Wanted Leaders with Humility By Plastino D'Costa If anybody watched Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli play for their school in their early teens, or for that matter practice at the nets of Bombay's Azad Maidan, and if one had to predict who would be the more successful of the two, without a doubt most would select Vinod Kambli. Such was the dominance of Vinod that it was very obvious that even if both played for the country, Kambli would be the more successful of the two. That said, their brand of cricket was so special that it kept most commuters on foot, shuttling between Victoria Terminus and Churchgate stations and using the Azad Maidan shortcut opposite the Bombay Gymkhana, always spellbound and awestruck. That usually meant these commuters would be missing connecting trains, losing sales calls, delaying appointments and unable to reach their destinations on time. But there was no denying the fact Vinod was always the more belligerent and promising.
Today if Vinod honestly reflects as to why his career did not take off on expected lines, among other follies, arrogance and flamboyance would have had something to do with it. Of course there were lost opportunities, injuries that played spoilsport for Vinod, but the major difference between an average career for Vinod and a great career for Sachin was arrogance versus humility. Cricket is a performance oriented sport; you perform or perish. The system although tainted at the moment, on match fixing allegations, is designed to measure performance based on the runs you make or the wickets you take. Having talent helped, but eventually it was Sachin's humility that played a part in him becoming the greatest cricketer of all time. Great people are generally humble and competent modern systems are generally designed to reward humble people. Arrogant leaders might have led dictatorial states in the past, by keeping their citizens fearful of everything around them, but those kind of dictators have no place in a democratic setup, specially if there is a strong and transparent media presence. Strong media presence with a combination of educated citizens who are able to decipher actual news vis-à-vis fake, is one combination most arrogant leaders are unable to manipulate and eventually meet their fate. The arrogance of Republican George Bush Jr. is the reason Democrat Barack Obama became the President of the United States. Of course economic meltdown helped. In a generally democratic world where arrogance is usually punished, how come Goa has not found a way of showing the door to its arrogant leaders? We can tolerate them for one term maximum, but the public have a chance to rectify their mistake when they appear for a re-election. Have we got so used to arrogant leaders around us, who go to the extent of playing politics over a pothole or a streetlight? Why do we give these leaders so much control of our lives? There are instances where our leaders do the most corrupt and immoral things in the afternoon and on the same day lecture their citizens on morality over a toast raising ceremony at some evening reception party. Our inability to speak freely and make up our own mind has seriously jeopardized our thinking ability. The more the processes, licenses, and permissions you need from leaders, the more they show you who is boss and an arrogant one at that. Great leaders usually provide solutions to a problem that might arise in their work area. In Goa most leaders create the problem, so that they are automatically called upon to be part of the solution. Lousy leaders usually thrive on chaos, the more the chaos the more they control the population. This is the reason leaders loathe smart and efficient systems, because it threatens their leadership and might render them obsolete. Great leaders are usually never insecure of their leadership; their thumb rule is to usually have subordinates that are smarter than them. That gives them an edge as a team, to perform better and stay ahead in the race. That also makes sure the leader is always humble and listening to smart advice from his subordinates. Lot of Goan leaders are seen promoting their offspring into the political arena, nothing wrong with that, but are any Goan leaders ready to listen to ideas from their offspring, for that matter is any offspring ready to point out the mistakes of their political parents? Narayan Murthy's highly qualified children can change their names, walk into Infosys premises and get selected for a job based on their merit. Infosys as a policy till date has not encouraged offspring taking over management, because the organization is beyond petty power struggles. Arrogance is killed at the doorstep of Infosys and that makes them the most humble organization always geared towards customer service. Google founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page found themselves too young and inexperienced to run day to day affairs of the scale Google was turning out to be. They immediately hired Eric Schmidt as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Google. Even though all the three run Google as a triumvirate, it takes audacity on the part of the founders to handover the company operations to an outsider. Narayan Murthy, Sergey Brin, Larry Page can be termed as humble leaders whose performance is measured by the results their companies declare. No big talk over the mike can mask their performance like our leaders resort to, because the audience they usually address, are not used to listening too much prose, they listen to facts and figures. Performance oriented systems usually put pressure on leaders to perform or face consequences. Goans must come out of the dictatorial mindset of the past, which might have delivered great results, but there are enough checks and balances to stop corruption, high handedness, nepotism, red-tape even in a democratic setup. For that to happen we the citizens must use our voting power judiciously. We could make a start by changing our vocabulary and start addressing our leaders from 'honourable leaders' to 'humble servants'. This will have dual advantage, it will remind the leaders every time that they should be humble towards their citizens and more importantly remind the citizens that leaders are selected to serve us. Measuring performance of leaders might not be as easy as counting runs and wickets in cricket, but surely before selecting a leader we can set benchmarks they should achieve. There is an old saying that goes something like this, "Fool me once, Shame on you, Fool me twice, Shame on me". If we go by this proverb, and the amount of times we have been fooled by our leaders, Generation Next Goans will be branding us in their history books, as Most Shameless Goans of all Time. Above Article appeared on Herald, Goa on 20th October 2010. Archives : http://goangenerationnext.blogspot.com/
