Introduction
Best known for his outstanding qualities of a peacemaker and utilitarian, Mahatma Gandhi was a charismatic, altruistic, and selfless leader. Without a single violent action, he managed to achieve such progress in Indian-British relationships which other nations could not even dream about with the use of military power. His strongest weapon was love – love to his friends and foes, subordinates and masters, and adherents and opponents. Gandhi’s style of leadership was unique due to the application of visionary leadership and the servant leadership methodologies. His legacy as the leader is the exalted name of “The Father of India” (Munshi, 2010)
Addressing Gandhi’s strengths as a leader, this person was prominent due to the implementation of the shared vision leadership strategy. His charismatic impact on followers was explained by the power of his ideas and his own example. Being a member of the highest caste in India, endowed by excellent opportunities in life such as brilliant education and well-paying occupation, Gandhi led a life of simplicity and limitations. His exhausted body was his powerful tool to persuade million people to follow him in the fight for the vindication of Indian rights. According to Stanley Wolpert.
By re-creating himself, through the power of his passion, in the humble, vulnerable image of India’s poorest starving naked millions, Gandhi could, when moved to do so by his ‘inner voice,’ call upon that unarmed ragged army, whose pain he mirrored and magnified in his own naked body, to follow him barefoot up India’s Via Dolorosa to freedom. And countless millions unhesitatingly did follow him, not as a modern political leader, nor as a medieval native prince or martial maharaja, but as their own Mahatma, India’s “Great Soul” (qtd. in Bligh & Robinson, 2010, p. 844).
The quotation mentioned above demonstrates the strongest inner qualities of this prominent leader, which are the ability to communicate his thoughts through words and deeds, connectedness with followers, focus on the shared vision, strong ideation skills, and outstanding positivity. Other strengths of this inimitable person are proactivity, highly effective conflict management skills, emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, celebrating diversity and excellent problem solving and decision making skills.
Speaking about Gandhi’s weaknesses, it is necessary to note that they are not as eloquent as his virtues. Still, according to a number of critics, this leader was not charismatic to the full extent. Although he did demonstrate ability to draw masses, but this result was achieved due to his message and not the pathos of his speech. The following statement made by Bligh and Robinson. (2010) offers more details to understand Gandhi’s limitations as a speaker, “Gandhi’s rhetoric contained a number of charismatic themes, underscoring the strong impact of his visionary rhetoric despite lacking a dramatic and memorable delivery style or pervasive media coverage” (p. 853). Further, Gandhi failed to perform well as a team protector and the major aspect of this problem was his negligence in relation to his own personality. His altruism was not balanced by the care for the personal well-being. As a result, Gandhi did not succeed in his mission realization to the full extent because a fanatic person killed him. Another weakness in Gandhi’s leadership practices was the failure to establish well-measurable strategic planning indicators. As a consequence, the followers of this politician lacked specific information regarding their final purpose and intermediate objectives on their road to success. All these negative factors delayed Indian success for decades.
Mahatma Gandhi: Leadership Theory
Gandhi’s approach to leadership can be characterized as visionary leadership, servant leadership, Laissez-Faire style leadership, paternalistic leadership, and transformational leadership. In Gandhi’s case, visionary leadership is demonstrated through the use of the collaborative approach to develop the shared vision with an entire nation to encourage people to act in a particular way with an objective of a common goal realization. By his own life example, Gandhi created and articulated realistic, convincing, and appealing vision of the future of India. Besides, he supported leadership roles of others by his own example.
In addition, Gandhi’s concept of leadership can be characterized as servant leadership, which is explained by the main characteristics of his personality. In this vein, he demonstrated excellent listening skills, empathy, awareness, foresight, conceptualization, stewardship, building community, and commitment to the growth of people. Moreover, he prioritized the needs of those whom he served over his own needs (Kouzes & Posner, 2012).
