Leader

One spiritual Guru said that leadership is like mating with porcupine; one against hundreds (I am not making it up, truly it was said by a Guru). That is, a leader must be ready to deal with three ‘Cs’: criticism, complain and consensus.

In the beginning of your leadership journey if you are lucky many will criticize you and till the end some will criticize you. If you are unlucky, in the beginning only few will criticize and eventually almost all will be after your blood. If no one criticizes, that means either you are a non-performer, or no one give damn about you or you are the latest avatar of some omnipotent God.

And no matter what you do, subordinates will have complain. If you expect praise for your contribution then you are in a wrong business. You should not expect complain free environment. It is subordinates’ birth right to complain. Even if you create heaven on earth; the novelty will wear away eventually and people will start complaining, it is just a question of time. What you must concentrate and console yourself is regarding the quality of complain. What are they complaining about? If they complain  for clean drinking water, then you are an insensitive leader, if they complain that in the parties, Johnny Walker is not given, then you are a good leader.

The third C is important, do not expect consensus to be there for every decision you make. People are different, preferences and expectations are different, you must trust in your wisdom and gut feeling. If you are obsessed with creating consensus, you will be a non-performer, a tap-dancer whose aim is entertaining rather than leading. You have a birth right to make some mistakes, few blunders and outright stupid statements. Do not try to be politically correct always, it will make you a plastic figure, you will be drained of all energy and you will be part of the land of Zombies.

If you are uncomfortable with all these three Cs, then you should content being a follower. Life of a follower is a luxury; you can be faceless, and one among the thousands. It has its own beauty and necessity. The word anonymous itself sounds exotic and enchanting. Think about a party only with leaders and no followers (it sounds more like the congress party of Tamilnadu), you will have vision, mission and every other paraphernalia, but for what?