Bridging Gaps

Leadership course has started and it is very difficult for a person like me to find a real connect. I have never been a leader kind of a person and have not even thought to be one. Then how is this course going to help me? Why should I study the traits of a good leader? Neither am I nor I wanted to be. But after thinking through for some more time I am able to bridge this gap. I could put my understanding of a Leader in the words below.

If I look at a leader from a general perspective then it is very difficult to understand what it is about. It is like talking of some fictional character. But if I consider him as a person first rather than a leader then connecting the dots becomes easy. Many personality traits or his thinking process makes him do whatever he is doing. He will continue to do so even if his team is not with him. Below are few traits very much at a personal level which I think would be there in a leader

• Ø Must to have a vision and passion: only when you have a vision you will have something to look forward in life and only if you are a passionate kind of a person you would be ready to sacrifice everything you have to achieve that. So a mixture of these two is must for a person to be a leader.
• Ø Team building capabilities: you lead a team when you act as a leader. Without a team no leader is possible. And the team is build for some common cause. That would be the vision of the person who would eventually become a leader. Why eventually, because you don’t decide who will be a leader in a team, it mostly happens so that one person eventually becomes a leader. Moreover to build a successful team two most important qualities are required in each person i.e. trust and accountability, including the leader of the team. Trust is the thread which keeps a team intact. If people don’t trust each other they can never form a cohesive team and all the members of the team should believe that the leader of the team is making right decisions which are in favour of all of them. Accountability is the mechanism to mobilize everybody in a team to move towards common goal. Only when people feel accountable towards their roles and responsibility, they tend to work towards that.
• Ø Finally to keep the trust and to keep the honesty with the self one needs integrity, that is the most important trait for a leader. I suppose that is the most important trait for anyone to be even human. Every member of the team needs to have integrity in the character.

Why I consider these things as a must for a person to be a leader because one does not get nominated as a leader. One shows these personality traits in different walks of life. And one who consistently shows these traits emerges or moves towards taking higher or more accountable roles in the profession, in locality, society; in family, among friends. And that is what we call him as captain, head, decision maker, chairman or “A Leader”.

--By Vikas Shrivastava