Since it is impossible to not see Elon Musk in your online feeds, yesterday, I saw a photo of him sleeping on the Tesla factory floor in his sleeping bag.
And this, I thought, was real leadership. While I sometimes cringe at some of his actions (e.g., keeping revolvers at his bedside), he has not reached where he has for no reason.
What is leadership really? Cutting out the B-School gyaan, leadership is really simple – can you make your followers do the right thing even when it is not popular?
How do you inspire people to slog day and night for a cause?
Let me share an example of how NOT to be a leader. At an organization I worked with, during an evening meeting, a senior leader gave the team a bunch of deliverables for that night.
And while we were thinking about how long the night would be, the boss reminded, “Let us wrap up this meeting guys. My buddy will be waiting for our squash game.”
But what if he had said, “Today will be a long night but I will sit with you as long as it takes. Let us get this done.” I am sure nobody would have had a problem working the whole night.
If you are not willing to put your head on the block, you have not earned the right to ask others to do so.
Of course, this may not always be feasible since leaders have other responsibilities, but the general principle holds.
Once a lady went to Mahatma Gandhi and complained, “My son eats too much sugar. Please ask him to stop.” Gandhiji asked the lady to come after two weeks. When she next came, he duly advised her son to quit sugar.
She asked, “Why could you not give him this same advice the last time I came?”
Gandhiji said, “Before I could ask him to do so, I had to first see if I can myself give up sugar.”
When you ask someone to do something, do it yourself. When you ask others to sacrifice, you sacrifice first.
This is the leadership principle we rarely talk about in B-schools.
– Rajan