Leadership is a choice not everyone can make

March 17, 2007, was a forgettable day for Indian cricket. On this day, at the Port of Spain, Bangladesh had beaten India by five wickets and ousted the favourites from the World Cup. It was not only the end of the line for the captain Rahul Dravid, but it also cast a serious doubt on the claim for the top berth for the Men in Blue. Both Sachin and Ganguli, two of the most successful white-ball players, declined, and the crisis deepened as the inaugural T20 World Cup approached.

A new format, evolving rules, and a rookie team were to be led by somebody, and the charge fell on the shoulders of the 26-year-old Ranchi-boy Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Barely inducted into the team a few years ago, Dhoni was facing the tournament of his life, and little did anyone know that he would emerge as the most successful skipper in the limited-overs format. He remains the only Indian captain to lift all three ICC trophies - the 50-over World Cup (2011), the T20 World Cup (2007), and the Champions Trophy (2013) and took India to the top of the ICC Test rankings.

Was Dhoni the senior-most player? No. Was he at the top of any rankings? No. Did he have a record of leading teams? No. Yet he became the captain. Because he made the ‘choice’ of becoming a captain. A choice not everyone can make. ‘One of the things I really liked about playing under MS was that he never asked you to do anything that he himself didn't do,’ confides The Wall (Dravid) about Captain Cool, and that sums up the essence of leadership – walk the talk, and talk the walk.

One of the rites of passage in the corporate world is when someone ceases to be an individual contributor and becomes a team leader. It seems such a natural transition that if one fails to inch up the corporate totem pole in commensuration with a receding hairline, the employee is earmarked as irksome and then some. Remaining an individual contributor for long is both a financial millstone and a social grindstone – it tires you down and doesn’t offer much social currency either. Every engineer must have a Faustian Bargain in becoming a manager – a trade in which the firm loses an able engineer and gains a lousy manager. Why? Because that’s what is expected of you—move up, amass people, and manage masses. But does an uber manager automatically become a leader? Do you keep assimilating people to a point where, someday, you metamorphose into a leader? Or, is leadership beyond management? I reckon that to manage is inherited, but to lead is earned. One doesn’t even need to have people reporting under you for you to be annotated as a leader.

Ever heard of Stanislav Petrov? Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces, is often dubbed ‘The Man Who Saved the World’. While on duty on September 26, 1983, at the height of the Cold War, Petrov detected five approaching USA nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles on his early-warning satellite system. The protocol stated that the authorities be alerted and that a counterstrike be initiated by the Soviets, lest it be too late.

Petrov instead reasoned that if the USA intended to attack, it would do so with a barrage of missiles, not just five, indicating that the early warning system had malfunctioned. His judgment was redeemed as the Soviet satellites had mistaken the reflection of the sun off clouds for attacking missiles. How did his seniors respond to his heroics? He was reprimanded for insubordination, and the episode wasn’t declassified till the USSR was dismantled. Years later, the world realized how close we all were to a nuclear holocaust, and leadership is a critical choice, not preordained by your reporting structure. The episode unfolds on the heels of the heroics of another Russian, Vice Admiral Vasili Arkhipov, who refused to launch a nuclear torpedo from his submarine B-59 on October 29, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, averting World War III.

Leadership is a choice and is exercised only at the time of crisis, except that a leader can emerge from the most unexpected quarters, from down the ranks, or from outside the formation. Dhoni, Petrov, and Arkhipov were men from beyond the establishment. They absorbed immense pressure from all around, maintained a level-headed approach, and took extreme ownership of their decisions, often in the face of immediate flak from superiors and onlookers. 

In the corporate world, it’s a sobering reminder that leadership is not a popularity contest and not a game of amassing people. It's in being selective about the battles you wish to fight, the people you wish to include, the price you are willing to pay, and the posterity you dare to script. Hope you show up on the fateful day, strong. Till such time, sharpen your axe.