Sense and Sensitivity

Recently a newspaper reported an incident where Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni avoided calling on the Z grade security allotted to
him, as he rushed to catch an early morning flight.

“It is not right to be too feudalistic, it was better to drive down myself rather than disturbing the entire security team early in the morning for an eight minute drive from my house”, he said when probed on the episode.

Yet another report talked about Mukesh Ambani suggesting a compulsory one-year military training for all the youth in the lines of Singapore or Israel, that could help our nation have access to a large pool of youngsters towards disaster management.

Ambani was not just talking; he was in fact ready to walk his talk by promising to let his son go through such a training. If we contrast these mature opinions with the actions of some of our political leaders, we see a completely different picture.

In the midst of a national crisis of enormous proportions one of them saw an opportunity to demand sten-gun trotting security personnel for every legislator, another one an opportunity to sell the incident to the celluloid and yet others opportunities to blow their trumpets. Well, all these reports, might have been exaggerated to an extent, but the leadership lessons are clear:

Sense : People in responsible positions are expected to wear on their sleeve the most important virtue of all times, ‘common sense’. Leaders are supposed to measure every word that they speak, especially when those words could mean hope or despair to the people involved. When a leader is not sure what to express and how to express, a good rule to remember is that silence is golden.

Sensitivity : When people go through tough times, they expect empathy from their leaders rather than great rhetoric. At times extreme events happen due to lapses, but at times, they are black swans (events which are completely unpredictable).

In both cases, what is expected out of a leader is empathetic correction, which means ideally a leader should have been proactive in avoiding the mishap, but since it has already occurred he is expected to put himself in the other person’s shoes and feel at least a part of the pain. When a leader does that, truly from his heart, he understands that his existence is not because of a legal authority, but an authority that is conferred upon him by the benevolence of his people.

Leadership Takeaway :

Sense towards incidents and sensitivity towards his people are the most important weapons in the hands of a leader during times of crisis.


http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Features/Corporate_Dossier/Sense_and_Sensitivity/articleshow/4084395.cms