To be a leader

I have some thoughts on what it takes to be a leader in general. No puns intended for general as in an army general but it was meant generically. Anyway, being a leader fully involves paradoxes as you will get to see in this article.

A leader should know the art of being a good follower as well. Same concept as a good conversationalist. A good conversationalist has to be a good listener too, paradoxically. In fact, what would probably be challenging for a leader to do would be to know when to follow and when not to. Following does not mean giving up or giving in but leading from behind. Leaders should be willing to give others a chance to lead. Speaking of which, they should be learnable as well. Do good teachers make good leaders? Probably yes because they need to possess leadership qualities in order to be an effective teacher. For an instance, we would have come across teachers who allow their students to teach their peers sometimes, since some students learn better when being taught by someone of the same age.

The society demands leaders to be ones who are beyond the natural negative emotions like anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge, selfishness etc. Yet, they still need to be forgiving, jovial, kind and understanding. Leaders should not just lead but also lead by example.

Creativity is an essential charateristic too. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the best examples of a leader in history, was creative with his general approach. He thought of non-violence when every soul could only react violently. In other words, he responded while others reacted.

"Don't react. Respond" - Zig Zigler

Moving on, I think a leader should know the team members individually. When managing the team, poor leaders play the game of checkers while successful leaders play the game of chess. In the game of checkers, every piece is the same. They move the same way and get slaughtered the same way. Bad leaders treat all their members the same way with self-same expectations. Chess on the other hand, is a game with unique pieces. They move differently. Prior to this concept, good leaders would be able to identify each and every individual members' working styles to a certain extent and be able to utilise them in the right manner. It makes it easy for the team as well to explain things to the leader, knowing that he will know what they are into. The team members would be more willing to open up to the leader if they are facing any difficulty. Also the leader has to make them feel special and important by involving them whenever necessary. Needless to say, giving credit for a good job done would boost their morale tremendously. The leader gains respect this way.

Having people skills are of paramount importance and technical knowledge alone can never be complete for a leader. Having said this, it was no wonder that Andrew Carnegie was the "king of steel" once upon a time not because he knew a great deal about steel but because he knew how to deal with people who were working for him. In fact, his employees knew about steel more than him.

These are just some of the tips to be a successful and well respected leader. Before wrapping up, I shall translate a few lines from an old tamil song.

"Generosity makes a philanthropist; dutiful makes a warrior; patience makes a saint; whilst these three make up a leader".

Helping the self before helping others

As a huge observer of paradoxes and that too of life's parodies, I have strongly believed in this paradox since young. That of helping oneself is of paramount importance before helping others. We cannot effectively help others if we are in need of help ourselves. Perhaps it will be better if I relate this to an organisational context which I experienced when I was in the Army.

Back in those days, actually just more than a year ago lest I sound too old, I was working in this department of the highest division of the largest formation in the Army. I have to mention that the department is of high level so as to highlight the importance of having good internal resources for workers to work with. Being at the Head Quarters level, where the administration gets extremely busy, we needed relatively fast and reliable computers to work with. We had a buggy version of windows 95 and there was a total lack of basic hardware which made it all the more difficult to transfer information on a daily basis. I had failed to make my supervisor see the importance of having good resources to work with. So this is the scenario in the organisation. In fact this is congruent to how most companies function today.

Most companies, in the quest for satisfying customers, keep cutting down on costs. The problem is that they do not know how to differentiate necessary and unnecessary costs/liabilities. By having less than adequate resources for employees to work with, they easily lose pride and satisfaction in doing their jobs. This affects their performance and in turn brings down the overall quality of an organisation's products and services. Being customer-oriented is not enough to succeed, keeping the employees is equally vital. By keeping them happy, they would feel appreciated and see themselves as an integral part of the company's strength.

Relating back to our initial paradox statement, companies have to help themselves to be well equipped before providing value to their customers. They have to serve themselves internally before serving externally.

This is the same concept when people, being people, invest so much effort, money and time on unnecessities and invest none for their health and well-being of their emotional state. It boils down to their obliviousness of the fact that we need to help ourslves before helping others.

