Projects fail to gain momentum because the leaders in the journey covered the distance travelling backwards. Consider you are driving a car, constantly looking into the rear-view mirror. How do you think your journey would be? How safe would you be? How fast would you be going? Would you be moving towards your destination at all?
Leadership is all about moving forward. Living into the future. A future that does not really exist and so that needs to be created. To understand how to create this future, we need to understand the context a leader must know about the impact of his/her Past, Present and Future.
The Past
The past is where it should belong, the past. However, leaders carry their past not only into the present but also into the future. Fear of failing is a typical example most leaders experience. Let’s talk about Hari. Hari failed repeatedly in his studies while at school. It happened in the past, yet he lives the failures each day. Worse, he refuses to take up new assignments or risks for the future, because of the failure he faced in his studies, in his past.
The Present
The Present is just what it literally means. A ‘Present’ given by life to each of us moment by moment. A moment to create, perform and live. But, guess what, leaders ignore the opportunity and replace the present with events of the past or expectations of the future. Hari fails to see his present as an opportunity to shed the discomforting events of his past. Rather, he prefers to allow uncomfortable thoughts of an uncertain future to replace his present. Hari, as a leader, has no present. His life, every moment, is either being lived with failures of his past or the uncertainties of his future. This adversely impacts his leadership abilities significantly.
The Future
The future is the most precious of the three. It is up for grabs. A leader has the freedom to do whatever he or she wants from it. It is a blank canvas. But what does Hari do instead? He clutters all possibilities of a future by pushing past events into it. He kills all the possibilities of his future by blocking it with experiences of his past. Hari refuses to adapt himself to a better future because his concept of a future is nothing but the events of his past being revisited.
Leaders such as Hari are unaware of the fact that they are leading moving backwards. He senses he is moving, but he is unaware of the direction. When a leader is walking with his back to the future, he is moving ahead, but not visualising ahead. Leaders who fail to visualise into the future generally display the following outcome behaviours:
- They are risk-averse. Since they fail to envision ahead.
- The tempo, velocity and direction they resort to are all unpredictable.
- They do not have the faculties of forecasting, prediction and response
- They fail to overcome obstacles easily and spiral into anxiety to perform
- They live in constant fear of failing and do not allow others to fail
Leaders need to look ahead and walk ahead. They need to fix empowering future contexts that are not anchored by past failures. Past failures and challenges are mere beacons. Beacons which should influence a person to take workable actions and not stop him, or her, altogether. Leadership requires a clear understanding of creating powerful future contexts that are not influenced by past failures. It means walking a journey knowing fully well of the chaos, challenges and pitfalls that lay ahead, and yet being unfettered and resolute in purpose and intention.
- An effective leader thrives in an environment:
- Where leaders are adaptive to create a future from their present and not from the past
- Where leaders place the events of their past to where it rightfully belongs; the past
- Where leaders do not allow failures to impact the present or the future
- Where leaders understand, that in reality, the past does not exist nor does the future.
- Where leaders comprehend that it’s up to them to either enforce the present with the pain of the past or gains of a future
Leadership is all about setting a powerful context, a vision and driving oneself towards a definitive purpose using the future as an agenda. It is about operating from the present to create a future of own choosing. Most importantly, it is creating an eco-system where other human beings too are empowered operating from a present that is driven by a powerful future than an arduous past.
Transformations are led by Leaders with teams that are forward-looking and pacing with a clear understanding of the impact of the Past, Present and Future. It is about driving the car looking ahead and using the rear-view mirror intermittently to maintain safety and direction.
