Leadership Presentation

Given below is the presentation delivered by Prof Debashish Chatterjee @IIMK
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What is Leadership? Is it a means of attaining power, self actualization ,profitabiliy or creating a visibility in the society.

Leadership starts with a question mark (?) and ends with exclaimation (!)……

Have you ever asked a person who is climbing Mount Everest as to why he is climbing the ice clad mountains where in he knows that he may not be able to reach the top. He knows that he would face the wrath of nature with freezing and biting cold on his way upwards. He may loose his hands or feet because of frost bites. What makes him climb Mt Everest…?? Yeah !!! It is this sense of accomplishment and quest which leads him to climb Mt Everest.

Those who have kids knows how difficult it is to take care of kids when they are young. You need to wake up in the middle of the night many times to take care of kids needs. But still you do wake up without complaining. Why? It is because of our own parenting instincts….Leadership in that sense is much like a Parenting Instincts. As an individual we want to parent, perpetuate and multiply our abilities…

Leadership is much like a search of self, a congenital urge that I want to grow and cannot contain in my present form..

Reality has to be challenged. We need to differentiate between what is real and what is unreal. Everyone must have heard a story wherein a minister goes to Indo Pak border and starts inspecting a Gun which a guard was holding – Which side of the gun which you are holding is used for killing the enemy? To which promptly comes the reply that which ever side you shoot, one enemy will die.. So does not matter how you hold a gun..An enemy will die.. Either an external or other side an internal…. What we are seeing is an external enemy but what we have forgottenn is the enemy which is sitting inside. Leadership is challenging what is real. It is not the mountain we conquer it is our own self which one conquers….

What brings happiness? Is that money ..? Money is just just human energy, quest coded in plastic form.. Money doesn’t bring real happiness. It is the passion of doing things which brings happiness, success and money. It the love of the aircrafts which made Boeing a successful company.. The moment their aim became wealth creation for stakeholders they started to decline. Similarly another chemical company 500 years old is able to surprise because of their love for chemistry. But when the focus started to become wealth creation company started to decline…

So leaders are the ones who defines and refines organizational values.  Leadership is all about influence and not manage. A story which goes like – a Russian goes to US and see bread being delivered at home. He wonders and asks who manages this bread supply business in US. Because for him in his communist country(before communism) it was being managed. Yeah but in states it is automatically delivered by market dynamics and not managed by anyone … Russian cannot seems to digest this idea that no one is managing here….. Leaders work “ON” the system while managers work “IN” the system. It is this ON versus IN which makes the whole difference.

When as an individual we cannot manage our son and/or daughter can we manage other employees…. BUT wait we can influence…. we definitely can influence what choice our son/daughter takes/decides be it schooling or whatever. Leadership is all about influencing and not managing. When we say ‘I can manage it’ it  indirectly means ‘I can manipulate it’ …

Leadership is all about being happy in what you do…. Complexity cannot be managed by analysis, complexity cannot be directed… e.g. Sachin Tendulkar may not be able to tell how to manage a team or for that matter how to play a good shot … It is all about his love for cricket he is able to show/demonstrate… Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic once said that he never knew the difference of what gross and what Net means even though he was handling such a large empire… Dhirubhai when he was building his house foundation was asked by his son as to why he is building a house which can sustain Richter 8 scale earthquake… when in Gujrat they have never experience earthquake higher than 6.5 or 7…No one can predict future outcomes… But few leader can !!! No one knew recent tsunami’s magnitude till it hit japan.

Everyone must have heard the story of 3 different people breaking stone.. Same work yet 3 different actions and 3 different source of energy…. Once a girl at hotel after lighting Agarbatti did an Aarti of herself… On being asked she said -if you can’t worship yourself how can you worship others… When in childhood we used to watch Jet Aeroplane going at faster speed creating thick smoke up in the air… But as a child we get caught up in the thick smoke and suddenly see aeroplane disappearing in that thick smoke…. … Most of us get caught up in that thick smoke that we forget the engine of aircraft which is our life, purpose, mission … Leadership is all about a question mark ? Did I live? and it ends with an exclaimation that ‘Yes I did’

Most of us get caught up into resource and forget about the source …. it is then we realize that we get caught up in resource when we should have looked at source … Leader looks at source than resource … E.g we look as water bottle as a resource .. when that finishes we try to find our another resource but then our focus gets lost as we never try to find out the source of the spring from where water is coming …. In one of the interactions a company @ Gurgaon who deals in quality has mirrors placed at everywhere .. guest houses, cubicles and everywhere …. Below that a beautiful line is written ” Look who is responsible for Quality here”