Can I be a Leader?
Samikshya Bhattarai, DNPPF 2023
"Pack your bags and leave for home if you cannot solve this issue!" a statement I still remember vividly even after more than eight years of the incident. Back then I was in my undergraduate years and as a student of the seniormost batch was leading a group of students from junior batches on a weeklong practical field trip. The statement was thrown towards me as a leader after some students from my group did partake in an activity that brought our whole team to a negative light. As someone who really believed in our team, and their freedom, and valued their opinions, this felt like a betrayal to me and also made me question if I am good enough to be in a leading role. Since that day the doubt still persists within me even though there have been other instances too where in my leadership my team have had achieved our collective goals. But as they say, negatives probably stick to you more than positives.
Cut back to the present, to the LPI- Leadership Training Module I session by Dr. Pukar Malla where we were introduced to the concept of adaptive leadership and the type of challenges someone in a leadership position might encounter while walking towards their goals. The session made me realize the importance of being able to identify types of challenges encountered in the leadership journey correctly to draft apt interventions for those accordingly. To elaborate on it further, technical challenges where problems and solutions are known can be different from adaptive challenges where both problems and solutions to those problems are not clear. And if an adaptive challenge is treated as a technical one and vice versa the consequences can lead to a bigger failure. Another idea that was introduced to us was how people are not reluctant to change but reluctant to the loss (or perceived loss) that might be resulted from the proposed change. This can be seen in a context where intervention proposed by leaders as a solution to any existing issue is faced by resistance. I found this approach to looking at resistance to interventions by subjects to be a very empathetic module. If only when one understands why people act the way they do, they can lay out proper plans to deal with such resistance smoothly. I believe the solution does not steam from the place of blaming. If we just look at somebody's resistance to ideas as resistance to change rather than looking into the fear behind their opposition, we will be lost in the echo chamber of complaints. This very striking proposition then also helped me go back to all those times I faced resistance and like in the above-mentioned incident where my leadership was even brought into question. The whole session was very relatable to many problems that I have encountered in my life - mostly professional life. I had been exposed to many resources on leadership including texts on leadership typology before, but this training module's focus on adaptive leadership did bring my questions and doubts about my own capability that I have been trying to avoid for a long time to the foreground and help me dissect it objectively.
Then in the second session of our leadership training (LPI- Leadership Training Module II), we were introduced to the tools that can help us understand our own 'self'. Identifying our loyalties – professional, societal, and ancestral - that make us take certain decisions when faced with chaotic situations felt like another one of those handy tools for me to understand my own values and behaviors led by those values, especially in challenging situations. Having faced a number of failures in my life even during those times I thought I knew myself well enough, this session by Dr. Malla helped me understand that I probably was missing out on or not ready to face unfavorable truth about my loyalties that have had hold me back multiple times to reach towards my goal. In the end, there was a statement presented by Dr. Malla that probably will stay with me more than the one I presented at the start of this blog. But this is not a negative statement that will hold me back but a positive one which will give me strength and confidence to make decisions and move forward in my life and who knows will help build myself as a leader not afraid of chaos, challenges, and failure. And it goes like this –"Mountains are not to be carried but to be climbed upon."