, without of course letting any body come in the way of the chief’s autonomous decision-making.

Teams represent the ultimate in participative management and provide a mechanism for bringing together people with different skills and strength to serve the cause of the organisation. Finally, the leader at the top of the organisation had certain responsibilities that fell squarely on his or her shoulders. One is to define the ‘Mission’ of the corporate body in crisp intelligible words to which every member would stand committed. In highlighting the pathway to that highest organisational objective, the leader would bring out the paradigms of the corporate ethics that were to be followed by all members. This is a powerful instrument for promoting their commitment and loyalty towards the organisation. The modern leader puts the organisation above one’s self-interest and does not hesitate to take the onus for any strategic failures just as he or she rightly got the advantage of pooled credits for the progress of the corporate body.

There is a greater demand of transparency, personal integrity and a value-driven approach from the leader today. This is because unlike what could happen in public life, realities of business do not allow any buck-passing. It is only the head of the enterprise that could take measures for strategic ‘course correction’ which might have become unavoidable in today’s fast moving world and the changing business climate. A successful organisational leader can prove the mettle in any walk of life for he or she combines the wisdom accruing from an interactive career, real time experience of decision -making at the strategic level and a capacity to ‘ride’ a change without getting bogged down in the same.

(The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views are personal)