A Leader

I have heard multiple times about the difference between a manager and a leader. I have also seen numerous books on Leadership, Developing leadership abilities. But Who is a leader? How do we become a good leader. There cannot be a single answer or a common formula to answer this question. In this blog, I will try to answer these two questions, from my experience.

My stint as a manager / team leader started in 2012, in Kolkata. I was in Airtel then, and handling a Direct sales agency, selling high speed internet connections. Looking back at the stint now, I think I did terribly, both in sales and also in team management. After an year in Kolkata, I moved to Bhubaneswar where I led Airtel's m commerce platform, for 8 districts of Odisha. This was my first stint where I handled a geographically distributed team. After 15 months of this, I moved to Vijayawada, where I led Airtel's brand retail, for the state of AP. These stints in Bhubaneswar and Vijayawada, where I was part of highly competitive business environment, leading high performing teams, gave me great learnings in team building, management and helped me with my pursuit to become a leader.

Who is a leader. According to me, anyone who is able to lead his team, or a set of people, in one, focussed direction, is a leader. The length of the definition in no way depicts the complexities involved in this. If we take the CEO of a company, for him to be a leader as per the above definition, firstly, he/she has to define what the direction is. Then aligning the entire organisation, mainly, their immediate team, defines whether they make a leader or not. Now, after defining the direction or roadmap, identifying aligning everyones professional and personal goals, to this direction, on a periodic basis, make the leadership abilities of the CEO. Even for this, there are various skills that play a role in determining the success of the above exercises; which is precisely my statement, that the definition of a leader is not as simple as it sounds.

What are some of the major leadership traits? Now this is a difficult question. As the saying goes, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. The leadership traits are majorly defined by the expectations of the team, which are not constant. In spite of this, I have learned that there are few simple traits, if displayed, can take one a long way in their role as a leader. Please find some of them, below.

1. Lead from the front

This one goes without saying, definitely. Be it discipline, sales, customer service, discipline, or even punctuality, if you want to see it in your team, lead as an example. Lead from the front in any unusual crisis or situation, irrespective of it being major or minor.

2. Build Roadmaps, show direction

We all love leaders who show us grand visions. Be it Modi, Trump or Steve Jobs. We all love a great grand future. Building roadmaps for your team, and highlighting what their role is in it, helps them not only understand the roadmap of the company or team, but also helps them plan their work/objectives. This exercise also helps leaders track their own performance and also teams, basis the objectives set as part of the roadmap.

3. Take new initiatives

Teams love leaders who take new initiatives. In business as in life, we expect perpetual improvement in anything we undertake. And this improvement is not going to happen by doing the same tasks again and again. Teams appreciate leaders who solve problems with new initiatives (major/minor). This also gives the team a sense of excitement in undertaking something new, which is out of their daily routine.

These are from my experience of the last 8 years, and have helped me during my various roles, in different companies. Are these enough - Definitely not. Many of the skills that are required to display leadership traits, are also learned through learnings from our experiences. For Ex: I have worked in six different states, and have lived in 8 different states so far. And I strongly believe that this has helped me to understand and appreciate various cultures, helped me to learn to work well with diverse teams. Similarly, there can be many many experiences from life, which help us to build important traits, which eventually help in the pursuit to become a leader.