The making of a leader

The book is as much about leadership as it is an autobiography of an academician who transformed IIM Kozhikode from an obscure regional school to an institution of national impact and global recognition.

However, the book seems to lean more towards the latter as it shares insights from Debashis Chatterjee’s personal and professional journey of nearly three decades.

As such, Leadership Chronicles is not quite a book that talks about the qualities that make a successful leader, even though this aspect, too, has been covered in a chapter. Neither does it give a plethora of examples of various leaders who made it to the top with some astounding qualities or failed for lack of them. It is more of the author’s view on how he transformed the education sphere, be it the IIMs or IMI, and how everyday life experiences of common people provide insights on what it takes to be a leader.

Chatterjee starts by saying that to know what leadership is, or rather what all should be in a leader, one does not have to look into the corporate towers. His grandmother, for instance, was less educated, but she showed some unselfish traits that were revered by the people around her. This is a clear example of what a leader should have. It is a simple and straightforward trait that rarely occurs to us. In fact, the prudence we show at home when there are limited resources is a good clue to running companies where leaders should learn how to make do with the existing resources. This trait is rarely acknowledged in leadership classes. So, there is this eternal question of whether leaders are born or is it something learnt along the way.

The author is quite spot on when he puts forward the view that the real test of any leader is when the economy is down and not up. In fact, all the stories that we read of any leader are related to doing exceptionally when the going is good. But what when the chips are down? Here, the important thing is the capability of the person that comes out in times of adversity.

Often leaders buckle under pressure and get nasty to everyone around. This is a lesson that comes from the ordinary day life experiences of even the man on the street. Here, the character that stands out is how one successfully deals with adversity. He gives the example of Panasonic where at crunch time the choice was to sell the company or pay employees half salary and ask them to turn around the company. Founder Kanosuke Matsushita offered the company to the employees and there was a remarkable transformation seen as the workers took on the challenge to bring about this change. He described this act as holding an umbrella to the employees when it was raining.

The unique way of delivering a message is the reason why this book should be read. A field like education may look like a large edifice that one cannot alter. But the author’s desire to bring about change is what he believed in and was able to implement with success-so much so that these practices are now being adopted in other institutions. He brought about gender diversity consciously in IIM-K. This was the first institution that had 54% female representation in the MBA course. These days, this is an aspiration that is being pursued by several such institutions. Even at the micro level one can make a difference as seen when the author ensured that the entire campus was clean with emphasis on the state of washrooms. Now, this is something that is rarely looked at even in the best of educational institutions.

In the course of the book, Chatterjee points out three rather repulsive behaviour traits that emanate from what he calls the ‘ego centres’ of bosses that should be avoided. These are interesting, for sure, as one can often see it in the organisation one works in. The first is flattery, which gets into the heads of leaders and often they relate the success of the company to themselves as this is how the people around interpret their glory. And such people, the author writes, are often those with a traumatic childhood that leads to this level of insecurity. The other is what he calls ‘bitchiness’, which, he says, is gender neutral. Here too, one can see such traits where the boss pries into what you do in office that can mean getting distracted by Facebook! Now that sounds quite familiar. Last is ‘cowardice’, where they would not like to take bold decisions and hide behind power games, precedent, and prejudice.

Now a rather relevant example he brings in where almost all readers who are fond of cricket will agree is the case of Virat Kohli. Everyone agrees that his contribution to cricket is overwhelming and he has been able to blow away opposition teams with his aggression. But he rightly points out that he has promoted a brand of leadership that is too intense to be sustainable. Leadership, the author points out, is about ‘taming the galloping horse of talent with the reins of temperament.’ He continues this theme when he concludes that following one’s passion without discrimination may land one in the mud with a thud, as many leaders have discovered. The message is singularly hard hitting and once can relate to several cases in the corporate world.

Chatterjee provides some useful insights on leadership, even though the chosen route is quite different from other expositions. It requires a lot of introspection for leaders to actually ask themselves whether they are on the right track. This is of importance because the author says that a leader not only grows within a culture but also carries the culture within himself. He talks of five qualities-vision, reflection of self-study, teamwork, equanimity of mind and state of being self-fulfilled. It may rather be philosophical, but it has definitely worked for the author as he has shown the transformation brought about in the education sphere. For sure, this can be carried through all other lines of business.

The author is chief economist with Bank of Baroda.

Book: Leadership Chronicles: My Experiments with Globalizing Indian Thought

Author: Debashis Chatterjee

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Pp 256, Rs 599