Leadership

"LEADERSHIP". I have been always fascinated by this topic from time immemorial. About 3 weeks back, I was in Bangkok and I had the opportunity to conduct a workshop on Leadership to a team of 30 well accomplished management professionals. At the end of the program, one of the particpants said that he never knew that Leadership was so simple. I just smiled. The reason being that in the last 25 years, I have been watching various leaders and admiring their unique characteristics. I have been observing their communication style, their decision making acumen, their sense of anticipation, their thinking and behavioral pattern. I have in the past admired Corporate leaders such as Xerxes Desai, the first Managing Director of Titan and Bhaskar Bhat, the current Managing Director of Titan, Ravikant, the past Vice President - Marketing of Titan and the current Managing Director of Tata Motors, T C Chauhan, the Managing Director of BPL, all of whom I have worked with.

I admire my current boss Amit Lohia as a leader who inspires his team to give the best. I have admired my cricketing captains who inspired some very good performances from me on the cricket field. I have been inspired by a few leaders in various fields, such as sports, corporate world and theatre, all areas, where I believe I received some significant recognition. But there is one person whom I admire and would like to adapt as a role model. And it will be surprising if I reveal his name, since many would not even have heard of him. It is a young turk by name Manish Mundra. My colleague, my dear friend and some one whom I am sure many will not be able to emulate in many lifes to come. And what I found in him is a unique characteristic of being a Path Finder.

All over the world, leadership is normally related to inspiration. But here is a person or rather a bloke, who has changed my definition of being a successful leader. He has gone one step ahead of inspiration. He has given a new definition to the meaning of leadership. And when I compare him to all those leaders whom I desired to accept as role model and emulate, I realised that he has one single trait which many of the leaders need to build in them, and that is Path Finding. I am amazed by his ways of finding a path for the team, when everyone is lost, and then making it traversable with confidence for everyone to go through the path that he has laid. In short, he is one guy who sets the rules of the game and makes others play by that rules. Believe me guys, this is one unique characteristic which I believe singles him out to be an achiever par excellence. It is easy to work in set rules. Many of the corporate leaders can only inspire their team if they are placed in a structure which has familiar and friendly systems. But a Path Finder is a person who will create an environment despite the absence of a structure. And that is what is Manish Mundra.

Many of you guys would be wondering as to who this bloke is. He is my colleague in Indorama. I have seen him as a Manager in Indorama. And I have seen him displaying this unique characteristic of being a path finder so very exponently with clarity that he has grown from being a manager to a Managing Director of Indorama African Operations in just about less than 2 years. And he has no God Fathers. He has no Mentors. He has no hand holders. He has no familial legacy. He has no geneal inheritance. And he has done it all on account of this one characteristic of being a path finder. And with this single trait of his, he has taken the African operations to be the single largest business division in Indorama group.

And when this management professional in Bangkok mentioned that I made Leadership look so simple by conducting the workshop, I reacted by stating to him that, yes leadership is simple. But one needs the wherewithal of Manish Mundra to build one single trait of Path Finding with dedicated passion to out grow the definition of leadership. And he asked me who is this Mansih Mundra. I told him, he is going to hear about him very soon as a top class leader of the corporate world, who changed the definition of leadership.

Manish, are you reading this. If you are, then let me tell you chief, you are one leader whom I believe is difficult to emulate. And thats what makes you stand apart from others. In short, you are a leader amongst leaders. I salute you.

Its been a long journey from the small town of Yadgir in Karnataka, where I was born to Narayan Peth in the state of Andhra Pradesh, bordering the state of Maharashtra, to Ranipet in Tamilnadu to Bangalore in Karnataka and now to Indonesia. These 48 years have been a journey full of adventure, creativity and inspiration. A journey which has taken me through life's ups and downs. A journey which has made me see the darkest moments of life and also the brighter moments. A journey which saw me being abandoned by those whom I thought were my own and loved and cared by those whom I least expected to. I have no regrets. Neither am I tired about this journey. Because, one day everyone needs to reach his destination and when I look back and see what I have left behind as my legacy, I am sure I will feel nice to have made a difference to a few people's life. And it is this feeling which gives me the energy to keep going towards the destination of life. It does not matter for me whether they remember my contribution to them, since when I did contribute any small thing to anyone, there was nothing that I expected of anyone. It gave me pleasure to make a difference to people's life. Its a feeling of high which and the intoxication leaves you with an apetite for more.