You can lead wisely!

Leadership is in more than several ways overemphasized and presented in a much complicated manner explain the leader follower dynamics and transactions. Several theories of leadership extending from a transactional view to LMX perspective and servant leadership, have enriched the literature. Just about when everyone was trying to emulate smart leaders like Bill Gates and Jack Welch, Prasad Kaipa and Navi Radjou introduced a new idea : How do leaders transcend their smart leadership capabilities to become a wise leader. These authors argue that the difference between a smart and wise leader is not about the difference in their perspective,action orientation, role clarity, fortitude or motivation. The wise leadership is all about ethics, shared value and larger purpose.
Here’s my take on wise leadership ( this cuts across leadership roles, situations, professions etc). A wise leader is like lord Krishna in epic Mahabharata.
• Has the attitude to serve
• Be on the side of truth
• Carries leadership role with equanimity
• Performs with a sense of duty
Particularly in the context of sales leadership, it’s important to underline the result orientation and performance pressure that the sales leaders manage day in and day out. Striking the right balance between high performance and associated job stress is something that sales leaders must deal successfully to achieve high sales force morale and job satisfaction. So what does it take to be a wise sales leader? Someone who has the answers to the following:
• Self-Awareness: Who are you? Do you know yourself well enough? Know your strengths and weaknesses. Know your values and let these values add more strength to your thinking and actions. What are your aspirations? Where do you want to go with your team?
• Do you have a story? : All right you know yourself very well. Do you have a story for your team? Or you have the same daily operational conversation that possibly can be accomplished through non-human communication tools! Have you weaved in your strategic insights into a nice and racy story that explains your business objectives and outlines the paths leading to those objectives? Des this story of yours reflect your own commitment to the central theme of the story?
• Can you sell your story? : Your team members look up to you for support and guidance. You need to sell your story to each of your salesperson so that they perform with a sense of calling and membership. If you can sell your story successfully then you have ‘ buy in’ from your team for the larger picture and the broader purpose of the collective toil and stress that is being committed to day-to-day business activities.
• Are you ready to give it all? A wise leader leads with an attitude to serve and perform his duties without staking any claims for ‘credits’. Yet, he/she puts his/her reputation behind his team in case of a failure/under performance.