Read an exclusive except from Wafadari, Imaandari, Zimmedari!
‘Leadership is a journey, not a destination. It is a marathon, not a sprint. It is a process, not an outcome.’
—John Donahoe, CEO, Nike
‘I see what shines in you’—this simple but profound eulogy came my way from a charming lady I met for the first time in my life at a literary seminar in Chandigarh in February 2024. The occasion happened to coincide with the period when I was engaged in preparing the blueprint for my second book, which is this one. I had been invited to this ‘Members only’ literary event, to participate in an interactive session to discuss my first book Kitne Ghazi Aaye, Kitne Ghazi Gaye. I was seated in the front row waiting for my session to begin when a graceful lady walked in, and asked if she could sit in the vacant seat next to mine, after she had ostensibly failed to find any preferred seat in the rest of the hall. I politely gestured that she was welcome to sit there, and in accordance with the customary military civility that comes unbidden to a soldier due to the discipline imbibed after years of being in the army, I rose and wished her, ‘Good morning, Ma’am’, sitting down only after she had settled in her seat. After a while, as a precursor to my session, my photograph in full military uniform was displayed on the screen on stage along with a reading of my biodata. Surprised, the lady seated next to me turned and asked, ‘Is that you?’ I politely replied in the affirmative before moving up to the stage. After the session, some of the attendees complimented me for my services in the army, exchanging pleasantries and requests for some selfies.
I ran into this graceful lady again a few months later at another literary event that was attended by the same audience as the previous one. Instantly recognizing me, she recalled our encounter at the earlier event, which I too remembered vividly. She recounted that she had narrated that incident to her parents, too, telling them that she had instantly guessed my military
antecedents from my gracious behaviour, which was confirmed when I was introduced and invited on stage by the master of ceremonies on that occasion. It is then that she delivered her
potent one-liner that absolutely caught me unawares, ‘I see what shines in you—your gentlemanly mannerisms and upbringing are instantly visible to anyone you come across.’ At that moment, I was too overwhelmed by the compliment to offer a suitable reaction, as I am sure anyone would have been. However, it was only later, as I ran through her words in my mind again, that I realized that the person who had stood up in deference to the lady in the hall was not me, K.J.S. Dhillon, but an officer of the Indian Army whose demeanour and actions had been conditioned by a strict military ethos and rigorous training, which has made such gentlemanly behaviour a way of life for all those who don the military uniform. So, yes, the inner ‘shine’ imparted to me by my four-decade-long service in the army was obvious to any onlooker, especially a clairvoyant lady who could recognize the value of that chivalry.
What Is It That Shines in Me?
The entire process of chiselling, moulding, polishing and buffing the rough edges of a teenager’s personality to create the inner ‘shine’ began over forty-five years ago, on 2 January 1980. The chilly evening when I, as a strapping lad of seventeen years, boarded the popular Punjab Mail train from Ferozepur to reach the hallowed gates of the National Defence Academy (NDA) at Khadakwasla, is still fresh in my memory. Barely out of school, I plunged into the deep waters of army pedagogy, when, after a stringent selection procedure, I was called to join the NDA, widely known as the ‘Cradle for Military Leadership’. The lanky boy, who had just started growing a wisp of a moustache, and who loved to sleep well past sunrise, was suddenly thrown into an alien world that was the complete antithesis of his hitherto easy-going life. However, it was the challenges of this highly regimented and disciplined environment at the NDA and subsequently at the Indian Military Academy (IMA) over the next four years that shaped a raw, scrappy youngster into a refined personality, sowing the seeds for my future leadership roles in different capacities in the army.
I had obviously been selected to join the army on the basis of certain qualities or leadership attributes that the Selection Board must have observed in me. The training at NDA and IMA not only served to extract and hone these dormant qualities but also imparted new ones that went on to define my character as I assumed a range of challenging roles in the course of my army career. Today, as I pen down the vital markers of the military leadership mindset that I have imbibed over forty-three years of my military life, entering it as a naïve seventeen-year old and ending it as a wizened sixty-year old in January 2022, I can say with certainty that the fire in the belly has not dimmed at all, with my immense reverence and love for the profession still intact. During the course of my long innings, I have commanded men and women from diverse backgrounds, following different languages and cultural practices, and served under bosses (not all of whom can be called ‘leaders’) of all shapes, sizes and characters. The environments and physical conditions I have encountered during these decades have ranged from extreme danger to the leisure of peacetime soldiering, both in India as well as during my various assignments abroad. And I daresay that I may have assimilated every possible leadership style delineated across various leadership manuals, practising them in my life as well, mostly obtrusively, others subconsciously and some with eyes wide open.
Leadership Approaches
This rich experience endows me with the ability to understand and share the nuances of some critical leadership theories.
So, here goes—my take on various leadership approaches (theoretical as they may sound).
The Trait Theory, also called the Dispositional Theory, postulates that successful leadership emerges from certain innate personality traits that produce consistent behaviours across different situations, and only a person who has those traits can be called a leader. However, this theory does not take into account situational and environmental factors, also presuming that leaders are born and cannot be developed as they evolve into thinking adults. Notwithstanding the limitations of this approach, the fact that certain defining traits a person is born with are associated with good leadership across all circumstances is incontestable.
***
Get your copy of Wafadari, Imaandari, Zimmedari on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
