Reflections on Leadership

Yesterday, I handed over the everyday running of Prajnya to someone else, to begin my own departure from the organization I founded. I have always believed this to be necessary to the organisation’s growth, not to mention my own. In these almost-15 years, I have had a great deal of opportunity to reflect on leadership and I would like to write down some of these thoughts.

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At a recent discussion about teaching leadership, it occurred to me that the best leaders are actually citizens first and foremost. Leadership comes from their willingness to step up and do what is needed without waiting for someone else to do it first or along with them.

It is not rote citizenship, the kind that drags you grumbling to a voting booth. It is not about the sense of entitlement that has you complaining with the expectation that someone else will fix the problem. It is ownership of the problem and the solution. The consciousness that one is responsible for both, I think, is a key element.

This is why, to my mind, being self-aware and by extension, aware of one’s privileges, such as they are, are key features of a leader’s attitude. That constant self-examination or introspection must surely be necessary. This is something about Gandhi that I find very admirable—that he was self-aware and able to be honest about what he saw. “Change begins with me,” is sometimes attributed to him and whether he said it or not, he seems to have lived it.

Conscience-driven citizenship is leadership, I think. When you act because something is right or insist on doing things the right way and not the easy or common or convenient way, that is citizenship and leadership. To not take the short cut and to insist on following the right path, is good citizenship and leadership. This is true whether the context is some official process or a decision that must be made or a social media debate—the need to do the right thing is good citizenship, and therefore, leadership.

Because this path is hard, it is necessarily courageous. It is courageous because sometimes one may take an unpopular position or a position apparently inconsistent with what one’s team or party or family thinks. It is courageous because one has to find the ability to express oneself, and then to defend oneself in increasingly uncivil and even vicious, times. It is courageous because a conscience-driven choice may mean one has to wait or forego some opportunity or access—or personal benefit. It may be that one is constantly defending the decision and that is both wearying and demoralizing. Courageous citizenship is to stay the course patiently, and to speak one’s truth calmly, over and over and over again.

Compassion and care are crucial traits of citizens, and therefore, leaders. If self-interest is said to have brought us into political communities, there is a dimension of collective interest in that. If I uphold the law in your interest, I set a precedent in my interest. Universal welfare that initially benefits you, will surely also benefit me. Traffic laws meant to prevent me from being mowed down, will also keep you safe. But a good community and a good citizen will go beyond that instrumental reason.

To feel for others, to care about deprivation and injustice, to seek to include and to want to help are impulses that lead to good, compassionate citizenship. Discussions about gender justice at the workplace often start and stop at instrumental reasons like company reputation and costs, but the reality is that justice will take root when we are moved by compassion and persuaded by conscience, rather than a cost-benefit analysis. Compassion is good citizenship, and certainly, leadership is not possible without compassion—you may be able to enforce your writ but people will obey you not emulate, follow or love you.

Conscience-driven, compassionate and courageous citizenship is constantly seeking to make things better, and sometimes, especially when resources are limited, one has to be creative and resourceful to find the thing that one can do. Citizenship is to not say, “It’s too difficult or costly,” or, “How can we make a difference?”, it is to find that one thing that we can do, and do it. That is also leadership.

Standard images of “leaders” depict leaders as those who stand at the head of a room and talk, sometimes delivering homilies and sometimes instructions. But in fact, I think, leaders are those who walk into a room, take stock of what needs to be done, and start doing it. Others follow that example and that is leadership. Leadership follows from exemplary citizenship.

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Over the years, the Prajnya Archives have put out two calls for photos of women in leadership roles. In the first one, we defined leadership as ‘making things happen.’ In the second, we defined it as ‘the citizen next door.’ These crowd-sourced projects had the worst response and got us wondering about the relationship women have with leadership.

This puzzles me especially because in another part of my life, I spend a lot of time thinking about getting women into politics and especially into legislatures. Through academic study, I have learnt to list many reasons why, on an average, women only make up 10-15% of legislatures.

