Bring out the leader in you

Leadership comes with passion, not with position- Maxwell

Today when I turn the pages of newspaper, I see in one or the other page the photo of a leader or a business man.  A leader who is either announcing the profit of   his company or a leader who launching a new political party. When I see these people i always dream to be one of them someday.

What makes them so different from others???

According to me the most important trait that defines a leader is that he/she always believes in himself/herself.  Most of us only dream, where as a leader both dreams and does everything to make his/her dream come true. Let me share an inspiring story of a leader.

He was born on December 28, 1932, at Chorwad, Gujarat, into a Modh family. His father was a school teacher. He started his entrepreneurial career by selling "bhajias" to pilgrims in Mount Girnar over the weekends.

After doing his matriculation at the age of 16, he moved to Aden, Yemen. He worked there as a gas-station attendant, and as a clerk in an oil company. So, sometime towards the end of 1958, he landed at Bombay with little money in his pocket and absolutely no connections except a letter of introduction from a Gujarati shopkeeper in Aden to his son living in a Bombay chawl to let him share his room. Soon after arriving in Bombay, he settled himself, his wife and son in a two-room chawl and launched himself as a trader in spice setting up office .All that his office had was a table, two chairs, a writing pad, a pen, an inkpot, a pitcher for storing drinking water and a few glasses. The office had no phone but he could make and receive calls on the phone of a next-door doctor paying him a small amount for every such call.

 He went on to establish his textile company in 1964 under the brand name “Vimal” and the World Bank applauded the brand as the best Polyester Cloth. Perceiving success, he established Reliance IndustriesLtd in 1970s. You must have guessed by now about whom i am speaking. It is none other than Dhirubhai Ambani alias Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani.

 What the Corporate Houses of Tatas, Birlas and Dalmiahs achieved and dominated over a period of a century, Dhirubhai Ambani could achieve within a short period with a razor like sharpness and business acumen. Dhirubhai Ambani proved to be a king in his diversification plans into Petro Chemicals, Energy, Power, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Capital Markets, retails and so on.

 RIL is now India's largest Private Sector with turnover over US$19.976 billion backed by a profit over US$2.03 billion. Fortune Global 500 featured RIL in 342nd rank in 2006. Forbes Global featured RIL at 295 spot in 2000. Chemtech and Chemical Engg.World gave the" Man of the Century” award in Nov 2000 to Dhirubhai Ambani. Dhirubhai won the “Dean’s Medal” of Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in June 1998 for “Outstanding Leadership.

              

There are few distinctive characters that make a leader unique from others.

A leader must have a vision. A leader, let him/her be at any level, should have a vision. A vision towards which he/she can work together with his subordinates and achieve it.

A leader should always travel in an unexplored path.  It is a normal tendency for any leader to take up a well laid path because there is no much difficulty. But a leader should follow an unexplored path and set an example for others. He should have capability to not only do different things, but to do things differently.

A leader must believe in himself/herself and his team. He/she should have confidence in his/her team .one of the most important charcter of leader that makes him/her different from others.

Last but not the least, the most important characteristic of a leader is that, he should not only know how to manage success, but most importantly how to manage failure.

In 1973, APJ Abdul kalam was made project leader for the mission of putting Rohini satellite into the orbit. With help of management and man power, in august 1979 they set to launch the satellite into the orbit. Just few minutes before the launch, computer detected problem in control component, but however they bypassed the computer and launched the vehicle. Unfortunately, the satellite instead of getting into the orbit fell into Bay of Bengal. The whole mission had failed. Satish dhawan, the then chief of Indian space research organisation (ISRO) addressed the media and took the whole responsibility of failure and assured that the satellite would be launched successfully in span of 1 year.

It was in July 1980, Rohini was successfully launched into the orbit. At that time, Satish dhawan asked APJ Abdul kalam and his team to address the media and announce their successful launching of satellite into the orbit. Thus being a leader, when it came to failure, he took the responsibility of the failure, but when it came to success, he gave the credit to his team.

Every one of us dreams to be a leader. We have knowledge, team and management. Then what is it that is stopping us? It is the fear of failure that is holding us back. Failures are stepping stones for sucess.One must a keep always in his/her  mind that learning is always a continuous process and failures do not make anyone small. Great leaders have always faced failures several times and learnt from these failures.

India today needs young leaders, who believe in themselves and in the future of country. At the end if you ask me to brief it up in once sentence, it would be like this.

“We are never leaders by birth, we are leaders by ideas.”