Just do it. Period

In cricket a good deep fielder is a master of anticipation and judgment. Unlike at slip, where the fielding is all about split second responses, fielding in the deep is all about anticipation and the ability to run to the point where the ball will be and not where it is. The difference between the star strikers and others in football is this split-second ability to anticipate where the opening will emerge and to leverage that window to score a goal. When you carefully look at this ability to anticipate you will realise the difference between ordinary and extraordinary sportsmen.

What does an ordinary employee who aspires to become an extraordinary leader do? Does he or she think more about tomorrow than today? Do they invest in understanding and anticipating where the market will be tomorrow and thus what skill, knowledge and experience they would need to succeed then and not just today? Do they see beyond the instant gratification economy where everything is quick and long-term planning is a forgotten skill?

BEYOND QUALIFICATIONS

I meet and mentor a lot of young leaders and I see a hunger, desire and intensity in them which I have never seen before. What is missing is guidance and coaching to help them run the race not for today but in anticipation of tomorrow.

What investments should you make so that you are a successful leader of tomorrow? There are many. However, four aspects will matter most. If you master even three of these, you are on the right track.

‘I can’ more important than IQ: Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 per cent of an individual’s success is due to skills in “human engineering,” personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Only 15 per cent is due to technical knowledge! Scientist James Watson, John F Kennedy, Muhammad Ali all have average high IQs but they have gone on to become alpha leaders in their domains. So if you are not a rank topper or the brightest brain around, it doesn’t mean you are any less capable of climbing the corporate ladder or any other ladder of your dreams.

One common attribute in most successful leaders is that they have always been high on action-orientation and delivered on that promise. The deadline you always meet, the hard push that you deliver and the extra miles you walk are what matters the most at the end of the day.

For every ten who tell me why something can’t be done, my eyes are always searching for that one person who sees a great opportunity to perform when others have surrounded themselves with excuses.

Passion more important than degrees: I was once interviewing a young manager and as I normally do, at mid-point in the interview I gave him feedback that he is not going to make it because I am not seeing what I am seeking.

The next second he started singing. Shocked, I asked him why? He said how many people who work with me, will sing in this situation. I said ‘none’. He said ‘doesn’t it make him stand out’? The interview stopped at that moment; I asked him to join the team and it turned out to be a great decision. If a person displays a passion for life he/she is likely to become a more valuable member of the team than someone who may appear more qualified.

An employee with a passionate attitude is valuable not just for the job at hand but for the entire team’s morale. So throw yourself in many situations till you discover what you are really passionate about; then throw caution to the winds and go after it as you would have gone behind the love of your life in college to ensure you end up being married to him or her.

Value-generation more important than hierarchy: This is one debate I have fought for long and will continue fighting till I walk. I’ve always believed in recalibrating organisational structures away from ‘circles of power’ to ‘circles of influence’. Enterprise 2.0 is all about value centricity wherein hierarchies based on power are outdated. If you are an individual creating a huge amount of value for the customers, the organisational pyramid will naturally tilt towards you. The ‘Employees First, Customers Second’ philosophy is built on this very foundation. Thus you may be better off planning how you would create more value each day, rather than how will you manage value. A leader creates value; a manager just helps count it.

ATTITUDINAL SHIFT

Curiosity more important than experience: Have you ever wondered why a kid first tries to break a toy before playing with it? It is because of the God-given gift of curiosity; one which we forget over years of learning.

A recent study published in Perspectives in Psychological Science journal found that curiosity and conscientiousness are predicative of long-term academic and professional performance.

No wonder then, being curious is now believed to be an important trait in the job market. Hiring Executives are not just looking for someone who has mastered a single skill over many years, but instead for someone who has the innate curiosity to explore new challenges.

In today’s new normal with such rapidly changing contours, curiosity is indeed more important than the fat file of experience, as roles and responsibilities change dynamically. Just the other day, I was reading an article on how, for example, journalism is going through a sea change.

As compared to the sole focus on writing and editing in the past, “Journalists today need new skills such as data mining and scraping, interactive and multimedia storytelling and reliance on social media and mobile phones to inform and engage audience”, it said. With such rapid changes only an individual who is curious and willing to learn new things will be ahead of the rest.

Becoming a high performance leader is no rocket science. It just takes a few important skills and some positive personality traits. Folktales and legends are full of stories like tortoise and the hare, David and Goliath etc. where an individual who had all the worthy skills by the book was overtaken by a so-called underdog.

Corporate corridors are also full of such tales. All you need is a big dream and a stone-strong conviction.

To end, I would like to mention what one of my all-time favourite movies, Pursuit of Happiness, basically says – ‘don’t ever let somebody say you can’t do something…not even your boss…. People can't do something themselves, they will tell you, you can't do it.’

If you want something, go get it. Period.

(The author is founder, Sampark Foundation and Vice-Chairman, HCL Technologies.)

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