Article#24: Leadership

A leader is not someone who just assigns the work, but is someone who is capable of making you work neither with a request nor with an order. He is someone who helps you in the task, someone who drives you all the way along, motivates you with his words, encourages you with your strengths, appreciates you when you achieve, and corrects you when you go wrong. Leadership is not something just related to a job or a project, but is something that plays a major role in meeting a goal. Well, in this article, I am going to share my experience as a leader not professionally, but personally.

It’s been 7 long years since we people left the college. We were in touch only with the ones whom we knew very well. Everyone was in touch with someone or the other, but it’s not that all of us were in touch with every one of us. It was the New Year 2017. We boys had a small get together wherein we thought of taking the advantage of this technology advent and wanted to form a fresh Whatsapp group with our classmates. We were able to pull off almost everyone except a few. Then the question arises, who is going to lead the group? One more thing was people were in dilemma on how to interact with each other in the group. After all, we would have the groups to talk, not just to send some forward messages. I wanted to put a full stop to all this and I came forward. I didn’t want the group to be just like any ordinary group. I wanted each and every member to talk, interact, exchange their ideas, refresh their memories, relax with the chats in the group, relive the good old days. I took the leadership with a self-designed show called “Target”. Daily I target one member in the group and anyone can ask any question to that member, they have to respond. I used to dedicate the Fridays for general discussion on how we can improve our show because as a leader it is very important to consider the ideas of your team and see how you can implement for achieving the goal. Then I used to plan the Saturdays for some fun activity like Dubsmash because it is required for a leader to mingle with his team to better understand them. A leader has to maintain that gap wherein the team could feel free to come forward in expressing themselves, mingle with him, but at the same time give the respect for him. Respect is not something that we seek or ask for, but is something that we earn. A leader has to earn the respect from his team. For us, Sunday is a holiday because while keeping the goal alive, a leader should also ensure that the team has work-life balance. Seems to be little funny in my example, but I did lead the group in a professional way to reach our goal more than in a casual way. Now, you may ask me a question, how did you make the members of the group talk? Here comes the next quality of a leader which according to me is being creative. I used to keep the welcome note daily as new as possible like Director-Host Interaction, An FM RJ type welcome, A TV show start, etc. I used to write description for everyone, choose a title for them something like “Humorous Target”, “Sparkling Target”, “Shining Target”, etc., then change the group subject as something like ‘Open chat with XXX’ and change the DP of the group with that of the Target for the day. I believe all these things served as a source of encouragement for my friends to talk in the group. I used to be the first one to post the questions for the Target because a leader should take the initiative. The chats sometimes used to be huge, people in US used to receive around 800 messages when they wake up daily in the morning. Some questions were serious, some were funny, some were interesting, but I ensured that none of them hurt a member in the group. At the end of the day, I used to give them the score based on their performance, it is again as a leader to encourage my team for participating in the show on a daily basis with more enthusiasm and interest.

For almost four months, I had no secondary thought except my show, how can I do it better? How can I make it more interesting? How can I engage the maximum members for a target? How can I write perfect description for someone? What could be the fitting title? The only goal behind this concept is to refresh our college memories. It could have been just fine if I tried to memorize the things and present them, but that makes our goal incomplete because one can share only few memories, but everyone of us together can share unlimited memories which some of us could forget or don’t know at all. This should be another quality of a leader wherein he puts all his efforts along with his team or sometimes even more than that to achieve a common goal. Out of 58 targets, there were 50 hits which means that I was able to make 50 members interact in the group. We had 8 flops wherein I couldn’t drag them after many trails. This should be the next quality of a leader, accepting the failure.

For everything we do, we always have the other side of the coin. Even in my show, I experienced some challenges. There were members, who commented that I was doing time pass by collecting votes on Fridays in our general discussions something like our future get together plans. But I completely ignored them because a leader should have the notion that everyone’s opinion matters, also at the same time, should have belief in himself that he is doing it right. There were also some who doubted me about my choice of targets on a daily basis although they were just random picks. Then I brought the concept of nominating a member, if I get good quantity of votes for a particular member to target, I would do them soon. This way a leader should be in a position to give an optimum solution for an issue or problem raised in the team. There were even people who thought that I was partial in giving the scores at the end of the day. But I explained them on the reasons and also the criteria for their score. This way a leader should be in a position to express his actions with requisite proofs as required.

Finally, my journey as a host came to an end after I completed targeting everyone in the group. I wrote a long thank you note to all of my friends for helping me in achieving our common goal. Here, as a leader I went on to appreciate the members who gave me their brilliant ideas during the show and who helped me, supported me, understood me in taking the intent right. It’s once in a lifetime experience for me as I can never forget that I as a host was successful in engaging 50 members through a show and I believe I followed my own leadership style that made an impact on my friends. Maybe that was the reason I received lot of appreciations for my thank you note on the last day of our show. Attaining success alone gives you confidence, but attaining success as a team gives you strength. Now, what are you waiting for? Try to do something with a team of friends or colleagues and achieve success, you’ll notice a leader within you. All the best J