Humility: A key to Successful Leadership

For any person wanting to be a role-model of success, the traits needed cannot be quantified precisely. The set-of-traits that has been significant for the success of a person may not be significant to the other person. So, how can we conclude to those major set of traits that can be universal for everyone to follow?

Well in that case, the traits that might be useful for a person to be successful might not be totally be applicable to others. A great leader is one who has the ability to visualize a dream and  brings that concept to life by organising a team equipped with best of capabilities and resources. The ability to find promising new ideas and the ability to implement them is what distinguishes a successful leader from the rest.

Humility is must for Successful Leaders. (Pic from Google.) 

However people who become successful to enjoy such a stardom of success, to some extent, display some common visible traits. The universal characteristics of famous leaders are: Honesty, Proper communication, Sense of humor, Confidence, Commitment, Positive attitude, Creativity, Inspiring ability, and most prominent to all of these is Humility.Before exploring about why I find humility as key for a successful leader; a competitive advantage, lets go to the backdrop.

Looking at the present leaders of giant companies who have origins in India, we can get greatest of hint. What is the factor that has been guiding indian originated successful leaders like: Indra Nooyi ( Pepsi Co), Satya Nandela ( Microsoft ), Neetin Nohria (HBS), and Rajeev Suri ( Nokia ) to accede to the global post ? Beside having a common nation of origination, these people share another common thing .The common trait that brought all these hard workers to limelight is humility, which at present time is considered as a key aspect of successful leadership.


Humility and its significance:

By being humble in workplace, you not only respect the presence of your contemporaries in workplace, but also create an congenial ambience to learn and share. Being humble doesn't necessarily mean that humility and aggressiveness can't go hand-in-hand. But however, humility when combined with positive intent helps you to stand out as an inspirational figurehead in your organization. Humble people create a great leaders because:

• They are self-aware about themselves and their immediate surroundings,
• They are ever-learning and are conscious of their career growth,  
• Are ready to acknowledge the mistakes they commit , correct them, and learn from them, and 
• Focus on self-introspection as key to self-improvement
• Influence their successors to be adept more than themselves by guiding them behind the scene. 
• People with humility possess good empathy skills which helps them to excel in team works, getting works done in volatile and uncertain world. 
• Are not hesitant to help others. Thus, they have large network of friendly people; an advantage considered  vital in contemporary business world.   

What makes people of India origination Humble ?

Lets take a fable from Geeta to explore how Hinduism practice in Indian subcontinent is influencing people to be Humble.

During the period of Mahabharat, Arjuna was in dilemma of fighting as-against his own clans and kins. In such period of dilemma, Lord Krishna influenced Arjuna to fight against the evil Kauravas. All such inspirational quotes with humble message are inscribed in Hindu religious books called Geeta, which has shaped the life of many generations thereafter. For Instance: while helping Pandavas to fight against Kauravas, Lord Krishna offered to be Chariot rider of Arjuna (Which of course was to be taken as surprise provided the fact that Lord Krishna was himself incarnation of God, and also an elder cousin of Arjuna). As Arjuna became busy in fighting with the opponents, he used to kick Lord Krishna to give directions to ride the Chariot, which, Lord Krishna obeyed with humility. As such, fable like these still shapes the minds and lives of many practitioners of hinduism in Indian sub-continent.

In countries like India and Nepal, where majority of population follow hinduism, we need to understand that the key aspects of hindu religion that largely shapes the personal and family lives. Hindu culture and religion encourage the practitioners to have strong emphasis in family and social relationship. This tradition that is practiced since a very young age is carried over to the professional life. This "H" factor inspires and enables the people to work effectively in group of people of diverse origination.  When people with humility work together in a group, they display empathy skills that fosters team-work and thus endure the congenial work-environment. They keep themselves apprised about the problems of their co-workers and subordinates and try to address their issues promptly; facilitating improved job retention and morale of the employees. As such people with "H" are always in demand these days.

Why Nations Fails ?

This article is a short review of book "Why Nations Fail", in relation to Nepalese context.

Meaning of Nation:

Conventional definition of nations identifies it as: A large group of people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic makeup.

