Leadership. It is a simple word but has a thousand different meanings. Almost every person has his or her own definition of what is the essence of leadership and what attributes make a good leader. For some, leadership means absolute authority. On the other end, there are those who believe that leadership stands for absolute responsibility. Those who believe leadership is authority, often carry this thought with a parallel thought - that this authority must be exercised. This ideology is what fuels exploitation of power, exploitation of the very people who provide this authority, and the world has witnessed many fall to this path and turn into dictators. The flip side is the class of people who believe leadership comes hand in hand with responsibility. They believe the moment you assume a position of leadership, you also assume responsibility for the welfare as well as the actions of the people you are exerting your authority over.
A good leader-
A truly well-seasoned leader will understand the precarious balance you need to maintain between the two extremes to avoid being the whip master and the babysitter. Leadership does not mean you are superior to those who you lead, but it also does not mean that you have to micromanage them to the point they start to lose their individuality. A good leader, instead, uses this individuality in a resourceful manner to create results that embody the ethos of the group as a whole.
How does Leadership affect us -
The reason it is so important to understand what leadership truly stands for is that it is a concept or phenomenon that plays into every aspect of your life. You may not realise it, but we are organised into a hierarchy from the moment we are born. If you are not a single child and have siblings, you must have realised that the eldest is by default handed to the mantle of being the leader. This form of leadership may not be as formal as the word itself, but the eldest if often subconsciously expected to lead. The younger sibling unwittingly looks up to them, and the parents, too, unknowingly expect the elder child to be wiser or to set a good example for their younger sibling. Even if you are a single child and live in a joint family system, or in close physical proximity with extended family, the elder cousins are expected to lead you and be guides to you. Sometimes, you are the eldest and the weight of these expectations fall to you. This is a structure that follows you well into other aspects of life as well, from academic life to work life, to personal life as well.
In schools, children are encouraged to follow the example of the class ‘monitor’, the student often chosen by teachers based on which child meets the standards of behaviour they consider to be ‘model’. As you grow older, universities too have TAs or other representatives of the student body that serve as a bridge of communication between the students and administration. In workplaces is where you understand the most formal definition of a leader. Workplaces are strictly hierarchical, and will often need team leaders for a variety of reasons.
Personal life is a different question. You may be wondering how leadership and the attributes necessary for it affect your personal life. Despite what many may believe, it is possible to be a better leader even if your personality is not assertive naturally. Leadership, in many ways, is something that can be developed. Leadership, at the end of the day, is a set of skills more than anything. The one skill you will need to hone, that will also help you develop the others, is compassion. Compassion is something that you need, as a human before a leader. This is exactly why compassion is one skill from the repository of leadership skills that will help you succeed not only professionally, but also personally.
Compassion-
Compassion is the capacity of an individual to be willingly kind and considerate towards those around them. If you think about it, wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone was a little more considerate, kinder to each other? Would it not be easier to reach compromises and solutions to disagreements if we were all a little more willing to look at the other person and extend a behaviour that would take into consideration the situation from their perspective as well? A leader is one who brings about this change. A leader is one who leads with an example, and this rings true for compassion as well. We will always have to take the first step to encourage the other to reciprocate. And I assure you, compassion extended will be met with compassion that will startle you.
So how exactly do we utilise compassion, be it in our professional or personal life, to be better leaders?
In a professional setting, a compassionate leader would be one who would not view his team members as instruments to carry out the actions necessary to reach the common goal. A good leader, a compassionate leader, will realise that it is counter-productive to reduce the identity of their team members to executors of the team and to acknowledge their identity as a whole three-dimensional human being. Being a part of the team is a smaller part of their much larger identity as a human. This also means, if you are a leader for any team, you realise that your co-members are much more than the responsibilities and commitments to their team. Compassion, in this sense, is an attitude that you adopt than a skill you pick up. But it is an aspect of leadership nonetheless. If you are not compassionate as a leader, you will struggle to figure out that people operate differently and that this individuality is something that can be harnessed to be of much greater benefit.
