Strategizing to Win: There is No One Right Way to be a Leader

To inspire change that cascades over individuals, organizations, and at times, culture itself is a mighty task and an even mightier achievement. Anyone who encourages such transcendent transformation is worthy of respect and the mantle of leader. To lead people towards personal growth, a collective goal, or a long-cherished dream requires courage, conviction, and above all, a capacity for goodness. 

But it is not often easy to be a leader of such magnitude; there will be testing times when methods will be questioned and intentions shaken. The kind of leadership you adopt, that is, your leadership strategy for a given situation/challenge influences the outcome and the people involved. The strategy varies according to the situation and there is no one right way to lead. 

Nurturing the Young

A young and inexperienced team will have limited knowledge on the approaches and actions required to achieve the goal. Hence, the guidance they require will go beyond the confines of organizational processes and extend to personal growth. What they need is not a manager who supervises their everyday tasks, but a mentor, whose nurturing support helps them evolve in their professional avatars.

Fresh with the knowledge they gained from their textbooks, the young professionals will not be the best judges of adapting to the pressures of the corporate world. They will have to be gently coaxed out of their comfortable conventions and inspired to not just step out of the metaphorical box, but also to believe that sometimes, the box doesn’t exist.

The fictional English teacher, John Keating, portrayed by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, is a progressive leader who encourages self-expression in his students to unlock their potential. With his somewhat eccentric methods, he elevates them to be the masters of their destiny by thinking for themselves instead of treading on well-trodden tracks laid out by someone else. Keating’s approach too is noteworthy. He himself doesn’t adhere to the traditions that dull the minds of teachers and students and thus becomes a leader who leads by example. Following him is effortless, not because the path he shows is easy, for it is not, but he is ever-present in that journey, guiding the way. 

Aggression Doesn’t Always Hurt

The open-minded professional, willing to accept criticism and feedback, and patiently works on it is a myth. Self-willed individuals, brimming with potential but driven by self-interest, on the other hand, are a common sight. To bring determined, willful individuals together and make them work as a team requires more than a nurturing leader. Sometimes, a little aggression helps with a tough crowd, as long as the goal is true.

An autocratic approach to leadership never sounds ideal but a loud voice is always better heard than a soft one. A leader must be unafraid to take action when the situation warrants it, as Ken Carter did in 1999. As the head coach of basketball in Richmond High School, when he realized that the players in the team were not concerned about their grades, Coach Carter took a very tough call. When his multiple attempts at making the students realize the value of education failed, he locked up the gym and canceled consecutive basketball seasons, breaking their winning streak.

Much like Coach Carter, who was unfazed in the face of harsh criticism, manifested most often in physical violence, the strength of his convictions will help a leader in reaching through to his disarrayed team and transform them into a winning one.

Adversity and Vision

Trying times motivate one to think harder and innovate because the struggle is real. This is when we are forced to break the barriers of conventions and invent something new. Something of a similar nature happened to J.B. Bernstein, the CEO of Access Group, an athlete management firm. After facing a crushing setback in his business one night, Bernstein caught glimpses on TV of Yao Ming, the first Chinese basketball player to attain stardom in the US, thus gaining an enormous fan base for the sport in China. He also happened to notice a cricket match on ESPN some time later, which led him to the idea of finding pitchers for baseball from India.

It was a crazy idea. And everyone said so. But Bernstein saw huge potential in his dream. Undiscovered talent lay waiting for him in this distant land. Long story short, with his reality show Million Dollar Arm in 2007, Bernstein changed the lives of two rural young men from Uttar Pradesh, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, by giving them the chance to enter professional baseball in the US.

Bernstein’s success lies not just in his belief in his dream; he never wavered from it no matter what the negativity. Bernstein, a self-declared narcissist, was willing to change himself, adapt to the new surroundings, and best of all, willing to learn from his students. He changed them and let them change him. A visionary leader one might be, but the leader must be willing to learn from his subordinates.

Leading with Audacity

Trying something new and being innovative is not always easy. Vision is not the only tool that you need to be innovative; you need audacity too to tackle the enormous consequences. It was both vision and audacity that helped Branch Rickey, baseball’s most innovative executive, overthrow the color barriers in the game as well as bring about lasting changes in it.

In 1945, Rickey founded a baseball league for black players with the sole intention of finding the best pitcher; he found him in Jackie Robinson who became part of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Rickey was with Robinson through all the discrimination he faced, boosting his confidence and sometimes, completely restoring it. An aggressive man by nature, it was not always easy for Robinson to not fight against this cruelty. Rickey, who knew the consequences of such an action, was known to have told him, “I want someone who is brave enough not to fight back.” 

Rickey’s leadership, which stood the test of opposition and negativity, was such a resounding success that by 1952, other executives were on the lookout for black players, resulting in 150 of them finding their way into multiple teams, effectively ending segregation in baseball.