But working with women and girls, I am coming to the conclusion that the problem begins deep in our hearts. It is two-fold; first, it lies in the way we define leadership, and second, it lies in the way women typically view their work.

If leadership is that head-of-the-room, everyone saluting when you pass thing, then women rarely have that. Not being seen as the ‘boss,’ itself then becomes a reason for not being the boss or not feeling like the boss. When you redefine leadership as citizenship, then women start to become visible.

Women are active in Residents’ Welfare Associations, in Parent Teachers’ Associations, in charity work and in professional organisations, often handling finances, logistics and public relations. Even if you confine them to the private sphere as home-makers, they budget, manage money, make allocation decisions (“Politics is the authoritative allocation of resources,” is a classic definition), build team spirit, resolve disputes and make policy decisions that balance need with aspiration and pleasure—all tasks that leaders must perform, as Prime Ministers or Presidents!

Patriarchy says that maintenance work within the home is a woman’s job, and women do the same work outside the home, it still has the same tag. They do it because it needs to be done and if it is neither remunerative nor glamorous, it is their job to get it done. The work is invisible and unpaid, and there is no special appreciation most of the time. Even when it is glorified and women are praised for their care work, it is naturalized rather than recognized for what it takes. Women internalize this and when you ask them to self-identify as leaders, it is hard for them to do so. They simply do what is needed.

How do we change that? How do we give them the confidence to see themselves as successful leaders? Women often consider themselves unqualified for political office, although male counterparts are also just as untrained or unlettered. Perhaps the teaching of small skills will create that confidence—teaching people what they know instinctively and just putting a structure and label on it. This may be a way to help adult women, but we still have a chance with every young girl that we meet. To treat her as a person, a thinking human being with capabilities and inner resources; to take the time and make the effort to listen to her; and to instill a sense of infinite possibility in each girl—it is actually easier to do than to write!

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What does a leader look like? Based on my reading and observations over the years, here are some qualities I would list (in no particular order) as essential to leadership.

• ·       A leader is honest, first to herself and then to others. This means, a leader introspects and has the grace to be corrected and the fortitude to accept and be open about mistakes.
• ·       A leader is the first to get to work (on herself or the task at hand), works ahead of everyone and harder than her team. You cannot ask people to do things you will not do, and this was Gandhi’s message. There is no task that a leader will not perform within the team. Every expectation that is held up for the team must first be met by the leader or aspiring leader.
• ·       A leader is ready to learn—new facts, new perspectives, new skills—and knows when to seek the leadership and guidance of others.
• ·       The leader is not “the boss”—and to borrow from old political science textbooks, is merely first among equals and that by virtue of work, not entitlement.
• ·       Praise, warmth and encouragement, openly and generously given, are stock in trade for a good leader, while correction and criticism are discreetly delivered in low tones.
• ·       A leader is disciplined. I think more and more about that Indian ideal, ‘control over the senses,’ which also includes control over anger and lust.
• ·       A leader is perceptive and sensitive to others in the team (and beyond). She listens to what people tell her and she also pays attention to what they don’t say—Are they moving slowly? Are they quick to anger or tears? Are they struggling with something? Being sensitive to the needs of colleagues allows a leader to create optimal work conditions.
• ·       A leader is forgiving, and is able to patiently give people a chance to learn from their mistakes and grow.
• ·       It is a tight-rope between running a disciplined ship and creating enough space for people not to feel suffocated, and a leader must be able to renegotiate that patiently every day.
• ·       There cannot be an endless recall of past errors and if something cannot be corrected, there should be a way to change the situation that is not soul-destroying to the other person.
• ·       Leadership is humane.
• ·       Good leadership speaks softly but does not need a stick.
• ·       Leaders do not seek leadership; they do what needs to be done and others follow.

I am reminded of Kenneth Boulding’s Three Faces of Power—destructive, exchange and integrative. You can force people to obey you but not to embrace you as a leader. You can buy compliance for a while. But it is the heart that inspires allegiance and bestows leadership, isn’t it?