It is about You

My early memory of a leader goes back to my grandmother whom I remember as someone, who had a good authority in a joint family where 25 of us lived. She could ask and direct people to have the required things done. In my family, I saw my parents, siblings who were highly communicative and had a point of view on every subject. My first few years in the school- My friend always topped in exams, who could tell answers to problems in mathematics by calculating the required steps in his mind. My middle and high school, where I found a classmate who was not good in academics but was a class leader. I felt he was fearless and outspoken, had a command when he spoke and in doing things. Later in college I saw people who could speak in English fluently, whose opinion was counted by everyone, and some students every year, who got the best outgoing student award…

After I moved to workplace, I saw and felt someone who asked more questions to trainers or senior leadership team, someone who topped the region in performance, achieved sales budgets, people winning contests, someone who got promoted early, someone who can make anyone speak with sheer presence, flamboyance are the ones who can become leaders or will be leaders.

All these behaviors I saw, and I felt that these people are born as leaders looked difficult for me to have these skills and exhibit the behaviors. There was another strong feeling that you keep doing your work and over the years you, with more familiarity and repeated work you will reach the leadership position (title or designation) due to institutional knowledge. Though I had read few books, articles to take the path of leaders, nothing much changed in my mind about leadership and the journey to leadership.

Beginning of this year, at work, one of the leaders asked me, “what does Leadership mean to you”. I went answering all the definitions I knew ?? and what I had felt through my experience. All these definitions became simple with one word he said after listening to me. The word he said was “Care”. He said “Vimal, leadership is about care” what you can care for others. You care for others by enabling them so that they can do things independently and make them achieve their goals. ?

Soon after this, my memories travelled back and I could recollect good number of instances where I exhibited care, be it teaching my classmate who couldn’t write clearly in Kannada, my younger cousins who couldn’t pluck the Mangoes from the trees, helping my friend who was also my competitor in the industry we worked, on how to handle objections from the customers and so on.

However, the instances I chose to do it exhibit, care was limited, due to my own interests or in many instances, I was not confident to care more and felt I didn’t have the required skills. With some introspection on this, I realized that there were many instances where I picked the skills or chose to do it because I believed in it and wanted to. Sales was something didn’t come naturally to me and I put in efforts to learn it and I wanted to as I felt it was critical for my growth. With this thought I got reminded of one more thing which I had read. That is “Everyone can be a leader” and probably related to this thought, lot better this time.

This thought has given clarity to me to instill and make others believe that they all can be leaders. When I was speaking to my colleagues about Leadership- saying it is all about care, I saw a sense of belief and confidence in them that they can care, and they have cared before. And they do it even now. This confidence can draw more people to take the journey of leadership.

People choose to do certain things with a belief that this is all I can do or want to do. But in my realization, you certainly can do more. ?Meaning currently, you are exhibiting care to others with 10 skills you have in you. But to do more care, you will have to develop yourself and reach 20 or more skills to do bigger care. (Read as the amount of impact you want to create as a leader) That means to say I must invest in myself and pick more skills to care more and grow as a leader.

We all have lived as leaders and living as well. And the good news is that the opportunity is huge to grow as a leader and help others to grow as leaders.

Well, there is more to talk about Leadership. In this note of mine today, I want to end with the word Care. The word Care and behaviors which exhibit care can be a good starting point and help people to dream big as leaders. The amount of confidence the word care can bring in people to sign up for the leadership journey is huge.