In the famous Hollywood flick, Gladiator Maximus famously said “Win the Crowd, and you shall be more powerful than the King”. Leaders don’t need official position of authority if people in and around you look up to you for ‘clues in crisis ‘you are a leader. A lot of trees might get cut for the paper work if we try and make a list of qualities an ideal leader must possess, here are few which I believe are of utmost importance. If a human brain looses self control, the same beautiful mind can be its biggest enemy and self destruction is eminent. So a good leader should be able to control his emotions and passions. You might not appreciate me using the word passion, as many entrepreneurs are passionate (almost all), and passion is the oxygen for excellence in entrepreneurship, but what is important is having a control. The emotional attachment towards success should be very less, this is because being a leader on will see failures, and I don’t know a successful man who has not seen them. If a leader is high on self efficacy he can get his team of the slump faster. A leader CEO/Manger can create value on long term basis only if he is passionate about his job but not too emotionally attached to what he has done or he is capable of doing (ego). Let us take case of Satyam Computers it failed because Mr Raju was attached to what he had achieved and feared that all that could be acquired if he showcases the real stuff, thus compelling him to cook the books from inside, let’s not forget he hardly gained personally from it. Emotional attachment stops one from taking decisions for larger good.
Leaders are neither born nor manufactured, they emerge. A good leader should be less individualistic in nature and more of a team-man. As truly said by lord Krishna ‘Hey Arjuna, keep on doing your duty, without expectation of fruits and victory shall be yours’*
Leadership (Management) Style’s across USA, Japan and India…
I used these two countries as its chalk and cheese when it comes to USA and India in terms of how companies are run, that does not mean it’s not all Smoke & Mirrors when it comes to running the Show in USA.
One clear difference I make out is in nature (the mindset), in USA people are very individualistic and the first generation entrepreneurs don’t focus much on legacy, they actually might not mind to hand over to professional Managers to run the show. If we talk about the Indian Large Business houses few names come to my mind are ITC, L&T, Gujrat Ambuja Cement, ACC the Murguppa Group and many more but we can actually count them, but in USA things are different.
I am not saying that Professional Managers create better value for shareholders or not, neither do we have enough empirical evidence, we have seen fiascos like Enron and World Com in the past due to larger than life ambitions of these CEO’s these companies met their destiny.
Talking about styles of managers/leaders major difference between styles of USA and Japan is the relationship between suppliers/vendors and companies are totally different. If we see the case of Auto Industry crippling with lack of fuel of liquidity currently, companies like GM and Ford try to create competition amongst the suppliers to get the best deal.
In Japan likes of Toyota and Honda go for cross holdings in the suppliers companies and make them part of the family and believe in long term relationship, also supporting them to develop new technologies and help them achieve operational efficiencies. And we all know what success companies like Toyota have scripted in world’s largest car market.
*Essence of Bhagvat Gita , but not the exact words.
