Leadership - Inherient or Position based?

Image by pedrosimoes7 via Flickr

The events in our City over the past few months have left me wondering if leadership in India is wrongly equated with power, and if so, would that explain why our country, our society has no leaders to look up to?

I truly believe that leadership is an inherent quality, it is something you are born as. Yes, that skill can be honed, but you cannot develop leadership, if there is none to begin with. Because

You cannot teach someone to be passionate or fearless.

And that i feel is at the root of our leaderless society. Indians are far too busy being nice and polite to each other to be leaders. Inside we may be what ever we are, but rarely do we stand up to our bosses, our superiors, our so called leaders about issues that we feel strongly about. Because we are too busy working on our image management. The only time we raise our voice is when we are in mob, because then who is to say which voice belonged to

Image by lumaxart via Flickr

which body..

Leadership extracts a heavy fee initially, it needs you to stand apart, be fearless, and also unpopular.

A lot of our Corporate leaders are "leaders" because there is no one to question them as they constitute the top management. Yes, they are answerable to stake-holders, so they do what all good managers should do. They grow profits, increase sales, and do all things that please stake-holders, but that does not make them a leader. Leadership comes out of crisis, which is when you see the boat floundering, the masks slipping.

Leadership relies on a strong mix of passion, gut, gumption, fearlessness, empathy and self-belief.

And it may so be that no matter how much self-help books and courses claim to put you up there with the best, your success as a leader may have been determined way back coded right into your genetic make-up.