Kishore Borra

Mumbai Dabbawala

As a leader, I am always a process improvement enthusiast. I strongly believe that leaders must continuously look for ways and means to improve the organization’s processes. Leadership commitment and support are critical for successful process improvement initiatives in any company. I also strongly believe that organizations don’t need extraordinary talent to achieve extraordinary performance when the right system is in place.

With the popularity of mobile apps such as Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats, many cities in India and the rest of the world now started enjoying the privilege of ordering specially prepared food being delivered either directly at their home doorstep or the work desk.  But dabbawalas have been doing it for 130 years – and the newcomers have much to learn. Also, the new-age digital rivals couldn’t match the low-cost and high-performance service provided by dabbawalas. By far, the Mumbai Dabbawala Association is one of the best case studies of Six Sigma and ISO 9001:2000 certified, process-driven, error-free, low-investment business from India.

Let me share what I learned from my mentor John C Maxwell this week.  This week John taught us about Inside Out Leadership.

The inside influences the outside. Great leadership is always an inside job. 

When you’re better on the inside than the outside, and when you’re bigger on the inside than the outside, over time, you will become greater on the outside. In other words, when you’re better on the outside than the inside, and bigger on the outside than the inside, over time, you will become less on the outside. 

Better on the inside deals with character, integrity, authenticity, honesty, trustworthiness, walk your talk, showing more than telling, being more than doing. With a better inside, we may have a slow start, but it eventually shows up. 

The number one criterion for success is the ability to connect with people. Connecting is the ability to identify with people and relate to them to increase our influence with them.

Characteristics of inside-out leaders: 

1. Inside-out leaders value more than position. 
2. Inside-out leaders inspire others because others inspire them. You cannot inspire others unless you get inspired yourself.
3. Inside-out leaders are secure enough to appreciate and acknowledge others.
4. Inside-out leaders do not abuse power. 
5. Inside-out leaders extend grace and forgiveness to others.
6. Inside out, leaders acknowledge and apologize for their mistakes. 

Often, leaders mistakenly believe that they must be considered great to do only the right things. Apologizing is an act of humility. Humility attracts and inspires. Arrogance does not. 

Connectors live what they communicate. During the first six months, your communication overrides credibility, and after six months, your credibility overrides communication.

Skillful leaders constantly uncover their true selves, manage their emotions, achieve great goals, and are conscious of their unique talents and how to maximize them.

John C. Maxwell offers these eight questions to assess one’s level of self-leadership:

1. Are you investing in yourself?  This question is all about your personal growth.  How can you teach what you do not know and take others to where you have not been?
2. Are you genuinely interested in others?  Are you more concerned about other’s agendas than your own? There is nothing worse than a self-centered leader.
3. Are you doing what you love, and do you love what you do?  Passion provides the fuel that provides you with the energy to be a great leader.
4. Are you investing time with the right people?  Leaders surround themselves with talented, inspired people who want to make a difference.
5. Are you working in your strength zone?  Leaders are keenly aware of what they are great at and what they love to do, and they spend most of their time doing these things.
6. Are you taking others to a higher level?  Leaders help others unleash their inner talents.
7. Are you taking care of today?  Leaders are natural visionaries, and they also know how to focus on the daily agenda and priorities at hand.
8. Are you taking the time to think?  Great leaders love action.  However, they also are talented at disciplining themselves to stop every day and think creatively.

Change the world around you by changing yourself. Regularly retrospect your self-leadership abilities to grow and evolve.

I had the misfortune of working with a leader for some time who is quite moody, inconsistent, and unpredictable. You never know what he is going to say or do the very next moment. Since you don’t know what to expect, you surely become hesitant, fearful, and nervous. In addition to that, quite contrary to my nature, I remember always going to him with the problems instead of the proposed solutions that I have in my mind.

My colleagues and I struggled to figure out how to navigate his leadership and predict what he wants and had a severe impact on our productivity. One minute he will ask you about your kids, and the next minute he will threaten you. Sometimes he will help us with the solution, and other times he is angry that there is a problem. Often as a team, when we planned to celebrate small wins, we are not sure whether to invite him or not. When we request a minute of his time, sometimes he will hug us, and other times he will push you away. When you greet him in the office or the cafeteria, sometimes, he will smile and say hello, and other times he will ignore you. We always looked at him as a self-centered leader because he is always focused on his feelings, thoughts, priorities, and plan. He intentionally or unintentionally never had room to focus on the team he is leading and always puts his needs and wants ahead of his team members and everyone else.

Sometimes as a leader, you want to remain as unpredictable for a certain period on certain policies but certainly not with your people in your day to day interactions. Psychologists have proved that being unable to predict what happens in a team environment is extremely stressful and requires complex coping skills to deal with. Unfortunately, being unpredictable was a life and leadership strategy for my manager. He took a lot of pride in his unpredictable nature and often thought about it as a strategy to keep his team on their toes whenever they think they have figured out how to work with him. He ended up creating a lot of noise at the workplace.

What would you do if you worked for a moody boss who yelled and cursed you regularly? The answer is simple; you would work hard to find another job because life is way too short to work with fools. If you think you are an unpredictable leader, then its time that you should start working on consistency. It would help if you made it easy for your team to meet your expectations because unpredictability is a nightmare for people trying to manage upwards. The question is, how do you know whether you are displaying unpredictable nature or not? Simple; check if you have any one of the below qualities.

1. Do you get angry about small mistakes and problems?
2. Do you find it difficult to control your emotions or mood?
3. Do you treat people with disrespect?
4. Do you withhold information from the team and thereby making them incapable to take the right decisions?
5. Do you struggle to recognize people’s contributions or success?
6. Do you jump to conclusions and pass judgment without having all the facts?
7. Do you lack listening skills?
8. Do you feel insecure and unwilling to allow the team to decide without your involvement?
9. Do you say something, meaning the other and doing the third one altogether?

Pastor, best selling author, and leadership evangelist Craig Groeschel says that when we say the same thing repeatedly as a leader, and your actions are consistent with your words, that builds trust. Consistency matters in leadership. People would follow a leader rather with a consistently average plan than a leader with a great plan, bad plan, or a mediocre plan that changes all the time.  When you are predictable and consistent, your team knows what is important to you and how you decide on priorities.

The below actions can help you make consistent in your decisions and makes you predictable.

1. Be intentional to respond instead of reacting.
2. Firstly thank people for bringing problems or concerns to your attention. Do not forget to ask questions, get their perspectives, and evaluate their feedback for any solution proposals.
3. When in doubt, refer to your organization’s purpose and values, which always act as a guiding light and help you make correct decisions.
4. Take time to discuss with the team and explain how you arrived at decisions for recurring situations.
5. Do not hesitate to admit when you’re wrong or when you do not have all the answers.
6. Connecting with the team requires energy. Make an effort to greet your team pleasantly.
7. If you conform to a course of action, follow up and see it through to the end.
8. Do not hesitate to remove yourself from the situation and seek advice.
9. Never make a decision when you are angry and never make a promise when you are happy.
10. Let every conversation to be a constructive conversation rather than an emotional dump.
11. Finally, take more blame than you deserve and less credit than you deserve.

Remember you don’t have to know it all to be a great leader. Be yourself, because people would rather follow a leader who is always real than one who is always right.