I was a source of great amusement to my paediatrician. I would get a severe asthma attack every month, and in those days, the best solution to control it was to give the child an injection. And here was little Usha, who would start screaming from the moment he prepared the needle! ‘I haven’t even touched you Usha’ he would tell me. He just didn’t understand that the screaming and crying was in anticipation of the pain, the real thing never mattered.
I have remained this way till date. I don’t take injections, I avoid visits to the dentist until the pain in my teeth is larger than the anticipated pain at the dentist’s chair and all my self-help tactics fail; I don’t do any sport that remotely involves pain. I don’t even watch any of this on TV!
And here is the very same Usha, who is made of the most cowardly yellow stuff the good lord invented, standing at the head of a line of people, in front of a 15 feet long strip of glowing hot coals. The ‘fire-walk’ instructor is gleefully pouring kerosene onto the coals and stoking it, making the embers burst into flames and glow brighter.
‘Lets start the fire-walk team. Ms Usha, lead the way!’
‘Sudhakar!’ I scream in my head. ‘I didn’t sign up for this! What on earth made me agree to your mad suggestion of having my whole team do a ‘fire-walk’!’
He had suggested this for the team to overcome fear and be charged up for the future.
The future of a new team, created to be a new function, with a new leader (yours truly!). Sudhakar, my HR partner, had suggested this, and here I was, the leader of this function, Ms Yellow, faced with the possibility of burning her feet and god knows what other body parts – and that too voluntarily.
But walk I did, and come out with no burning parts, not even a teeny weeny boil, and the experience changed me forever.
In two ways. Personally, I learnt the beautiful lesson that the imagination is way more frightening than the reality, and I should take it easy with imagined pain and scary scenarios of the future.
But more importantly, that a leader sometimes has to do what she most fears, if she wants to lead from the front. There is no copping out, no excuse not to do what you want your team to do. You just grit your teeth and go for it.
Every day, in the workplace, we ask our teams to do things big and small, that we can escape doing just because we are the boss. It can be anything from spending time with the customer, to attending training, to keeping good notes on meetings to following the process. But if we don’t do it ourselves, we really can’t understand what it feels like, and the team will always find our huffing and puffing phony. There is no authenticity in a leader who says ‘do as I say, not as I do’
So, if you want your team to walk on coals, be ready to do it yourself, and do it first.
By the way, Usha still doesn’t do injections, doesn’t go to the dentist, no blood tests thank you. Just the occasional fire-walk 🙂
Follow me on for more thoughts, tips and tricks that can provoke thought, and can contribute to raising the level of excellence in individuals, leaders, organizations and families. Organization’s transformation starts with individuals.
I am reminded of an interesting story about President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
General Musharraf graduated from Pakistan Military Academy in 1964 and during Pakistan’s 1965 war against India over Kashmir he won a medal for gallantry. When war with India came again in 1971, he led a squadron of commandos from the Special Service Group. He would train his men not to flinch at danger and his favorite training exercise to help his men overcome fear was that he would order a soldier to lie as close to a set of railroad tracks as possible, facing an oncoming train. “The train will definitely not touch you,” he would tell the soldier. “But you have to keep your head up and eyes open.” And, he would do this exercise first before asking his soldiers to follow.
No wonder he was the only leader in Asia, perhaps in the world, who survived the number and magnitude of political crises during the years 2000-10.
When you become a leader, success is about making the people who work for you smarter, bigger and bolder and helping them increase their self-confidence.
SHWETANK
Usha I am reminded of an interesting story about President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
General Musharraf graduated from Pakistan Military Academy in 1964 and during Pakistan’s 1965 war against India over Kashmir he won a medal for gallantry. When war with India came again in 1971, he led a squadron of commandos from the Special Service Group. He would personally train his men not to flinch at danger and his favorite training exercise to help his men overcome fear was that he would order a soldier to lie as close to a set of railroad tracks as possible, facing an oncoming train. “The train will definitely not touch you,” he would tell the soldier. “But you have to keep your head up and eyes open.” However, he would perform this exercise himself first before asking his soldiers to follow.
No wonder President Musharraf was the only leader in Asia, perhaps in the world, who survived the number and magnitude of political crises during the years 2000-10.
When you become a leader success is all about making the people who work for you smarter, bigger, bolder and helping them increase their self-confidence.
SHWETANK