Leading by example

This is a handy guide on leadership ethics.

At the entrance to the Senate Hall of Taxila University in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, visitors get to see a Persian quote inscribed in gold: Qayadat un baghair usool, shaviz un bilam nakhuda (Leadership sans values is akin to a ship without its sailors).

This is the Persian rendition and expansion of Chanakya’s sutra: Netritvam sahitam siddhantam. It’s worthwhile to mention that during the heydays of Buddhism in the sub-continent, Taxila, (originally pronounced as Takshashila in Sanskrit and Pali), was one of the four Buddhist Universities where Chanakya taught Niti Shastra, the other three being Nalanda and Vikramshila in Bihar and Dhanyakatak in Central India. The point is: Values constitute the cornerstone of life and leadership. Without them, there’s not just a severe crisis in leadership, but also in all aspects of life.

Reams and screeds have been scribbled on the importance of values and how they influence leadership at all levels, but the moralistic impact of values in leadership has seldom been discussed. Here comes this book by corporate veterans Ramesh Subramanian and Ramakrishnan Ramiah. Even before poring over the book, while browsing through it casually, a reader gets to realise that there’s something in the book that makes it different and distinct.

Steeped in oriental and occidental wisdom with ample practical examples and instances, the authors have been able to ram home their point. Technical jargons and a complex glossary often mar a book and dissuade general readers from reading it. At the same time, a didactic and pontificating attitude of the author/s may also prove to be off-putting to the readers. But, there’s no such Naipaulic snobbery (to quote Salman Rushdie) displayed by this erudite duo.

The corporate barons have enumerated upon the role of values and how life and leadership get impacted by them. Whether it’s corporate, organisational, social or political leadership, the significance of values is a sine qua non. A great leader, whether corporate or political, is driven by values. And what are values? Values are qualms and ethical exhortations that act as a cohesive force to create a moral compass for a leader to lead by example. This revelation has been elucidated by the authors in a comprehensive manner.

An erosion of values

Today, there’s a widespread crisis in leadership because of the erosion of values. Only by creating a set of values and clinging on to them steadfastly can we hope to find a solution to this issue. The authors seem to have understood and imbibed Henry Ford’s pithy aphorism: ‘Values see and save you through a sea of crisis.’ So very true.

A Panglossian approach to leadership, coupled with a solid base of unwavering values, may bring about a sea-change to any sphere. Why and how did M K Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr and Dalai Lama succeed in their noble missions? Because, they were all leaders with exalted values who never relinquished their convictions.

The life of a leader, or for that matter, any individual, blossoms with the innate, intrinsic or core values known as familial values. With the passage of time, we all acquire certain values that are social and survivalist. A leader has to internalise these sets of values through a sort of osmosis and by being sensitive to organisational needs. He or she cannot remain opaque to the requirements of the people who’re being led. This is what essentially value-based leadership is.

It can be said that the book is an evaluation and rootification (moolanukaran in Sanskrit) of values with a corporate perspective. Kudos to the authors for tackling such a complex subject.