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Permit me to ask you to do an exercise. Please do pardon me if you feel uncomfortable doing this exercise. Grab hold of a piece of paper and a pen. I would like you to think for a few  moments and write down all the major things you did during this year of the pandemic. All of us had a difficult year and at the same time, the year has opened up opportunities for several of us. We have adapted to several things during the year. Write it down.  It might be that your learned a new skill, you published a book, or It might be as simple as baking a cake, it might be buying cloths, it might be decorating the home or whatever. Think and write down please. If you have finished writing it down, go through the list and put a tick mark on the items that were done for others. If you baked the cake for the family, it counts. If you bought cloths for your wife (if she ever allows you to do that; my wife doesn’t trust in my taste, and I admittedly do not have any, in cloths) it doesn’t count (I am kidding, it does). Now, look through the ticked items and identify what you did for your immediate family, immediate relatives, and put another tick mark against the items you did for people outside your family circle.  Now sit back and reflect on the items that have the double tick marks. The year is coming to an end with the Christmas being over, Holiday Season coming to an end and a  Grand Finale of the New Year celebrations. This is a season of Joy and celebrations, especially as we are bidding goodbye to an arguably most difficult year this generation has faced. All of you know that I evangelize Servant Leadership in corporates, and other Organisations. That is my passion, that is my mission and that is the only legacy that I wish to leave. So, when people ask me to define a Servant Leader, I give them this definition. “A Servant Leader is someone who invests in the life of another person to the extent that the other person becomes better, bigger, wiser, richer, healthier, happier, wealthier, more famous than themselves.” All participants in my workshops are impressed by this definition of Servant Leadership, but soon the “Practical aspects” of  this definition starts raising its head. Does it mean that I will need to promote my direct report to be my manager?  Does it mean that I give an increment to my team member that his/her salary becomes double that of mine? Practical questions. So, I do have a practical definition, and I do provide a practical definition, so that they don’t get put off by the ideal definition of Servant Leadership that I had articulated above. But in this blog I want to intentionally keep away from the practical definition of Servant Leadership and ask that we embrace the concept of Putting Others First, in all its original intent. May this be our resolution for the new year. Putting Others First. Putting Others First is one of the 7 DEEP BHC behaviours that I had written about in an earlier blog.  My research shows that this is one of the lowest scoring behaviours in the 360 degree survey that we run before our SLAM workshops. Let us look at a true story. The story is true, but some of the interpretations are mine in the narration that I have given below. Picture Courtesy:  Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of a Sudanese child and a vulture,   downloaded from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_vulture_and_the_little_girl#/media/File:Kevin-Carter-Child-Vulture-Sudan.jpg) Several of you have seen this picture before. This is a picture taken by photographer Kevin Carter in 1993. This is a picture of a famine stricken Sudanese child who was trying to reach the UN feeding center just half a mile away. The child (initially published as a girl, but later believed to be a boy) was exhausted and could not carry on and the vulture was waiting for its feed. Kevin took the picture and it was published in the New York Times. The horror of the famine that was prevalent in Sudan came alive through this picture and this picture alone brought international attention to the situation in Sudan and significantly increased the donations for relief work in Sudan. Kevin Carter went on to receive the Pulitzer prize for this picture. But the story does not end there. Questions were asked about what did Kevin do actually, after clicking the picture. It is reported that he remarked to his wife that he did chase away the vulture. Yes, chase away the vulture but left the child where he was. Kevin did not think it was necessary, or possible for him to help the child reach the feeding center. The situation in Sudan was very volatile and they had limited time (it seems) and their priority was to click photographs. That was the job that Kevin was charted for. So he did his job and certainly was rewarded handsomely for the great job he did. No one really knows for sure whether the boy survived or did really reach the feeding center finally. Kevin certainly did not know. The guilt and the horror of what he saw and what he did not do, weighed heavily on Kevin Carter and he committed suicide four months after receiving the Pulitzer prize. This is a sobering story for us to remember this holiday season. In our hurry to celebrate the season, have we missed someone’s urgent need? In our eagerness to do a great job at what we have been assigned to do, have missed noticing the need of another person? In our eagerness to protest against the restrictions we have had through the year about gathering, partying, worship etc, have we missed actions that could edify (build up) others? When we rejoice in healing that we or a loved