For other:  It  refers to a shared cultural experience, such as Hinduism or Communism, or at one time even Christianity- an organization with no physical borders yet sharing a common bond because of shared beliefs of ethnicity.

Meaning of Failed Nations:

While there is no any consensus about the meaning of the failed nations, Wikipedia defines it as: A state perceived as having failed at some of the basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government. Some of those failed basic conditions and responsibilities might be:  Loss of control of its territory, erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions, inability to provide public services, inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community etc. Such failed states are peculiarly characterized by the presence of: massive level of corruption, central government being too weak to take control of its territory, massive criminality, prolonged economic decline etc.

Though the concept of failed nations is popular these days when we talk about a particular country (in light of the development situation or its political/economic stability), there has been no consensus among thinkers about the what failed nations really means.  We can set the parameters to mark a nation as a failed or not failed. But is it really a justified thought? Can a nation can fail just like an individual person? Nation may get overtaken or subsumed or recede, but rarely do they disappear. However when they pass through prolonged period or crisis resulting from loss of sovereignty because of massive poverty, corruption, political instability, rampant economic disruptions, we may term a nation as a failed one.

Reason behind failing of the nations:

"Why Nations Fall: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson" is one of its kind that makes an in-depth analysis of the facts and figures responsible for the failure of the nations. The book is eloquent, profoundly researched and a masterpiece of scholastic analysis of these repeated failures.

The book begins with story of place called Nogales which is cut into half by a fence. On the northern side is Nogales, Arizona-United States. While on the Southern side is Nogales, Mexico. The northern side is characterized by high income, good literacy rate, healthy population, higher life expectancy, a rule of law and democratically sound practices. But in contrast to the northern Nogales, the southern part has low literacy rates, poor health conditions, lower life expectancy, poor public amenities, and a fragile democracy. Both part of Nogales have no differences in geography, climatic conditions, types of diseases prevalent, food habits, cultural background and also they have same ancestors.  So typically none of the above mentioned reasons can be attributed for the cause of difference in prosperity of the two part of the Nogales. However, the writers identify the presence of inclusive political institutions (as a result of democratic economic institutions) the main cause for the prosperous and sound Northern Nogales situated in the United States.

Inclusive political institutions guide the inclusive economic institutions of the country. Inclusive institutions bring together all facets of society in economic generation activities; providing incentives via institutions. These set of institutions encourage technological innovations, flourish education system, enhance knowledge and skills enhancement, etc. They provide people with freedom to pursue the vocations in life that best suits their talents which ultimately ensures the greater welfare of people living in a society. In contrast, extractive economic institutions, which are the byproduct of extractive political institutions (like that of North Korea), are designed to extract wealth from one sector of society to the other subset of society. Such extractive institutions enable the elites controlling the political power to choose economic institutions with few constraints/opposing forces.  They also enable the elites to structure future political institutions as per their convenience. And this cycle goes on.

Where does Nepal stand?

In most of the failed nations, states are structured around extractive political institutions where the institutions serve to satisfy the needs and aspirations of the elites alone. While we see this issue in reference to that of Nepal, we find the evidence of the same and data suggests the same.  Institutions of Nepal are extractive and are basically family dominated. 

In case of Nepal, we can also relate the condition to extractive political situation prevailing here since long period of time.

When we study the political history of Nepal, we can find that the country’s political situation has been turbulent over time.  Though Nepalese have been successful to overthrow one corrupt political system for the other, but still the new system couldn't be installed properly for the broader welfare of its citizens. The paradigm of changes that emerged after such point of time have been contrasting with regard to that in developed countries like United Kingdom and other developed nations. For eg: While if we see the case of United Kingdom, favored by inclusive political and economic institutions, the introduction of Bills of Right of 1689 following the overthrow of King James II developed a breakthrough change which harvested the benefits for the next 250 year and more.

Even after the end of 104 years of extractive political system favoring Rana family, the political system developed thereafter couldn't establish and thus flourish properly. The country has gone through rapid political changes during the last two decades. As such no any democratic system could hold a firm control of the state affairs that would favor their citizens.  And over this period the political conditions revolved same group of elites. Any political and economic systems that were established between these periods couldn't be of significant help to its citizens, in terms of resource mobilization, economic empowerment, employment generation etc.  All the mode of governance was centralized and the state couldn't have firm control over its state affairs. As such the country was heading towards the juncture of failed nations.

 However with the establishment of 2006 April revolution, Nepal has embarked into a journey which has been able to instill a new rays of hope to the country and its citizens. The political system has been set-up in a democratic and inclusive system wherein anyone can fight to hold any significant position in the form of governance. With people from all walks of life being involved in constitution drafting process, we can hope that a well inclusive constitution will provide a way forward for the development of the nation.


(This article has been drafted based on the book "Why Nations Fall: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson". The writer has used his own perspective regarding the Nepalese context. Any suggestions and feedbacks are welcomed) 

Work Life Integration over Work life balance

It is difficult for working professionals to strike a balance between their personal and professional life. Also it is true that a person at a point of time plays multiple role and out of which, s/he is expected to execute different responsibilities. A person is one, but his role and responsibilities is many, and that too is to be performed within a limited time frame.  If you are a recent college graduate and have joined profession recently, your priority might be more on the professional sphere of life. You may want to work hard, often late hours for the official work, even in the cost of personal and social life thinking that such activities will help you to secure strong position in the workplace. Perhaps while doing so we tend to ignore that being overworked is a global pastime that has odds against our success. Work fatigue makes ourselves less effective and efficient. In such a case, you may slowly lose your social capital. Not being able to manage time for personal self, family members and friends, at times becomes frustrating. And most of the times, the inability to balance work and life has direct impact in the working efficiency, often leading to chaos in the personal and the family life. A life where personal life bleeds into professional life and vice-versa.

While much  is discussed about work-life balance in contemporary management arena, we find it difficult to sum-up with methods to attain the same. Professionals involved with management field and working people too find it difficult to do so. While the concept of work-life balance is already there and many management pundits are citing methods for achieving the same, a new development to this thought has developed. More than work-life balance, we need to focus on work-life integration.

The concept of work-life balance implies that work and life are totally different concepts. It means that one’s work and personal life take place within two distinct chunks of time. Meaning that when you are working you should forget your family life, and vice versa. As such, an option to address such a problem can be by working in a more integrated way in the workplace. Moreover, the recent technological development means to life that we are available 24/7. And because almost everyone demand instant connectivity and indulgence, there is literally no boundary or break.  As such, were are left with no option but work-life integration. 

Work-life integration concept has become such emerging issue in contemporary management world that we cannot ignore it. Thus the stress is more in work life integration rather than balance. Balance means that we do it because of compulsion. However, integrate meaning we need and want both things to go hand in hand and for benefit of each other. With the advent of technology, the new world reality may be that work and life get completed integrated in the future, totally irrelevant to present isolated pockets concept. 

Benefits of Work-life integration:

1) Reduces stress level in employees, makes them feel less guilty of not giving time to family while at work and vice-versa. Understanding and practicing work-life integration helps in accepting the facts that interruptions are part of life and needless of who causes them. This will help you in enhancing the greater happiness.
2) Increases productivity as stress free people exert high level of effort to get things done. They realize it early that working is also a part of life and is thus worth cherishing.
3) Improved relationship with peers as a result of peacefulness of mind. Such employees take work as part of life and their peers as part of extended family.
4) Enriched family life can be obtained as we tend to cater to the need of family as-and-when required inspite of the work schedule and working hours.
5) Enhanced team work can be attained when we feel official life as part of our life and treat the co-workers as our friends.
6) It helps us to resonate our empathy skills by being able to understand the unique work-life need of our coworkers, subordinates and seniors.
7) Most importantly, work-life integration enhances flexibility meaning that we don't have no rigid work hours or family hours. This helps us to be flexible with time to attain personal goals of professional goals

Maiden visit to Delhi

It was second time I was in India, and this time I was fortunate enough to visit Delhi, cultural and political capital of India, while enroute to Tirupati, India. The date was Monday, July 28 when Air India jet landed in Indira Gandhi International Airport.  Generally Delhi is very hot in summer ranging sometime  to 50 Degree celsius.  In contrast to congested airport of Kathmandu, delhi airport was capacious and very well maintained.  While I checked out of delhi Airport the temperature was almost double than that of Kathmandu, 44 degree celsius. Thanks to my maternal uncle who had come to pick me up.

The journey from Delhi to Gurgoan was 30 minutes car ride. Just outside the vicinity of the airport I could see skyscrapers rocketing tall into the sky. It was a real fun with the speed of the car ranging up to 130KPH, which ofcourse is difficult to enjoy in Kathmandu, provided small roads and poor traffic rules along the highways.

My flight to delhi was in late afternoon of July 28, Monday, so I hadn't had much into my to-do-list. The evening was utilized to take rest and to have a nice family time with my maternal family in Gurgoan.

Chadani Chowk:

with my aunt in Chadani Chowk

The second day of  delhi visit was exciting me as we had planned to visit various landmarks of the capital city. We began the journey with Metro ride from Hunda City station towards Chadani Chowk. In contrast to the old and wrecked railways of Mumbai and other parts of India, I found Delhi metro very well managed and cheaper also. We reached to Chadani Chowk in about twenty minutes of boarding the train.

To talk about Chadani Chowk, it is one of the oldest and busiest market of entire India. Established on 17th century by the Mughal emperor of India Shah Jahan, Chadani Chowk offers varieties of goodies of day-to-day usage. We checked out the lane where clothes, fast-food items, and jewelleries. I found the market congested and unmanaged. However I found that the market offered wide varieties of goods at a cheaper prices.



Jamey Masjid:

Jamey Masjid during eid

It was day of eid ( Muslim's greatest festival) that I was visiting Jamey Masjid. I found the masjid very spacious than that of one in Kathmandu. As the people visiting the Masjid for religious purpose was very large in number, we skipped to enter inside the Masjid. However we could find lots of muslim pilgrims wandering in and around the masjid with beautiful dresses( most of them being typical to muslim dresses) and in celebration mood.





Red Fort:
Red fort is another greatest monument in New Delhi which is said to be built by Shah Jahan, on the banks of Yamuna River, and was used by the Mughal emperors as place of residence and the political center of their empire. As we were supposed to check-in  the Red fort, we saw line of thousand of people waiting in queue to visit the fort. The traffic was high basically because of Musilm's greatest festival on the same day. We clicked some photos of the fort from outside the premises and headed-off towards India Gate.



India Gate:
We hired an auto-rickshaw,  which took us about 13 minutes to reach India gate. I had seen India gate many times in Hindi movies and in Indian news channel. The gate is a memorial to some 70,000 Indian soldiers who died in World War I. The war memorial stood up like that of Mumbai Gate in Bombay. I could find lots of people wandering around this monument and passing time. Most of people were visitors like me we were relaxing in the lush-green garden  in the premises of India gate.  After having some snacks and clicking some photos there, we marched towards Gurgoan via the metros.

Delhi Metros:
Just like when you are in Mumbai, you should not miss hanging around in Autos, while in Delhi, you should not miss using delhi metros. Delhi metros started operation since 2003 AD and serves 2.4 million people on daily basis as of 2014. While the metros are advanced and well managed based on security and system, one thing that makes delhi metro unique is the large number of people using the metro and their behavior. Well if you get a seat in delhi metro, you should consider yourself lucky for that particular day. And on top of that, to check-in and check-out of delhi metro is very difficult and is similar like winning a battle ( :D ). But if you get a seat in the metro, you can save yourself from the heat of Delhi, at least for a while. Well, for me, I enjoyed the ride in the metro for three days be it short ride or as long stretching from Huda city center to Greater Noida.

Well these well all the places that I managed to visit during my short stay in Delhi this summer. I had a flight to Tirupati on 31st of July where I was going to join college for MBA. Inspite of my short period of stay, I enjoyed Delhi. Still in my to-visit list in Delhi are some famous tourist attractions like: Qutu minar, Lotus temple, Aaakshar Dham Rastapati bhawan etc.

So, Delhi ! See you next year :)