Ignorance is bliss - A different perspective

We are familiar with the saying "ignorance is bliss". We are also familiar with the surface meaning (note "surface meaning") that not having knowledge of something is a good thing due to its lack of disturbance to the mind. I have thought of a meaning of this phrase from a different perspective. Probably this is the actual inner meaning to the phrase. All right here goes Thana's perspective on this. Let me inject a saying upon this saying. We know the phrase "the more we know, the more we realise that we don't know". Based on this phrase, we know that the more we learn new things, the more we realise that we don't know some things. This is simply because whenever we learn something new, we come to know that that there is much more to learn about it. This is very much akin to an iceberg. By looking at the tip of an iceberg, we realise that there is so much more to be seen of the iceberg. Coming back to our original phrase, by knowing something new, we come to know how ignorant we are of the depth of that subject. Hence, "ignorance is bliss" may not refer to our lack of knowledge. It ironically refers to our awareness of ignorance resulting from the knowledge of something. By having this awareness, we achieve the good feeling of bliss. Henceforth we have the meaningful phrase "ignorance is bliss". I hope the knowledge of this phrase from my perspective has brought bliss, if you know what I mean. Haha, just kidding!

Check out this post...

Just a note to my faithful readers and wandering surfers, who happened to stumble upon this informative blog. My martial arts blog (http://www.resourcesonmartialarts.blogspot.com) has finally been brought to life. To all martial arts enthusiasts, just to let you know that I am a martial arts enthusiast as well. I have been researching on all sources available to my eyes and hands on various forms of martial arts since the age of 9. Not claiming to be Mr Know-All but I will try my best to provide information to anyone who is interested to know something specific about a particular martial arts. I have started off that blog with 2 articles. One is on the oldest martial arts in the world and the other on origins of Shaolin Kung Fu. Enjoy.

Everyone is marketable

I realise that everyone is marketable. Marketable in the sense that everyone is unique. Everyone is talented at something. Everyone is good at at least one thing. We can therefore make money out of what we are good at. Of course, being good at something is not enough and we have to be marketable but since we are different in our own ways, we are all marketable. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Hence the bottom line is that everyone has the ability to acquire success and wealth owing to the fact that he/she is skilled in something and is unique in his/her own ways.

Did you know that if you write a story of your life, regardless of how eventless it may be, and publish it, it will still be salable enough to make a fortune? It works because people, by nature, are interested in knowing others' affairs. I am planning to do so later on in life, in that way I will have more to write. Not that I don't have much to write now, in fact if I do now I will be over pouring with information but I prefer to do it later. So if you want to have a healthy weight in your pocket, write a story of your life in your own style. Try it, after all there is nothing to lose because even if our life is filled with memories which we don't want to keep, we will feel better after sharing the information. In fact, we can even choose to omit certain events if we don't wish to keep them in the story.

Creativity at its best

What is the best way to achieve creativity? We know that the mind has to be open first of all. Much like how the saying goes "the mind works the same way as the parachute, it can only function if its open." To achieve the full potential of creativity, one ought not to be creative with the intention of creating something creative. Nice paradox, isn't it? The person should explore at their own leisure and discover things along the way. That is how most inventions are born. Some people call it "by accident". Irregardless, inventions are usually done unintentionally. They could not have happened if the inventors were concerned about the end result.

"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys." - Eric Hoffer

Competition vs Collaboration

There is this tidbit from my favourite blogger. She compares which is better between competition and collaboration. Collaboration obviously seems more beneficial in almost any kind of situation. She ended off with a funny thought as to what would happen if both the mother and the father of a family have a competition to serve the family members. Haha, that will be a disaster...

Speaking of which, we might have noticed that people who are very highly successful in their particular field has become so not due to competition but because they love what they are doing. If I give an example of a Kollywood superstar, Kamal Hassan, who is an epitome of acting (has won 171 awards, more than any actor in film history) is best at what he does because he loves it so much and not because he wants to compete with other actors. Think about food as an example. Home cooked food is better prepared than commercial food simply because the former is done out of love and commercial food is done out of competition.