Six qualities of a Leader - APJ Kalam

Bieng a writer and blogger is always interesting, I was recently reading about Brain Stuart an artistic poet who wrote the most famous whole earth catalogue in 60's wrote in its farewell publication " Stay hungry and stay foolish". I m sure life would have been more interesting if everyone lived with the same spirit. I have hardly seen people who live for themselves, I myself never did till I realised lately, when we start living for ourselves we have hunger to learn more, and do foolish things which are more creative than normal, being foolish means knowing that there is hell lot of things to learn and what ever you have learned will never suffice.

There are people who inspire, motivate us throughout our lifetime.. I have been quietly ordinaned to be man who believes in some of the leaders. I feel great when I read Niti Shastra from Chanakya, his thoughts and work ever read with full faith and understanding can make any one a better leader. We feel so great to hear these leaders, thier work and deed will inspire and motivate us for centuries. Why do we look at the world with whole lot of optimism and faith when we read, hear them? .....

Luckily I had an opportunity to listen to one of the most beloved leaders in Indian History, who doesn't require any introduction at all. He lead our country as the president, well known as "The misile man of India". A patriot dedicated his life in betterment of people and the country. Abdul kalam is the first scientist to head the world's largest democracy. Abdul Kalam is acknowledged as the driving force behind India's leap in the defence technology that brought India in the league of nuclear nations.

'Mr. Kalam's life is a message itself" , he says any leader must have 6 qualities to lead effectively.. In this article I would like to discuss about those 6 qualities in brief so to give a reader better understanding of each qualities.

Mentioned below are the qualities or traits a leader must have - hope you guys enjoy as much as I did when I wrote???

1. A leader must have vision - There is an old saying in english " If you don't know where you are going any road can take you", leader must know the paradise even before he sets for his Journey and he must have seen even before it is reality.

2. A leader must travel towards unexplored path - Where people see end, leader sees an opportunity to start a new venture, One of the board directors of IBM once said " World hardly has market for 5 computers", where people saw nothing Bill Gates visualised a wonderful world for himself and his employees.

3. He must know how to Manage success and most importantly the failures - To explain what he really means its good to state one of his own experiences. " When he was the mission director of SLV, team took help of computers to check the system and to launch it. It got into trouble, instead of satelite going into orbit, the whole rocket went in to Bay of Bengal. Our man failed miserably, The leader and then chairman Satish Dhawan considered as the one of the visinory leaders took the responsibility of failure and next year in 1980 the team succeeded, and Satish dhawan told Mr Kalam to address the press conference.

The message is very clear "The leader takes failure alone and stands firm with his team but when team succeeds the credit goes to the team not to the leader". I think Nelson Mandela the great leader said it beautifully " It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership".

4. Leader must have courage to take decision - I don't know how to do I describe courage, but let me put in a very simple way. Courage is a mental, moral strength to stand for what is right? its the quality and stregth of the mind which enables us to encounter any danger or difficulties with firmness and difficulties. Remember leaders are always compared with an Eagle which flies high and high....

When Gandhi said "non-voilence is the way out for independance", think about the failures he might have encountered still he stood firm and built an army of strong believers in Non- voilence and today we call him BAAPU.

5. Leader must have nobility in Management - Nobility in Management can never be learned by reading a set of book, leadership is a process, likewise to inbuilt Nobality in management is process where you build some traits which disintiguish you from others. Nobility in Management can be defined as set of acts, traits, character which differs from others.

6. Every action of the leader should be transparent, leader must work with integrity and succeed with the Integrity - I suppose this is the most unseen character in leaders of today, Integrity is a set of principle, Ideas, Moral values which helps to make the right decisions in our daily life.

I would like to end this blog by reciting Mr Kalam's peom "Learning gives creativity, creativity leads to thinking. Thinking provides knowledge and knowledge makes you great" – A P J Kalam.