Rethinking Leadership!

"Leaders are not made, they are born" – has been the view of many theories in Organization behaviour; however I do not subscribe to it. On the contrary, I strongly subscribe that, leadership is an inherent quality of human being; it only needs a situation to emerge. Each one of us demonstrates leadership at some or the other point of their life. Leadership, I would classify into

·         Personal Leadership

·         Inter personal Leadership

·         Organizational Leadership

Each individual has a myriad of intertwined personalities which is also sometimes referred in common parlance as faces. The personality of a person is determined by which of these intertwined ones is demonstrated more often. Each of these personalities is important as per the situation faced by individuals .It is both an art and science to respond with the face/personality to the changing circumstances around oneself. Thus a stern order with something wrong going at the shop floor is as much required as the loving smile at your kid when he/she makes mistake. Many a times, one has to motivate himself, talk to one's own self and ask him to move ahead despite all hurdles. Hence Personal leadership is about managing the multiple self within oneself such that the right one is demonstrated with respect to the situation.

 Inter-personal leadership is about making others see the value in them and in you. It means motivating people around you, connected to you, be it old or young to be able to get the energy to move ahead and realize their potential. This kind of leadership is demonstrated in every small activity you do, be it talking to a poor kid asking for alms or convincing auto driver you just made friends with, to leave smoking. This leadership is often referred in common parlance as charisma and it is the most important aspect of leadership.

Organizational leadership is one that is talked about much and investigated into much deeper details. Hence in the abstract we shall not be concentrating on it in detail. It broadly means engaging your employees to deliver value in the continuously changing business environment.

However, the point to take note of is the view that leadership, all three components as described above are situational and leaders and leaderships have emerged out of situations and incidences. Personal leadership is the easiest example to refer to. All those people who have excelled in their fields of science, arts and in whatever they have done are a very good example of personal leaders. Even those people whom their children often call "their role model" are great example of personal leaders and all those who say that they are happy with their life are very effective personal leaders.

It must be noted that effective personal leaders may not be good interpersonal leaders. While scientists or people with flamboyant lifestyles may be very happy in their own world which they manage effectively, they might not be able to influence people around them and be an interpersonal leader.

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[coyright]A. Kumar