Of Leader-SHIP and Leading…

Always a topic on the discussion board in every workplace, table, conference…

Or rather for a some people always a sore point (not that it has happened to me, but who cares, someday it will :)) because this SHIP has no boundaries and the so called “LEADERS” always try to stop you from moving forward by saying “You need to hone your ***SHIP Skills” and that is why you have to stay here…

I will talk (or rather blabber..) about the “try to” part later… for now, let us first try and understand the aspects.

Of all the Ships and Skills in the world, this is the least understood and followed and thus an opening for anyone to create an escape route. From my point of view(and you may disagree), leading and leaders don’t require to be told and repeated telling people cannot create a leader. I mean, how many leaders have been created by forcing your ideas on them? And how many can actually be leaders when they have to confirm to someone else’s idea only? I may agree to a certain extent that leadership skills can be inculcated, but again, that is usually just a learning phase in a leaders’ life to enhance his controlling/maneuvering skills (again arguable, that you may not agree!). Or more appropriately a Polishing phase where the leader yet to be recognized is learning few other skills to achieve his vision.

Leaders are always born, they may or may not recognize their potential, but they are still leaders. No matter which field they choose, they would surge ahead of everyone. They would innovate, they would create, they would discover but would always move ahead of others. Leaders have the uncanny ability to show themselves up in difficult situations and that is how they can be easily recognized. If you throw them a challenge they would solve it faster than anyone else. Please mind that the challenge should be to them and not to you, since there is a big difference in thought process. Don’t take offense since each leader is leader of different domain, some are people leaders, while some might be technical visionary, and others might be business leaders and so on.. So if you give a technical problem to a business leader, what he would do is identify someone (inside or outside his circle) to do the job effectively and vice-versa but this wouldn’t present a challenge to him.

The funny thing is that the so called and self-proclaimed leaders, (could be anyone, or even me :)) don’t realize this fact (even after saying all this I may not accept it and thereby bury myself!). They try to force their ideas (not at all revolutionary or up to the mark) on all the others or claim someone else’s ideas as their own. Leaders don’t force their ideas on you, you would easily be swayed by their vision and more agreeing to them then anything else. They have the charm, charisma and conviction to take their vision forward and no matter what, people start following them and their vision. Their vision creates a following and followers. Leaders also have the great ability to identify talent and passion in others and they utilize this ability to achieve their goal.

Leaders and their leadership is what drives nations, businesses and world forward… We should respect them as well as ourselves for making the right decision and selecting our leaders. At the same time we should blame ourselves for not selecting the right leaders and/or trying to push everyone to be a leader.

If everyone is a leader, how would an objective be achieved? (remember each leader has his own vision, his own objective and he has even decided the path to be there…) No war can be won, if every warrior is the leader. In fact several nations destroyed, armies lost, civilizations decimated when there are too many leaders or too many forced leaders.

Paths are what we make, goals are what we achieve..

We are what we perceive, we are what we achieve..a