Leadership and Power has always been bed-fellows. We cannot think of one without the other. If we go with the definition that “Leadership is Influence”, then no one is really exempt from being a Leader. Does that mean everyone has some sort of power of otherwise? Researchers agree that we all have power, immaterial of whether hold positions or not. Social Psychologists John R. P . French and Bertram H. Raven conducted a remarkable study about power in 1959 and classified power into 5 separate and different forms. Susan Fowler and Ken Blanchard in their book, Self-Leadership and the One minute Manager speaks about 5 Points of Power that Self-Leaders need to be aware of. As they put it “Not realizing your own power could be your greatest assumed constraint.” In my studies about power, we have seen that each power that we have as an individual or as a leader can be used appropriately or can be misused. History records more of misuses than right uses of power. That is what prompted T S Eliot to say “ Half of the harm that is done in the world is caused by people who have power and want to feel important.”  I am sure we nod our heads in agreement at the quote by T S Eliot. We can reel out names of dictators and military generals and politicians who have proven this right, and many continue to prove this saying right even today. Corporates are not devoid of this malady either. It is an accepted norm for “Leaders” to have a bigger office, a reserved parking space, priority seating and servicing at office cafeteria etc. We have come to accept them as part of the office culture and normally do not worry about it. On a lighter note, we might have a laugh if we see an executive rest room in the office premises. Simon Sinek, in his book, Leaders eat last, talks about the former Merrill Lynch    CEO Stanley O’Neal. Stan’s story is a true rags to riches story that Ivy League Management Schools drool over. He did make it really big. He made it to the top position at Merrill Lynch in 2002. In his own words “Whatever I have achieved in life has been the result of the unique combination of luck, hard work, and opportunity that can only exist in this country. My grandfather, James O’Neal, was born into slavery in 1861.”  In the same year that he took over the CEO position at Merrill Lynch, O’Neal was named the “Most Powerful Black Executive in America” by Fortune magazine. Further instances show that he used that power in a very self-centered manner. He had his own private elevator to go to the 32nd floor and he restricted entry of employees to the floor. He used his  power to feel important, and thereby became secluded. This infiltrated into the leadership culture of the organisation. The New Yorker reports that some staffers were referring to the firm’s leaders as “the Taliban” and to O’Neal as “Mullah Omar.” Stan is known to have kept away from the employees and was in touch with only a handful of “faithful” ones. Many analysts believe that this was one of the major reasons for his downfall. He was forced to retire in October 2007, due to the pathetic performance of the company. The legacy that he left was not pleasant.  Jim Cramer, the host of “Mad Money,” on CNBC,  wrote  “This man was Wall Street’s Wicked Witch, a much-feared, totally unrespected hatchet man who appeared to be beloved by his troops but in reality didn’t have a friend in the joint. . . . I swear you could hear the cheering from downtown after he left.” On the other hand, Herb Kelleher, who founded the Southwest Airlines, had a very different idea about Power. He said “Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.” And several analysts agree that he was not faking anything. Terry Maxon of Dallas Morning News reports “Whether it’s hugging and kissing co-workers at a meeting or making a 2 a.m. visit to a maintenance hangar, Mr. Kelleher is not happy unless he’s talking with employees.” And what legacy did he leave? Apart from leaving behind the worlds’ most profitable airline company, he also left several thousand employees raving fans of himself. Take a look at what the employees did to thank him. And that legacy did live on in Southwest. Collen Barret , another rags to riches story, and the first woman to have headed a major airline company, took over the President role from Herb. Colleen says “85% of my time is spent on employees and delivering  pro-active customer services to employees.” Closer home, Girish Kuber, who wrote the book “The Tatas – How a Family built a Business and a Nation” narrates the story of Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata , more popularly known as JRD. One of the first actions that JRD did was to take away the special privileges of officers in Tata Steel Plant at Jamshedpur. This included the special reserved lift for the Managing Director, Special dining areas for officers, and special toilets for officers. If you think this was no big deal, think again. This action was taken in the early 1940’s, when such privileges’ were considered absolutely normal. It was the time of British Raj and sahibs in India. JRD used his powers to make everyone equal, instead of seeking importance for himself or the others in office. It is not the absence of power that differentiates Servant Leaders from Traditional Leaders. It is the conscious choice that they make to use the power that they have for the benefit of the employees. Shakespeare knew it well. He said in his Sonnet No 94 They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold,