‘Leadership doesn’t begin with managing people. It begins with understanding the person in the mirror.’
I recall a conversation of several years back.
It was late evening and I was preparing to go home. Hearing a knock, I looked up to see a colleague standing outside my glass door, smiling. He was one of the bright managers from our Supply Chains division. As I gestured him to a chair, I sensed something was on his mind. After the usual pleasantries and how things were going at work, I asked what I could do for him.
“Sir, while I seem to be doing okay at work based on the feedback of my Divisional Head, deep down I fear I’m failing as a leader,” he blurted out.
” Hmm! That’s a strong statement,” I replied. “What makes you say that?”
He sighed, “I am trying to be a better leader. I’ve read leadership books. I keep trying new leadership techniques…… but somehow I feel a sense of inadequacy and a lack of being authentic.”
Pondering over what I had just heard, I asked, “When was the last time you studied yourself?”
My colleague frowned. After a few moments he admitted, “I don’t think I ever have.”
“You know,” I said, “most of us believe awareness means noticing what’s happening around us. For instance, the market. Our competitors. Our customers. Our bosses. We become experts at observing everyone else’s behaviour. We know exactly what our colleagues need to improve. We notice the habits holding others back. We can often predict how someone else will react in a meeting. But ask us why we react defensively to criticism… why certain conversations drain our energy… why we repeat the same mistakes… and suddenly the answers become less clear.”
He looked at me for a few moments before replying, “So you’re saying I’ve been looking in the wrong direction?”
“Not the wrong direction. Just one direction.”
Looking out of the window, he said softly, almost to himself, “I’ve been trying to model myself on people I’ve admired.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with admiration,” I said. “The problem begins when admiration turns into imitation. We can borrow someone’s ideas. We can learn from someone’s experience. But we can never build our leadership by becoming a copy of someone else’s story.”
There was a silence. Then the colleague asked quietly, “So what does awareness really look like?”
I realised that we were now entering the deep end of our conversation. I said, “It is knowing your strengths without becoming arrogant. Recognising your weaknesses without becoming discouraged. Understanding your patterns before they begin to define you.”
I concluded by saying, “It is having the courage to ask not, ‘How do I become like them?’ but ‘Who am I becoming?’“
As my colleague got up to leave, he paused at the door and said, “I’ve spent years trying to improve my leadership. Perhaps I should spend more time understanding the leader.”
The conversation stayed with me. The older I grow, the more I realise that personal growth rarely begins with learning something new. More often, it begins with seeing ourselves a little more clearly.
Self-awareness is perhaps the only mirror that becomes clearer the longer we are willing to look into it. Leadership is not the journey from ignorance to knowledge. It is the journey from unconsciousness to awareness. Because the greatest breakthroughs in life seldom come from changing who we are. They come from discovering who we have been all along. Perhaps the most important meeting you will ever have is not with your team, your boss, or your client. It is the quiet conversation you have with yourself.
Is that meeting long overdue?
Reflections….. Shakti Ghosal
A New Beginning 