Lao TzuThis quote by Lao Tzu shares about leadership from an inspiring perspective. Leadership, here, is when one inspires others, and not when one controls others. With this quote, it also seems like invisible leadership is highly effective and appreciated.Visible leadership is quite common, especially so in a competitive business environment where people want to be credited for the work they have done or be recognized by their followers. There is control and command here and people know their leader is.In contrary, then, there is invisible leadership. With Lao Tzu’s quote, I see a notion of invisible leadership where a truly great and generous leader is one that is able to gain fulfillment and happiness for his ability to create an environment that is nurturing – an environment that empowers its people or the organization to discover, learn and flourish. The personal virtue of modesty and subtlety is, thus, needed with such form of leadership. While the effects and power of this leader may not be tangible or seen, it can definitely be sensed and felt by the followers and the organization. There is some form of invitation by the leader to his/her followers – the invitation to grow.
In the context of today’s competitive world, whilst it may be challenging and tiring to serve the greatest good and then stay in the background, I feel that this also could be the most sustainable kind of leadership. In fact, true leadership should be invisible because this is a leader who possesses a very effective power form – the power to drive people by the people’s own intrinsic motivation. Further, I feel that this form of leadership allows for space within an organization. When there is space for the followers and/or the organization, they are able to grow organically and effectively. The followers will see the need to be responsible for their work tasks and consequently, their accomplishments. Allowing them to finally say, “we did it ourselves!” Thus, such invisible leadership requires a leader that is able to not intervene and not always be in the way of a certain workplace situation or project. In order to lead invisibly also takes a lot of trust and experience, per se.
The ultimate question is How do we build this kind of leader? A few simple and obvious questions in particular. First, how quickly can we change our culture so that someone and/or the organization that cares about the leader can see this changing? When we want to help, do we need to make sure we are helping it through our own efforts? When we want to help something new, does that mean helping the founder or the people who work with us, or other members? And for more than 30 years, a lot has been said about the culture. How do we build this trust and do we want others to have the same. How do we change the way we work, how we deal with people, who work with the organization, on their own day to day? Here’s an example. My question to me is, what if we had been doing the same thing as before? How could we be good leaders? All of these are quite difficult questions, and I think that you need a great foundation that can help in building a sense of “leader”.
I’ve known a guy named Darshan Chandrasekhar who came into my company, The Vibya Jha Darshan, by the name of ‘Bhaitham’. Chandrasekhar had worked very closely with me before this and was very interested in making an investment in him. Darshan Chandrasekhar had always seemed to be doing pretty well and doing well enough that he asked me, before I got married, to give him 2 months salary to become a director of his company. When we landed for the second term of our first one here in Vientiane, I had an interview in his office with me; I had some questions which did not interest me at the time, but I had to ask them afterwards. This was the first time we had ever had an interview. We spoke 2 hours, and in this session I talked the whole time. In the end, I got very much impressed with Darshan – so much so that I ended up joining him to do his first appointment. He told me that it was because he had a strong personal connection. Darshan, as I mentioned before, was a very well known practitioner of the practice he had been a part of since his youth. We talked for about 2 hours straight and had a great time. It was pretty interesting.
In 2012 I gave Darshan my first job and after 3 years, I started working under his leadership during my first few months. Over half the times I worked on projects I had paid for, I had done some work on his personal time management as well. Darshan was constantly involved with the development of the website, which his people and I were interested in. During his tenure at the company, he had met and became friendly with a large range of people. After this, they were always very supportive of being there: they offered to help me start my own business. When I started my first job he left and moved into my new spot. I used to stay in his company more during this time. Since then, I’d done work for a few more guys but the majority of work for me had moved into other roles, which had become challenging – for my personal life as it turned out. Darshan is the perfect example. He was very dedicated to having a great team of employees and helping the team win the job. He was an example. I would meet with Darshan during my first few jobs and he would then help me build that team. This had been the plan for him for the last 20 years, and I believe he was extremely connected with his team. Darshan even started having an actual talk with me after our first job meeting. He helped me understand their needs as well. With that being said, his initial focus for the 3-year term was to help the