“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader” – John Quincy Adams
Leadership is the art of persuasion—the act of motivating people to do more than they ever thought possible in pursuit of a greater good. A true leader influences others to be their best. Leadership is about social influence, not positional power.
The growth from one of the ordinary citizen Mr. M K Gandhi to the one and only Mahatma Gandhi was a classical example of how a leader should be. Gandhi could establish himself by leading through examples, he works along with the people as one among them, empowering the general public and practice what he preached, like spinning yarn to make his cloths or washing his own dishes etc. Gandhi as a true leader empowered his followers towards success with a long term vision, self confidence and stubborn on strong principles of righteousness.
Mahatma Gandhi proved by his life that leadership is action, not position. You just have to do things that make people want to follow you and you can be a leader.
Few leadership lessons we can learn from Mahatma;
- Lead through examples – Your life should be your teaching.
- Rules for everyone – As a leader once you are setting a code of conduct, you must be the first to follow the same, otherwise your followers will never follow.
- Commitment to the cause – Once the goal is set, you should dedicate fully to obtain the same and also remind your followers frequently of your destination and progress that’s been made towards the same.
- Never ask your followers to do anything which you wouldn’t do yourself.
- You should be prime contributor to the cause as a leader.
- You should learn to admit your mistakes and do the needful to correct them openly.
If you want to be a leader, you should be optimistic and your actions should be proactive. Few of the traits which projects leadership qualities are listed below;
- A leader should be an out of the box thinker and they should add values when ever they see an opportunity.
- Leader should be confident on their talents and should also posses’ ability to express their limitations.
- Leaders should be optimistic and should be able to see possibilities on every difficult situation.
- Leaders should be open to change and should look for better possibilities at every point of time.
- Leaders should posses the ability to take decision on the right time.
- Leaders should be accountable for his action and also for the whole team’s action.
- Leaders should be humble in all aspects with a strong mindset.
- Leaders should be passionate for what they are standing for.
- Leaders should be self motivated.
- Leaders should give more priority to the team than self.
- Leaders should be adaptable and open to learning.
- Leaders should be pious and should have heart of empathy.
Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers.
Robin S. Sharma