Leadership: The Chair Is Already Taken!

 

Imagine someone telling you that the secret to becoming a great actor is to become Amitabh Bachchan.

You practise his walk, imitate his deep baritone, perfect his expressions and perhaps even master that famous pause before delivering a dialogue. Eventually, you become an excellent Amitabh Bachchan impersonator.

Congratulations! You have become his double. But the hero is still Amitabh Bachchan. That chair is already taken!

If you aspire to be a great actor, the challenge is not to become another Amitabh Bachchan, but to earn a place of your own, perhaps even of comparable stature.

Remember, Amitabh himself did not become a legend by trying to be another Dilip Kumar or Raj Kapoor. He developed his own style, his own screen presence and his own identity. He learnt his craft, but made it distinctly his own.

And herein lies an important lesson for anyone aspiring to leadership.

The Inner Foundation of Leadership

First, you cannot lead by imitation. Every individual is different. If no two people have identical fingerprints, why should we expect two individuals to have identical personalities or ways of thinking? Each of us has our own strengths, weaknesses and potential. The real skill lies in recognising these and bringing out the best in ourselves.

Does that mean we should not learn from great leaders? Quite the contrary. Study them, admire their strengths, adopt their good habits and learn from their mistakes. Learn from as many as you can, but absorb those lessons into your own personality rather than becoming a replica of someone else. Blind imitation may make you an excellent double, but rarely the hero.

Second, believe in yourself. Not with arrogance or the conviction that you are always right, but with the quiet confidence that whatever comes your way, you will find a way to handle it. You may not have all the answers, but you trust your ability to think, learn and find the best way forward.

Third, be enthusiastic about your work. A leader who genuinely enjoys what he does brings a certain energy to the workplace. People sense it and begin to share it. Enthusiasm is contagious, particularly when the going gets tough. Sometimes genuine excitement can achieve more than a dozen motivational speeches.

These three qualities — Originality, Self-belief and Enthusiasm — form what I would call the Inner Foundation of Leadership.

But these qualities must translate into action, particularly when circumstances become difficult and decisions have consequences.

The Three Pillars of Leadership

When leadership is put to the test, three qualities become indispensable: Purpose, Composure and Adaptability.

Purpose gives direction, Composure allows us to think clearly under pressure, and Adaptability helps us change course without losing sight of the objective.

Rather than elaborate on management theories, let me share three examples from very different situations.

Three and a Half Minutes to Decide

15 January 2009. US Airways Flight 1549 takes off from New York's LaGuardia Airport. Captain Chesley Sullenberger, better known as Sully, is in command.

Barely two minutes after takeoff, the aircraft strikes a flock of birds. Both engines lose almost all their thrust. Suddenly, an Airbus A320 carrying 155 people is gliding without engine power over one of the world's most densely populated cities.

Imagine the scene inside that cockpit. The aircraft is losing altitude rapidly, the engines are not responding and every passing second brings disaster closer. An aircraft can glide without engines, but not indefinitely. Without a suitable place to land, the consequences could be catastrophic.

Could they return to LaGuardia? Could they reach another airport? The crew considers the possibilities while attempting to deal with the engine failure. But time and altitude are running out. Sully concludes that neither airport offers a safe option.

He decides to ditch the aircraft in the Hudson River.

Landing a large passenger aircraft on water is exceptionally difficult. At that speed, striking a boat or submerged obstruction, or allowing a wingtip to catch the water, could violently break up the aircraft. The river is freezing cold, and even a successful landing could leave passengers fighting for survival in icy water.

There is no opportunity for a second attempt.

Yet Sully remains composed. Alongside First Officer Jeffrey Skiles, he draws upon years of training and experience, focusing on giving everyone aboard the best possible chance of survival.

The aircraft touches down on the Hudson and slides to a halt. Remarkably, the fuselage remains sufficiently intact and afloat for evacuation. Passengers scramble onto the wings and into rescue rafts as nearby ferries and emergency boats rush towards them.

All 155 people survive.

From the bird strike to the ditching, barely three and a half minutes have passed.

We rightly celebrate Sully's extraordinary flying skills, but there is a deeper leadership lesson. His Purpose was clear: save lives. His Composure allowed him to make a rational decision under enormous pressure, and his Adaptability enabled him to abandon the original flight plan and attempt an extraordinary alternative.

He confronted the situation as it existed, not as he would have liked it to be. He did not confuse determination with stubbornness. When the destination became impossible, he changed the destination, not the mission.

