Can leadership de-stress??

In today’s fiercely competitive workplace, the single differential to make the ordinary become the extraordinary is leadership. The kinds of leadership, not by the sheer trappings of power, but by virtue of the kind of value add and knowledge sharing - knowledge that makes the team and organisation win in the marketplace. In fact, as I get more informed and ‘exposed’ in the corporate jungle, I tend to feel that leadership should be all about being able to ‘de-stress’ your team and at the same time make them get a sense of victory in a manner that appears to be easiest…. And appear to manage change that much easily and invisibly! And the only way to do that would be to possess the ability to impart the crucial knowledge differentials and get them equipped with a decisive edge over the competition. While there are loads written of the need to change, the human psyche and team psyche is still there to resist any change in the mildest form, and managing that front in an age when even leadership attrition is at a high is the biggest challenge for any leader… and for the team though, that is the most stressful thing to do, they rather do the same thing and perish…. It’s like that frog story in the pot of water, which get from cold to warm to hot to boil so gradual, both the frog and most of today’s team rather die that realise the need to jump and change! In my own experience of nurturing teams, on a couple of instances, I have seen that managing miniscule changes causes so much of stressful emotions in the team… and you never would get to know the hidden feelings and emotions that underlie. The singular failure in my personal leadership, I guess, is the inability to bring in even the easiest change in some teams, when there is all statistical evidence to support the need for change. And it is out of that I have come to state that maybe contemporary leadership ought to possess a style that actually de-stresses. How many leaders of that kind do we have the overall corporate universe of India? I guess not many. Even if you sum up the most prominent of them like an NRN if Infy, Premji of a Wipro or a Ratan Tata…. And a handful in the second rung leadership of our corporate…. I would assume that this is were our HR fraternity (in leadership positions or otherwise) would need to decisively focus as we move ahead creating winning organisations in a fiercely competitive and ultra-dynamic market-place. The only kind of leadership that can be a cure for most of today’s challenges in human resource management is ‘leadership that does not stress – neither the organisation nor the team.