Of leadership and motivation

Leadership. It's a thrill like nothing else, and a responsibility too. That brings us to the question about what are the responsibilities of a leader? For one, to be able to lead from the front, in that you take most of the criticism that comes your group's way, and you also are able to guide your team. The second, and in my case the more important one, is to be able to inspire others around you, and to be able to create sustainability in the organisation/endeavour, so that the organisation/endeavour lives on even after you go.

That is where I think my failure as a leader emanates from. For example, while I was the President of ECONOX, I was unable to effectively delegate work to my colleagues in the society. Now, a part of it can be ascribed to the fact that (1) DPS, R.K. Puram's societies function more as CV-building exercises than anything else (2) the level of bonding between dipsites is abysmal at most. True, that does not account for all my insufficiencies in this regard, but most other societies also functioned in that way. Kritika and I ended up doing most of the work. So, yes, I was able to inspire Kritika (and she was able to inspire me) and then Sneha did a lot of work during ECONORM week and we sailed through as a fairly successful society. However, I always felt I had been a bad leader. My juniors at school, those to whom I could talk later on, told me that I was indeed a very good President, and that those who succeeded me had not been able to either involve or inspire others. In this regard, familiarity with your colleagues becomes of exceptional importance. Some call it 'networking', but I guess this familiarity is absolutely essential for leadership.

Then, coming to college and working with individuals, in societies and otherwise, I realised how tough it sometimes gets to coordinate with people, to get them to do their part of the work on time. A part of this can be ascribed to my own hyper-activism as far as it comes to work, but seriously, there has to be a reason why those working with me procrastinate so much. Well, to be honest, I've seen everybody procrastinate, and I at times do it myself. That's it about discipline in life. It depends on the way you grew up, your upbringing, and your experiences in life. I like to do things fast, because I generally do things the way I like them. True, I won't get this liberty later on in life, but as long as I am enjoying it, it's fine.

So, why are others not able to keep pace. There are two possible reasons (1) they don't feel as strongly about the goal as I do (2) they are not able to discipline their minds enough. By 'disciplining the mind', I do not refer to any yogic exercises, because I've seen yoga practitioners procrastinate too; I mean it in an extremely professional sense - i.e. do work as fast as you can. One day Aditi Bajpayi told me, 'asap means whenever you can, in a day or two', which it literally does, but for me, asap means immediately, it's like a red sign to get working. I still haven't found the key to inspiration and motivation, as I have not found the key to several problems in life, but I shall keep trying as much as I can to perfect this art. Hopefully, that will not involve giving up on my own enthusiasm for things.