Dear Son,
You are a born leader like your mom. I can sense it already(you will understand more as you read). In the next few weeks,I will attempt to pen down, what I believe are the most essential characteristics of a leader from my 34 years of leadership experience in one form or the other. And I guarantee you this will not be found in any HBR must reads.
Flexible Core Beliefs
Ability to change our core beliefs, at regular intervals, according to me is the silver bullet of leadership. It is emotionally very hard to do as these beliefs are what made us successful in the first place. We have to let go a part of who we are and embrace the new. Easier said than done. I have found several ‘leaders’ lacking this skill.
A good example can be found in the world of cricket. Arguably Sachin is the best batsman the world has ever seen. Well, I am die hard Sachin fan but if you ask me to write down a team for T20 match, first name I will write down will not be that of Sachin, but that of one ABD - the 360 degree player.
With the advent of T20, there was a need to let go of core beliefs like one has to play in the V, good balls need to be given respect, well here is a guy who comes in, slog sweeps Bret Lee bowling at 160kmph over deep fineleg. Sachin did try to change, ABD embraced it and he was tremendously successful at T20 than Sachin.
It is very difficult(did i mention that before?) as beliefs are core to our value system.
Your beliefs are a function of your culture, faith, education, mentors and your own experiences. I can tell you in the first 3 you have the genetic advantage ;-).
The key, as I found is to just go through the experience, as painful as it might be.
For on the other side of the pain is a scaled version of myself, and leadership principle #1 for me is about scaling! - Easy aint it?
Next week we will look at principle #2