Blog Submission by Paduka Kannan.

Club Name: TCS Maitree Bangalore Toastmasters Club

The world has deeply exploited the noun “Leadership”. To add fuel to this fire, I’m going to put forth my views on a simple but an unconventional, type of leadership style.

Look at the below images & answer the questions:
(Nope, I’m not going to give you any gifts for the right answers 😛)

Is Mahatma Gandhi a leader?

Is Martin Luther King Jr a Leader?  (In 1963, there were approximately 2,50,000 people assembled in Washington to hear his exemplary “I have a Dream” speech in the era of no sophisticated marketing system or social media)

Is Hitler a leader?

The answer is yes for all of the above 👍. Each one of them has a unique style of leadership. Whether they supported for a good cause or a bad cause is totally out of scope for this article 🤐

Who is a LEADER?… ‘The one who has followers’. Do not confuse with Twitter or Instagram followers 😜. Followers willingly accept their leader’s vision as their own & support him/her to achieve the same. The keyword in this sentence is “willingly“. If it is forced, then it is not leadership. It is called Power.

Now, with this above definition in place, is the gentleman (Sachin Tendulkar) in the below picture a leader?

If your answer is NO, then you may get full marks for that answer in your MBA leadership paper 💯. But, I’m going to state about an unconventional method of leadership – the one I would like to aim for – “Leader with No Title” (or) “Leader within“.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

Alice walker

This concept is all about inculcating and infusing leadership into everything you do or you touch. There is no blame game here. You cannot blame others, neither your managers nor your manufacturers (i.e.) parents 🤪. You cannot blame others for wherever you are or for whatever didn’t happen.

Do you agree that :

• Every one of us alive at this moment has the power to go to work & can express our absolute best every day. You don’t need a distinguished title to do that.

• Every one of us alive at this moment has the power to inspire, to influence & to elevate each person you meet. You don’t need a powerful position do that.

If an individual is a tester, then he/she should strive to be a world-class tester & find the bugs in the product like no other can do it.
If an individual is an analyst, then he/she should strive to be a world-class analyst, where the person provides unique & out of box insights.

Excellent work will elevate us and it will indirectly inspire and influence the people around us. This is not possible by repeatedly doing the same thing, in the same way. We cannot live the same day over & over again and call it a life. This can be achieved only through consistent refinement & innovation in our daily work. This can be achieved only when we express ourselves authentically, courageously and ethically.

Let me conclude by quoting Martin Luther King Jr :

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Readers,
Do you remember any particular kind of leadership, which has influenced or inspired you?
Do Rate & Reply 😊

(This article is inspired from the book “Leader who had no title” by Robin Sharma)