By Dilip Mukerjea
An invincible destiny is shaped by being assertive with choice, not by surrendering to chance.
Our leaders in every domain must plant seeds of inspiration and aspiration: they must be able to put our hopes to work. Meghalaya has evolved across the span of over five decades into a booby-trapped enclave of volatile passions and temptations, but the citizenry at large yearns for transcendence, to be uplifted by stainless ideals that release them from the exhaustions of daily life.
We need a new human, and a manifesto of a new humanity, one humanity … not the minority marching on, and the rest left abandoned. Everything rises and falls on leadership, especially the precepts of servant-leadership.
Servant-Leadership is an expression coined by Robert Greenleaf. In his words: “The servant-leader is servant first…it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. He or she is sharply different from the person who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such, it will be a later choice to serve — after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.”
We need to ask whether those served grow as persons and if they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? Furthermore, we need to concern ourselves towards the least privileged in society, whether they will benefit, or, at least, that they not be further deprived. The concept of traditional autocratic and hierarchical modes of leadership are being phased out. Focus must shift to the arena of workers and the enhancement of their personal growth. Through teamwork and community, institutions and governance regimes can become paragons of societal excellence; with uncompromising high standards of ethics, care and compassion, the servant as leader becomes an example of a spiritual guide on the river of life.
So we can surmise that: Servant-Leadership is a philosophy and set of practices that enriches the lives of individuals, builds better institutions of learning and organisations of business, and all-round better governance of societies. It ultimately creates a more just and caring world, one that can transition from poverty to prosperity, and from harm to harmony. This is precisely what is needed in Meghalaya. Urgently!
We need people of pristine conscience, and consciousness, of immaculate vision, who, with direct experiential perception, can exhibit a lucidity of mind to do the greatest good across all sections of society.
Today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, novel, turbulent, and often dangerous world demands that we acquire a range of skills needed to navigate the new challenge spaces, with mastery in:
Vision: to set a clear direction and destination, with adaptive agility and deep focus, in order to engender transitions from hope to fulfillment.
Velocity: to think ahead, decide with clear intent, and act swiftly with definiteness of purpose towards garnering winning outcomes for the citizenry en masse.
Values: to be driven by conscience, with character, attitude, and beliefs, and to exercise integrity in actions towards all.
Vibrancy: to be imbued with energy born out of a sense of aliveness, to be purposefully engaged in the dynamics of crafting a life with meaning.
Our people, across every sector of the State, are significantly impoverished, uneducated, and in dire need of beyond-basic healthcare facilities in their rural locales. We cannot build lives on the misery we inflict on others. We cannot justify the existence of savagery against any member of the human race. In enclaves of desolation and wretchedness, our chieftains in business, education, and governance need to act from the precepts of a healing and helping ministry. If we fail in our endeavours to uplift lives and livelihoods, we are no better than asking which lunatic should run the asylum!
We need leaders who move from entrenched differences to common goals. Such men and women should be able to bring opposing groups to common ground, resulting in solid plans built on diverse wisdom. If these ideals are pursued, our State will preside and rule with a talismanic effect on future generations.
After more than five decades, we are still gasping our way with faded expectations. Perhaps it is a lack of confidence at every level, a failure of imagination, an absence of a will to win … selflessly! Imagination allows us to place ourselves in the shoes of others, with empathy, affinity, and rapport. And confidence comes from having goals, taking risks, holding on to our convictions, and building up a small arsenal of successes…and failures. Our failures tell us that it is possible to survive and move on. Our successes reveal that it is possible to prevail in the future. Both these experiences are vital in helping reassure us that in the end, all will be well.
But do our leaders know a crucial truth, that no single member of any confederation is mighty, none is adequate, standing alone. Each is necessary to all, all are necessary to each? Only then can we execute and realise relevant and liberating strategies. What is needed is a sound intellectual framework for making exemplary decisions, and the ability to keep away greed from corroding that framework.
But do we have leaders? In the truest sense? With vision, passion, integrity, trustworthiness, curiosity, and daring? Can they make a positive and disproportionate impact upon the world? Or are they merely politicos with power and authority, but a glaring absence of leadership? Servant-Leadership, and Statesman-Leadership? Do they have the triunity of qualities that can distinguish them with distinction, comprising:
· Wisdom tempered by humility
· Justice tempered by empathy
· Reason tempered by compassion?
The human individual is equipped to learn and to go on learning prodigiously, from birth to death! This is what sets him or her apart from all other known forms of life. Man is a learning animal, and the essence of the species is encoded in that simple term. Yet our beleaguered State of Meghalaya is in a State of Disrepair, with the lowest education level across the nation! Where thus are our Learning Leaders and Leading Learners? Are those posing in positions of prominence content with the lives of children born and unborn, being compromised, or worse, embezzled by the mandarins perched in institutions of education … but not of learning?
Perhaps we have the wrong people on the proverbial bus? Since it appears to be substantially difficult to get the wrong people off the bus, should we not focus instead on getting the right people ON the bus? Those who wake up every day and are compulsively driven to do the best they can because it is simply a part of their DNA?
Educational apathy, in our demolished educational system, and insouciance in governance, in our broken society, are both masquerading as organisms ‘being busy doing what is needed’, but with an advance at full-speed to nowhere! They constitute a morally blinkered ‘egosystem’ and must be confronted by due diligence audits that are invigorated by the agenda of a new Age! We need to bear in mind that: incompetence + incompetence = Incompetence!
The best I can conjecture at this point is that sometimes it takes an overwhelming breakdown to have an undeniable breakthrough. Am I being too optimistic?
All of us should ask ourselves two pivotal questions, daily:
· The Morning Question: What good shall I do this day?
· The Evening Question: What good have I done today?
These two questions should strike our consciousness, and our conscience.
If our leaders (in name) wish to avoid the path that leads to apathy and mediocrity, at some point they are going to have to step outside their comfort zone. It is our actions that define us, not our intentions. If they remain standing still, camouflaged away from urgent ideals, busy collecting and not connecting, stipulating and not stimulating, then their path to progress is opaque and … frightening.
To avoid aimlessness, we have to stand for something. Our leaders need to metamorphose from wishful thinking to wilful doing. To gain momentum, they have to get up and get started…with persistence and pertinacity! They need to stop looking for angels and start looking for angles: perspectives and prescriptions that are designed to propagate the greatest good, for all our people. Fear should not stop them in any way for failure shows us the way, by showing us what isn’t the way.
Leaders in name, beware the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’: aimlessness, boredom, comfort, delusion, ego, fear, and guardedness. The seeds of tomorrow’s brilliance are planted in the soil of today’s activity. It is action that creates impact, not knowledge alone.
Move from a state of ‘inaction’ to one of being ‘in action’! Bon voyage!
(The author is a visionary thought leader, breakthrough catalyst, innovation strategist and designer of learning eco-systems)