Leadership is challenging, but recruiting the right leader is even a bigger challenge. Involved in the recruitment myself, I have noticed that while choosing a leader, recruiter looks for many attributes including assertiveness, confidence, persuasion, and charisma. But are these enough? In spite of all these qualities, when I look at leaders around me I feel that something is always missing. Perhaps the most important element to look in a leader is Negativity.
I am not suggesting that even if a leader is extremely positive, he or she will be enormously successful. Of course, other elements are equally important. But negative attitude does play a very important role in shaping up a leader’s personality and team’s morale. I have worked with several role models in my career and whenever I get a chance, I try to analyze their personality.
One manager in my current company had a habit of not trusting his members. Rather than cheering them, he was often found sarcastically laughing and making comments, such as “I knew that you will not be able to do it”. Even if a leader believes that a resource does not have particular skill, or perhaps she doesn’t have aptitude to learn it, comments such as these are only going to demotivate the resource and hurt the productivity even more. Even supposing that such comments are made in positive light, no one would consider these comments as lesson and try to learn from them. If so, what do these leaders get by making such comments? Frankly, I could not find answer to this question.
While speaking to another colleague who was not happy with her current manager, I realized that how deep the impact negativity may have. Even though she was a good resource, she lost complete confidence in her abilities due to the negative attitude of her manager. In fact, she mentioned that if my current manager thinks that I am not good enough, I must not be good, and that who else can assess me except my manager? I tried to convince her that you are doing extremely well, but when negativity creeps in one’s mind, even genuine efforts may not prove very useful.
Incidents such as these makes you think that even if a leader doesn’t have other important qualities, it doesn’t matter as long as the leader has positive attitude. Positive attitude should be the first founding stone of a good leadership. A good leader backs the team off all the time and keeps the spirit of the team high while continuously tapping on the back as a mother does to her son.
Random Thoughts 