In personal life, assuming a position of leadership (like we described in the other examples above), requires a greater deal of compassion that it does in a work environment. Unlike in a corporate structure, here, leadership does not come from the motive of carrying out a task. Here, the goal is nourishment, of both the mind and the body, and to ensure more holistic growth. This requires the very human attributes of empathy and sympathy. In other words, compassion. If you are the elder sibling, when your younger sibling makes a mistake, what do you think is the right approach? Should you express disappointment and tell them they should know better, and tell them to get their act together? Or should you empathise, understand why they made the mistake in the first place, try to imagine what would get through to you if the roles were reversed and then advise them or help them see the error of their ways?
When phrased like this, it makes the choice easier. If you empathise and try to understand someone in your personal life, you will be able to trace the source of their actions better. You will be able to lead them from their perspectives. They will understand your vision better as well.
Princess Diana and her life lived through Compassion
Perhaps the most unique, yet exemplifying instance of this kind of leadership would be through the life of Princess Diana.
Popularly known as the Princess who became the Queen of Hearts, she quickly became known as the celebrity who used their fame for good. Her story is not one that needs an introduction. There are very few who would be oblivious to the fairytale that descended into an ugly spat that became the headline for tabloids all around the world.
Despite having such an unfortunate opinion projected by the British Royal Family, Princess Diana had been the sweetheart of the masses. It was for very good reason, though, that the opinion of the masses barely faltered when it came to her, as she had established herself as a very compassionate individual long before her image was spattered with her marital complications.
Princess Diana, from very early on in her life, had made it a point to be of service to those around her, to put her best food forward to alleviate the anguish of people who needed it. In her later academic years, she was awarded for her enthusiasm in community-betterment activities. Before she married the Prince of Wales, she took on an assortment of jobs that displayed her knack of being gentle and understanding towards others. She was an assistant to the teacher for a group of pre-school children, helped her sisters and friends in domestic tasks, and helped host parties. She also spent a good chunk of time working as a nanny to an American family living in London, where she lived with her mother and two friends. She had proved herself to be kind and generous before she was chosen to be the Princess of Wales.
Causes displaying her capacity for Compassion -
After her wedding to Prince Charles, her efforts to community welfare and doing good for the world intensified. Two of the most notable cause that Princess Diana had championed were the de-stigmatization of AIDS and stopping the usage of landmines.
These two causes alone are testament to her immense capacity for compassion, the ability to feel the pain of others and try to alleviate it. A leader leads with an example, and that is exactly what Princess Diana did, by using the spotlight on her draw attention to the fact that AIDS is not transmitted by hugs, or by shaking the hands of one who is diagnosed with AIDS. In a period where people infected with AIDS could not access the treatment they needed because people around them were afraid to contract AIDS if they helped, Princess Diana made an example of herself by going out of her way to visit people with AIDS, to comfort them, to extend her sympathies to them. It was her way of telling the world that if she did not contract AIDS by being human to another human, neither will anyone else. That we should not be hesitant to help those in need.
The second cause she dedicated a good part of her time and life to, was abolishing the use of landmines. Stray landmines, that are left on the conflicted ground can go off years and years later and can harm unsuspecting individuals who may not even be aware that the ground beneath them is equipped with a landmine. Her endorsement of this cause made it apparent it was important to her to do everything in her scope to urge people to wean off practices that endangered innocent lives.
Impact -
Time and again, the cause she stood for gained momentum and showed a remarkable upsurge in the general audience’s support into those causes. People’s opinion of those with AIDS changed, people realised that AIDS is not as highly contagious as they previously believed. More people came ahead to help those affected with AIDS. As the popular consesus, and the stigma attached with AIDS changed, people with AIDS got more access to the treatment they so necessarily needed. The social outcast-ness that they experienced also lessened, people realised that those afflicted with AIDS have dignity too, and what people should do is extend empathy rather than shun them out.
Princess Diana’s movement to stop the use of landmines in conjunction with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines left a legacy that is still at work. The efforts have led to not only successfully being able to get more countries to sign treaties condemning the use of landmines, but also get better treatment and compensation to those who have survived landmine explosions, and provide support to the communities that have suffered the consequences of use of landmines.
Princess Diana was a leader in the way she led people to have faith in the causes that germinated from compassion, from the urge to alleviate the pain and suffering of fellow human beings. She was recognised as the Queen of the People’s Hearts, not because she held influence in the way they felt about certain things, but because she understood the heart of others, because she was compassionate in the way she treated those around her - compassion was lens through which she viewed the world.
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- The Indiaparenting Team