A Hospital Where Chaos Was the Normal Condition

Those who remember the television series M*A*S*H will recall a group of American Army doctors working in a mobile surgical hospital during the Korean War.

Imagine their working conditions. A makeshift hospital near the war front, wounded soldiers arriving at any moment, explosions in the distance and death and destruction all around. No comfortable consulting rooms, no predictable schedules and certainly no opportunity to tell patients to come back next Tuesday!

Instead, there are tents, stretchers, exhausted doctors, limited medical supplies and helicopters bringing in more casualties.

The doctors joke, argue, play pranks and frequently question authority. Yet the moment helicopters arrive with wounded soldiers, the humour gives way to urgency. Operating tables fill up, difficult decisions must be made and there is little time to deliberate.

With resources stretched to their limits, the doctors improvise, collaborate and make ingenious use of whatever is available. Of course, M*A*S*H was fiction, but it drew inspiration from the very real pressures of frontline military medicine.

What makes this example interesting is that the doctors cannot control the war, the number of casualties or the resources available. Yet their Purpose remains clear: save lives. Their Composure enables them to function amid the chaos, while their Adaptability allows them to make the best use of whatever they have.

They do not spend precious time complaining about what is missing. They concentrate on what can be done.

There is a useful lesson here for young leaders. In real life, we seldom have the ideal team, budget, equipment or circumstances. Waiting for everything to become perfect may simply mean waiting forever.

Leadership often lies in making imperfect conditions work.

Thirteen Lives, One Flooded Cave

June 2018. Northern Thailand.

Twelve young footballers and their coach enter the Tham Luang cave complex. Then the rains arrive. Floodwaters block the passages, trapping the group deep underground.

Outside, anxious parents wait while rescue teams search desperately. The cave is a maze of submerged passages, some so narrow that even experienced divers struggle to squeeze through.

For nine days, nobody knows whether the boys are alive.

Then two British cave divers finally reach them. All thirteen are alive! The world celebrates, but the rescuers face an even more daunting question: how on earth are they going to bring them out?

Some of the boys cannot swim. The escape route involves long stretches underwater through narrow, muddy passages with almost zero visibility. Even experienced cave divers face enormous risks.

And this is where the story becomes a remarkable example of leadership.

The Thai authorities recognise that the challenge requires expertise beyond what any single organisation can provide. Instead of pretending to have all the answers, they reach out internationally, bringing together specialist cave divers, medical experts, engineers and rescue personnel.

Among them is Australian anaesthetist and experienced cave diver Dr Richard Harris, whose medical expertise becomes crucial to developing an extraordinary rescue plan.

The operation remains under Thai leadership, but specialised decisions draw upon those best qualified to make them. No single individual possesses all the answers, yet collectively they form a formidable team.

An audacious plan takes shape. The boys will be medically sedated, fitted with breathing equipment and escorted through the submerged passages by specialist divers. It is enormously risky, but the alternatives are equally frightening.

Over three tense days, all twelve boys and their coach are brought out alive. Tragically, former Thai Navy SEAL Saman Kunan loses his life while supporting the rescue.

The Purpose never changes: bring everyone out alive. Composure is essential in evaluating the risks, while Adaptability allows the authorities to assemble international expertise and support a solution that initially seemed unimaginable.

There is another important lesson here — humility. The willingness to acknowledge that someone else may know more than you do, and to give that person the responsibility and freedom to act.

A leader does not become smaller by allowing someone more knowledgeable to take charge. That may be precisely what makes the leader effective.

Leadership Begins Long Before the Title

An airline cockpit, a fictional military hospital and a flooded cave in Thailand. Three very different settings, yet each demonstrates the same three pillars — Purpose, Composure and Adaptability.

Sully could not restore his engines, but he could change his plan. The doctors of M*A*S*H could not stop the war, but they could save the wounded. The Thai rescuers could not stop the rain, but they could bring together the expertise needed to overcome its consequences.

None could control the circumstances. What mattered was how they responded.

For anyone aspiring to leadership, the starting point is not a designation, an impressive office or the authority to give instructions. It is the inner foundation — Originality, Self-belief and Enthusiasm. Build that foundation, and learn to lead with Purpose, Composure and Adaptability.

And that brings us back to where we began.

Admire the greats, study them and learn from them. But do not spend your life trying to become one of them.

Amitabh Bachchan's chair is already taken. Your challenge is to earn one of your own — and make it equally worth remembering.