Quiet presence!

This jasmine plant at the edge of of our garden is least visited or looked at! I m not even sure if this plant receives enough water and manure. 

However, no matter what is the season of the year, it has a few buds or flowers. 

As it is a variety of jasmine without an exquisite aroma, it does not have anything special about it to draw people to itself. 

Yesterday, I had a telephone call from  a former colleague who is known to be an eminent example of quiet presence fulfilling her role in whatever she does eminently and impressively. Her meticulous attention to details and orderly planning skills since I first knew her thirty years ago make her distinct and distinguished.

I sometimes wonder whether she denies others of her excellent leadership skills by her quiet presence!  Or is it that others use her skills gratefully without knowing the larger space she deserves to bring changes for the benefit of many more!

Life story is indeed a mystery!

Who can guess that there is a shell, kernel and glassful of water inside the husk of a coconut fruit, till you are familiar with it. 

Of all the types of leadership I have been familiar with in my involvement with the leadership of seven organisations in India and one overseas,  I have begun to believe more in conversational leadership.

Late Dr Ray Windsor, a cardiothoracic surgeon and a concert pianist from New Zealand was denied a place in the faculty of CMC Vellore when he cameo Vellore seeking for a job, bringing the skills of coronary by-pass surgery in the early sixties. Later he became the founding fellow of the department of cardio-thoracic surgery in the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Chandigarh. He left that to lead the the BMMF international. One of his outstanding contributions was fostering to form the Emmanuel Hospital Association. 

Anna and I had several occasions to meet him and host him in our home in Pune. Dr. Windsor was a conversational leader. He told me once, 'get to know with whom you work and that constitutes most of leadership'!  

How much we know others with whom we work more than we know of them!

It is when we get to know others you recognise the talents in others. Often able people remain doing far less than they are destined to because the leaders do not recognise them or help them to exercise their larger skills. 

In the place where I work, I have grown in knowing five colleagues because of which they do far more than what they are required to do in the job description given to them!

Many exist quietly around us and fade away over time. without being given a larger space for them to leave their foot prints! 

Those who have eye to see and ears to hear would be quick to discern some, whose destiny is beyond where they are placed currently in a organisation!

This can be one  outcome of conversations leadership.

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Photoblog: childdevelopmentashirvad.blogspot.com