Be Happy – Be Leader Everywhere

Leaders don't inflict pain. They bear pain. They understand that when they find that what they are doing isn't working, they do not get discouraged but tend to do more of the same and with greater intensity. They do not postpone the matters for tomorrow because they know that every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future. They know that whatever they will do they will do for the present only. If they are able to keep their present healthy, the future will take care of itself. The true leader never becomes arrogant. He says that if he is a leader of some team, he would like to follow the team spirit. The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. If you wish to become a good leader, never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless ... someone's got to make a wake up call. The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.

To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, We did it ourselves! A good leader continues to work hard and never gets discouraged – ultimately his work speaks itself who did that job. As a leader, you may have to commit yourself to the task. Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans. Good plans shape good decisions. That's why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true. For implementation of good planning, we need good leaders to organize all the elements to get the target. We must never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps us make a living; the other helps us make a life.

We must understand human needs. If we do it, it means we have done half the job of meeting them. Actually leadership means understanding people and involving them to help you do a job. That takes all of the good characteristics, like integrity, dedication of purpose, selflessness, knowledge, skill, implacability, as well as determination not to accept failure. You need to lead and inspire people. Don't try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be led. We must become the change we want to see.

You know! A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops. The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor. You must have vision to attempt upon any job. Where there is no vision, the people perish. As a leader, in spite of being strongly disciplined, you must be kind to others because kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. In war, three quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter. The art of leading, in operations large or small, is the art of dealing with humanity, of working diligently on behalf of men, of being sympathetic with them, but equally, of insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems.

If you wish your organization should develop at the earliest, you must empower each member of your team appropriately. Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.

The first step of being successful leader is to have aim. It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of activity or methods. It must always relate directly to how life is better for everyone. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. The aim is a value judgment for proceeding ahead. It is not a question of how well each process works; the question is how well they all work together. We need not to follow where the path may lead. We need to go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

The very essence of leadership is its purpose. And the purpose of leadership is to accomplish a task. That is what leadership does--and what it does is more important than what it is or how it works. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. We know not where our dreams will take us, but we can probably see quite clearly where we'll go without them. As a leader, you will have to look after the whole system. To manage a system effectively, you must focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately. Remember, processes don't do work, people do. The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and will to carry on. Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it. People are more easily led than driven. Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together. You will have to take risk and initiative. If you don't risk anything, you risk even more. You need to get the work done through your team. No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions. Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process.

Being leader, you can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment. If you do not do this, remember that it is far better to follow well than to lead indifferently. The only real training for leadership is leadership since quality has to be caused, not controlled. As a leader, you need to cause the quality in the task being performed. For that, you may ask a lot of challenging questions and let the team come up with the answer – you can consider that in context of your vision. Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it you can make it so.

Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength and idiotic to replicate your weakness. It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom. All serious daring starts from within. . . . As we, the leaders, deal with tomorrow, our task is not to try to make perfect plans. . . . Our task is to create organizations that are sufficiently flexible and versatile that they can take our imperfect plans and make them work in execution. That is the essential character of the learning organization. When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

Think of managing change as an adventure. It tests your skills and abilities. It brings forth talent that may have been dormant. Change is also a training ground for leadership. When we think of leaders, we remember times of change, innovation and conflict. Leadership is often about shaping a new way of life. To do that, you must advance change, take risks and accept responsibility for making change happen. Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. The world is round and the place which may seem like the end, may also be only the beginning.

If we go through the above lines again and again, we hope that we can become leaders in our life. Be Happy – Be Leader everywhere.