Regenerate!

There are many facets of leadership -vision, values, transformation, and others. Leadership competencies include ability to understand reality, ability to see the larger picture, ability to marshal resources, passion for developing people, and more.

But if I am asked,  “what is a leader’s ‘output’” or “what is the ‘outcome’ of leadership?”, I will say that on a day-today basis the outcome of ‘good’ leadership is inspiring people to accomplish something, making a routine job worthwhile.

And what is ‘inspiration’? It is feeling which gives that booster dose of energy. If the primary outcome of good leadership is inspiration, can there be able leadership without good emotional capabilities?

Emotional capability is that X-factor behind successful leadership. Emotional capability is not just emotional intelligence.

Without the ability to understand emotions, without the ability to deal with them, and without the ability to harness them, much of a leader’s thinking will remain just thinking and every action will need exercise of formal authority. No matter, what position a leader occupies there are many crucial aspects that are beyond his formal powers. He or she must have that X-factor.

Given the way in which people get their education and ‘training’ on the job, most have learned and have come to believe that emotions are bad, particularly in business or in serious work. This becomes a major factor that hinders capable people from realising full potential -theirs’ and others’.

Development of this X-factor, therefore, is one of the cornerstones of developing leadership skills.

I conducted a workshop “Leadership -How to Regenerate & Rejuvenate Your Business?” at the Indian Merchants’ Chamber, Mumbai on August 1, 2009. It was a day full of interactions with senior level participants from industries like financial services, logistics services, mineral trading, manufacturing, and others.

There was a huge interest in the emotional aspects of leadership, something that never fails to surprise me. Display of emotions is considered a taboo at work -this was apparent when one of the participant made distinction between being passionate and being emotional. But how does one reconcile this with the fact that great leaders are passionate about their work and that passion, excitement, pride and other similar feelings are central to leadership? What happens when you equate display of emotions with emotions themselves?and end up in suppressing them? Participants said that the workshop showed them the ways of dealing with emotions and using their emotional abilities as strength.

On another plane, thinking about their own work processes helped them apply various leadership principles to day-to-day work. How to leverage work related values was also tried by them. All this work led to their own agendas.

When their attention was turned to ideas that would make big difference to their businesses, the “creative tension” in the air was palpable. Various workouts help them draw ideas from ground realities and yet use imagination to question the status quo.

For me the big take-away from the workshop is to learn in what ways leadership principles work across a diverse range of industries. Another take-away was when you provide means of focusing on various aspect of work, how almost everyone can come up with good solid thinking and tangible actions for improving things. It just shows that all of us have huge untapped potential.

It is our right and obligation to discover our potential. It was very satisfying to me that I could be of help in this.