Leadership As A Lifestyle

Pakistan is a country of dichotomies and contradictions, an enigma in South Asia. At first glance, Pakistan should be at the forefront, a leader amongst its fellow countries. According to the World Bank report, “Pakistan today is South Asia’s most open economy.” However, despite her apparent strong economic and social indicators, things are not as positive as they appear.

We have sufficient natural resources and more than sufficient human capital. So what do we need actually? We need good leaders at all levels, especially at the organizational and national levels as it’s the leaders’ vision that matters the most for a country or an organization.

All of us face the challenge of leading in an era of discontinuity and ambiguity far greater than it was 10 or 20 years ago. All of us should try to be prescient in a rapidly changing world as we try to peer into the future for better planning and maximum benefits. By now we should be wise enough to idealize the qualities of the people who can lead us against the backdrop of the current situations of our times and the challenges ahead.

As we come closer to the fiscal year of 2016, which qualities do we need in our leaders now more than ever? Whatever the organization or the sector is, I propose that this is the high time when our masses need real leaders who nurture and live according to the high values of life, capable enough to unify people and heal the hurts of those who have been oppressed since inception of this country. Bringing hope and unity within the organizations, enterprises and different sectors will create an overall positive impact. Leaders possessing such a dynamic personality traits are necessary to solve the problems and meet the challenges of our time. We do have leaders but these necessary traits are lacking in them.

Furthermore, we need such strong leaders who can become role models for the people playing the second lead at every level of an enterprise. Only then we can see a trickledown effect of their traits and good policies in effect in an organization. We must keep in mind that our employees are not only workers like machines but they are humans as well. We need leaders who believe and embody the true concept of leadership. They must reflect from the language they use and their actions must show that leadership is a matter of how things should be done. It’s not about tackling things only after the situation becomes worse. It’s the stature and character of the leader that determines the performance and results. We need leaders who firmly believe in the idea of considering employees as the greatest asset of an organization, and they must demonstrate this belief by their policies thus making it a reality, not a slogan. These leaders build a richly diverse organization through powerful representation of their beliefs at every level. They have a realization of the enormous opportunities that rapidly changing demographics present in a society.

We need leaders who help clarify the concept and language of the ultimate mission of an organization: whatever it does what is the motive of the organization’s existence, its purpose, its reason for being there, etc. These leaders invest in building a focused and value-based demographic-driven organization from top to bottom.

We need leaders who communicate proficiently with the people of their organization the clientele and the masses keeping in mind the frame of reference of their target audience. Such leaders when they communicate are heard by their audience. Each and every word of their communication is valued and appreciated. No doubt, the effective use of language is one of the most important skills a leader of future outlook should be perfect in. His one word, one sentence or one paragraph all must be connecting, helping, inspiring, and being heard by the people on large scale.

We need leaders who are masters in the art of listening, who practice the rule of thinking first and speaking in the last. Leaders who are healers and unifiers listen to employees’ complaints peacefully, build consensus, appreciate differences, find common concepts, common language, and common ground to create harmony among employees of his/her organization.

We need leaders who in their own lives try to keep a good work-life balance and make this balance a reality in the lives of their people as well. It may appear as an unrealistic ideal in today’s tough work environment but it’s quite workable. Compare the productivity and morale of a workforce that is encouraged and supported in finding this rare work-life balance with those of a dispirited workforce where work-life balance is not a consideration. You’ll see the difference. The approach ‘take no prisoners’ is a valued management style which every great leader implements in his/her organization.

Most importantly, we need leaders who share success widely while accepting responsibility of shortfalls and failures. Such leaders have made strict standards of evaluating their own performance, fully knowing that their language, behavior and actions are evaluated against their self-proclaimed values and principles. What is the secret to building a great organization? How do you sustain consistent growth, profits, loyal clientele, willing employees, unique contribution and service in an uncertain economy that can literally change overnight? And how do you build a culture of commitment and performance when the notion of loyalty on the part of customers, employees, and employers seems like a quaint anachronism?

The answer lies only within these two words: be yourself. That is both a simple yet extremely difficult goal. It means spending lesser time by benchmarking a best practice and spending of extra time for building an organization where personality counts as much as quality and reliability. It also means cultivating an ability to embrace paradox.

Shakespeare in King Lear tells us that nothing comes from nothing. So do scientists, for that matter. Everything in this world exists already; whatever seems new is only something old re-arranged. So how do we explain innovation? Innovation is a form of change. Though, our culture welcomes change to some extent, but people proposing it, as you might expect, often run into barriers. As our society has become more complex we find important segments of it becoming larger, more structured, more bureaucratic, less nimble and less hospitable to non-conformists and people of unusual ideas. Leaders can help these unusual people bring forth their innovations even if it is not out of thin air. However, leading creative people in this age of diverse work arrangements and electronic relationships require from leaders themselves to be significantly innovative. The secret, I believe, lies in how individual leaders in variety of settings make room for people with unusual and creative abilities and temporarily become followers themselves.

Creative persons stand out from the rest of us. Somehow, their contributions affect large groups and move organizations towards im- 78 provement. I call them: ‘explorationists’ (the most creative people in an organization). Yet they function for the most part, being outside or away from their organizations. They work in all kinds of places: in cafes, airports, at home and they benefit from their unusual relationships with the organizations they join. They often have odd reporting relationships but somehow they instinctively insert themselves into organizations wherever they are needed.

The changes and innovations they bring about are often more like giant leaps than the small steps most of us experience frequently. They think of the world in larger terms. They work for institutions or societies or culture or greater ideas for mass effect, not for individuals. Their creativity comes from the novel connections they establish between their work and personal and professional experiences and observations. They are usually curious and look for a field where they can satiate that curiosity. Leaders can work to bring these special and creative people forth to have an impact upon the efforts of a group.

Leaders in companies, corporations, banks, industries, academic institutions and the government have already chosen to follow the unusual people who can revive and restore vitality and opportunity in their relative fields. Once a leader commits to a new way of dealing with creative people, the process can be defined quickly. It can be called a search for beneficial surprise. Traditional education does not prepare us for this. Though familiarity with technology helps us deal with such a search, all the technology in the world will not help us discovering the knowledge of ideas, experiments, failures, and successes that we will be requiring on advent of a venture.

If we want to find new sources and perspectives, there come two questions which, if thoughtfully considered, are likely to yield good results. The first looks at innovation from a leader’s point of view while the second arises from the view of creative persons.

A leader will be careful about measuring the contributions of creative persons. Return on assets has become a Baal in too many organizations. All things cannot and must not be quantified. Financial and legal matters are truly important but they do not lie at the heart of our future. Resist the urge to structure all things alike.

We also need to keep in mind that moving up in the hierarchy does not confer competence or wisdom. The discernment and judgment necessary to evaluate true innovation, to doom or give life to good design or breakthroughs in technology lie with people trained in those fields.

Creative persons come in all shapes, sizes, and fields: from graphic design and architecture to software design and human resource. The best are volunteers. They can find work almost everywhere and they gauge the quality of their leaders as a way of deciding where they will contribute. Leaders make it possible for creative persons to make something out of nothing---nothing, that is, but expressions of themselves.