A time to plant: the individual contributor

When they embark on their maiden jobs, most young MBAs, mothball their lessons on leadership learnt in classrooms , as they struggle to get clarity about what they are good at, what will be their niche in their career ahead, and what would constitute performance and so on.  They are breathlessly busy with themselves, trying to figure out the intriguing labyrinths of organizational life.  This is the time of individual contributor, or, as Peter Drucker described, a stage of ‘managing oneself’.

In the shaping of the future leader, this stage, in fact, is the make or mar stage. To borrow an analogy from Rabindranath Tagore from another context, it is the time of 'making of the wick, before lighting of the lamp'. The quality, strength, and the resilience of the wick would determine the luminosity and the life of the light. It is time for sowing the habits, the fruits of which can be harvested later, either luscious or poisonous. In short the foundation of leadership.

The brick laying for the foundation starts with envisioning, evoking a compelling dream about what one wants to become. Because the journey starts here, there needs to be a destination, however mist wrapped it can be. Is it possible to get the feel of a compelling vision at this early stage? Truly there is no age for creating a vision of the future. In fact, envisioning can also become a daily habit in exploration, like digging for water, till the right level is reached. But the long road of leadership starts here, by taking the first baby steps. To quote Ayn Rand “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision un borrowed….” (Fountainhead).

The second brick is the choice of values. This includes the awareness of what is truly important for one, and worth striving for all life. It is a time for seeing the hierarchy of value for oneself. Doing the ‘mirror test’ and deciding on what would be the profile of the ideal self. If vision is the polar star on the voyage across uncharted waters, values constitute the compass.

Finally, the great opportunity for the individual contributor is to use this stage to build capability, the repertoire with which to arrive at the leadership arena later. It includes what Ramcharan, Drotter and Tichy had formulated in Leadership Pipeline as the trio of time application, skill and work values. It also includes acquiring knowledge, and, not to ignore the range of Emotional Intelligence competencies, viz, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy et al. A time to build.