Couple of days ago, I had an opportunity to listen to Mr. Abhijit Bhaduri, writer of some of the famous books like Mediocre But Arrogant and Married But Available. If one would have noticed carefully, both titles share the same acronym MBA which actually makes the backdrop of books. To access his site click here.

He was talking on leadership. Some of the insights which he provided were really fresh and helpful at personal level. The traits in leaders which he elaborated upon were -

1) Trust: - It is very important for any leader to develop trust among his people. The quicker a leader establishes trust, quicker he is accepted as a leader. Now trust could take several shapes and forms. One could trust another person for his functional qualities, or could trust for being always there. A leader should be able to develop trust at several levels - functional level, emotional level, mentorship level etc…

2) Consistency:- A leader is called a leader only if there are any followers. And followers want stability, consistency and predictability. They don’t want to follow anyone who is driven by whims and fancies and is mercurial in nature. Hence a leader needs to be consistent in order to provide that comforting feeling to his followers.

3) Looking beyond the Obvious:- According to Mr. Abhijit, any leader should have the ability to look around the corners and beyond the obvious. He needs to keep an eye around the curve to observe the changes so that when his team reaches that juncture, he already has a strategy and plan in place.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from the session was the categorization of brands into “Loved” and “Respected“. He elaborated on the concept by giving several examples from his life. In essence what he meant was that a leader should always strive to be “loved” and “respected“. And this is exactly where all the trouble comes in; to strike a balance between being “Loved” and “Respected”.

But then who says Leadership is easy?

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