I was sitting in front of a panel consisting of senior
managers. They were ready to test my ability to clear the round and get into
the leadership position for the first time in my career. One of them asked me
“what are the 3 top qualities of a leader?” My instant response was i) Subject knowledge
ii) Independent iii) Not being biased. In reply he named few other qualities
but i was firm and stood by my point. He then wanted me to allocate percentages
to the three qualities. I told him that it would be 70 – 30 – 10. I remember he
was arguing for 10 minutes and finally said.. “You look to be very aggressive…
well.. thank you!”
So, what makes a good leader??
Modern day corporate culture has changed things drastically.
Leadership is seen only as people management. This may work with the Top most
management of an organization for example.. GM, VP, Director etc.. but
definitely not with the middle level management. And a leader can be successful
in top most management only when he/she enjoys success at the middle level
management.
Why knowledge is important?
The moment a subordinate understands that his leader lacks
subject knowledge; it becomes a cakewalk for him in misleading his leader. He
can easily say that an activity will take 7 hours as against the original time
of 4 hours.. and all the leader can do is to accept it since he does not know
what really is done in that activity!!
How important it is for a leader to maintain distance from
his subordinates?
The outsourcing world has pushed a new culture among us. We
are free to call even the MD by his name as against the ancient culture of
calling superiors as “Sir/Madam”. This culture has confused many leaders in the
middle level management on “how far can i move with my subordinate?”. The truth
however is that when a leader tends to move closer to his subordinates, over a
period of time, he starts sharing his personal thoughts on the confidential
information of the organization. The situation becomes even more dangerous when
a leader starts moving closely to a particular subordinate/group as it creates
a huge amount of insecurity in the minds of the other subordinates. He then
tends to act as per the directions of those who are close to him and starts
making decisions after taking their opinion without really considering what is
correct and what is not!
Why should a leader be independent?
When it comes to decision making, a leader can hear various
opinions, but should be highly independent and should make sure that none of
the opinions influence him in taking the final decision. Again, for this to happen,
a leader has to be knowledgeable and has to maintain a good distance from his
subordinates. The moment a leader thinks that he needs his subordinates to take
a decision / to run the show, it only means that he is not confident about
himself and it might make him to land in incorrect decisions.
What will happen if a leader is biased?
The first impact a biased leader creates is the insecurity
on the minds of his subordinates. It then boils down to frustration on the part
of those who do not belong to the leader’s favorite group and creates all sorts
of chaos… which could possibly damage the entire set up…
These are my thoughts on what makes a leader.. What’s
yours????
