“I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organisation owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team. The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience,” APJ Abdul Kalam
When I saw Mission Mangal recently, I was reminded of this quote of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. He had spoken about how his Boss, Satish Dhawan took upon himself the failure of a Mission and attributed to his team, the success of the subsequent Mission. The same incident replayed in the movie when Akshay Kumar took upon himself the failure of the Mission and gave the limelight to his team when they succeeded subsequently.
To my mind, this is Emotionally Intelligent Leadership at work. This incident had a huge impact on Dr.Kalam’s mindand shaped his persona as a leader. He referred to this incident several times during his Presidency and subsequently too.
This is a favourite anecdote at Shradha HRD. One we quote quite often during our programs on Emotional Intelligence for Leaders. It is rare to have a leader that is secure enough to give credit to the team for successes and accept responsibility for failures himself.
That is Emotionally Intelligent Leadership !!!!