Do you have to be abusive and arrogant to be a successful leader?

Today I was reading an article in the fortune magazine where the authors who wrote books on Sam Walton and Steve Jobs were in conversation. The moderator asked them what are some of the things that are common between their subjects. They answered that both of them were very ambitious, very ruthless in their dealings (nobody wanted to negotiate with them), rejected other's ideas that they did not like very rudely. They had the razor sharp focus on building their company and feared that their successors would ruin the company they started. They never took no for an answer from anyone.

There was another article about Jeff Bezos who is the CEO of Amazon who was declared the 2012 businessman of the year. He shared some of the qualities of Sam and Steve. He is very ambitious, talented, visionary but also very competitive and would not take no for an answer. Outside of this magazine, I had read about Bill Gates and Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle Corporation) and they also share a lot of things with Steve and Sam. All of them were a little bit rude to others.

Looking at all the case studies above, one could conclude that in order to be as successful as all of the above, one would have to be arrogant, ruthless and abusive. I don't think so. But I am yet to come across some who is as successful as the ones above and who is not arrogant and abusive. After the death of Steve Jobs, lot of people read his biography and analyzed him deeply so that they can emulate him. I hope people take away his passion, ambition, relentless pursuit for excellence and not his arrogance and abusive behavior.

Worst Case in life

During one of my introspective sessions, I thought of something that I feel I need to share with everyone because I feel it is a powerful idea. Most of the times when we have to make a decision whether to do something or not, our heart says something but we do want to think logically and evaluate the pros and cons of doing something or not doing something. Then based on the analysis, we choose the one that we think is the best decision considering the risk involved.

During these decision making sessions, we always ask ourselves: "what is the worse that will happen if we do this or don't do this?". And we make a list of all the things that can go wrong if we choose to take this path. If we see a lot of things in this list, we refrain from doing so even though our heart wants to do it. The mind does not let us do it because it is risky. In my opinion, there is only one worse thing that can happen to us in this life and that is death. As long as you are alive, you can always do something else and achieve the same success a little late or achieve a different kind of success that we never thought of. So my friends, as long as the list does not include death, there is no worse case. Follow your heart and do what you really want to do. I am not asking you to suspend logic and thinking but when you really want to do something and by doing it if you won't die, there is no reason for you to not do it. 

Catching up with myself

It has been a long time I have taken time to write down something. Life has been very busy. I have been running around not having time for anything. My son is already 15 months old. He is a real joy to be with. It still feels so surreal that I was partly responsible in creating a human being. As normal as it may sound  to others, I feel very surreal about it. If I have to think of the most proud thing that I did in this life, it has to be the birth of my son. I don't think anything else compares to this feat. I hope I get to see every inch of him growing up. I will do my best to expose him to everthing possible so that he grows up to be a balanced and broad-minded person.

Apart from my son, my MBA studies have been keeping me busy. So far it has been a great experience. My favorite course is organizational behavior. There is so much psychology in this course that I am enjoying learning every bit of it. This course has explained certain behaviors and helped me confirm some of my understandings of why people behave in a certain way. Now I am very careful in stereotyping people and forming perceptions about people.

Work has been the same. Luckily with the new manager and the new setup, I have a lot of freedom to do what I want and so far I have been successful in getting the work done on time with high quality. There are two more releases this year and if I can deliver with high quality and also deliver some nagging performance and production issues, I can be very proud of myself. Next year is going to be a challenge as we need to make the reform platform ready. I am looking forward to this challenge.

Of late, I have watched some videos on you tube called "Classic Legends with Javed Akhtar". I learned about some of my favorite artists: Raj Kapoor, RD Burman, Majrooh Sultanpuri and I also learned about Sahir Ludhianvi who I did not know much about but he turns out to be one of the greatest poet in our film industry. All these stories are so inspiring. They have achieved so much in their life which reminds me that life is short and I should not waste time in worrying about things that don't matter much  and do what I want to do. Before I know it, I will be standing at the end of the road for this life. I really want to take a pledge to follow my heart and not worry about anything and anyone.