Next, Gandhi’s leadership style is the synthesis of the Laissez-Faire and the democratic style with the dominating of the Laissez-Faire. Such conclusion can be made because the leader practiced decision making from different perspectives, was highly motivational, relied on effective team work, promoted flourishing interpersonal relations, and developed a positive climate among the followers (Munshi, 2010).
Further, Gandhi’s leadership is the eloquent example of paternalistic type of leadership style. To support this statement, the politician played the role of a ‘father figure’ in Indian society, he believed in the need to support his followers as his children, and adopted family-based decision making manner.
Finally, since Gandhi’s personal impact helped his followers make positive changes, his leadership style can be also defined as transformational leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). Gandhi’s transformational impact is often listed among his most prominent personal qualities.
Recommendations to Increase Effectiveness
Using the information learnt during this course, the following recommendations concerning the increase of leadership effectiveness could be offered to the leader:
- improve oratorical skills to ensure a higher level of charisma;
- work on team protection and personal protection:
- include measurable indicators of success (Northouse, 2012).
To make these recommendations, such variables as power of speech, the level of care for personal welfare, and strategic planning practices were taken into consideration. Speaking about the third variable, it is necessary to note that the assessment of strategic planning indicators measuring Gandhi’s objectives as an Indian leader demonstrated the lack of pragmatism in his activity. Below, each of the three recommendations will be observed more closely.
The actualization of rhetoric skills is necessary for a great leader since it is through the artful speech that a leader communicates one’s ideas to the followers. In connection with the above-made statement, the following comment by Bligh and Robinson (2010) finds implementation in Gandhi’s case, “it is the content of a leader’s message that invites followers to embark down the leader’s chosen path, and motivates and reassures followers to continue when that path becomes difficult” (p. 853).
Team protection and personal security matters should be the central priorities for a great leader as this individual should demonstrate such important qualities as being alert to social environment and adaptable to the changing circumstances. Unless a leader has a special focus on security measures, his or her project will not succeed due to opponents’ resistance. Gandhi’s murder is a thought provoking illustration to the truth related higher. Failure to implement such an important recommendation as team protection is a fatal mistake not only for a business but it is highly possible that it may have implications for a leader in person.
Development of measurable indicators of success is as important as the elaboration of the shared vision. Without well-weighted assessment tools, neither leader nor his of her followers are able to identify the level of performance of a team and its members on an individual basis. Therefore, the implementation of correctional measures will become impossible or hindered (Northouse, 2012).
Mahatma Gandhi: Overall Performance
In essence, Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership style is peculiar for continuous learning and improvement, excellent listening ability, execution effectiveness, proactivity, non-stop self-awareness development, high degree of self-discipline, value-driven vision, holistic perspective in every endeavor, and being open-minded. Moreover, outstanding success of this leader was connected with the fact that he always practiced what he taught. Thus, Gandhi is a vivid example of visionary leadership, servant leadership, and transformational leadership
Personal Reflections
To integrate the information learnt during this course into my own leadership practice, I plan to work both on eliminating my weaknesses and on my strengths optimization. First, my primary objective is to ensure high level of personal discipline and self-organization since a great leader is the one capable of restricting one’s unnecessary wishes and vein pursuits in order to achieve important goals of business development. Numerous talented people failed to perform well in the area of leadership because they did not pay enough attention to self-discipline. In this regard, Gandhi’s example became a source of inspiration to me. Nowadays, few people will decide to limit their expectations of life to such an extent as Gandhi because modern world is the world of consumption, egoism, and selfishness. Still, I aim to be more balanced in pursuing my self-interests since I do not want to be destructed from realization the goal of my life. Thus, it is crucial for me to know how to control my opportune time, not to waste it on unnecessary works, and help my followers in this important task.
Further, I reserved to focus on my community building skills development and on removing the problems we have in this field in my company. First, I am going to facilitate the creation of the shared vision to unite the collective body of workers and the management. Second, I aim to promote diversity among the employees since I am concerned about the malpractices certain individuals demonstrate in the field of cooperation with the rest of the personnel in the company (Kouzes & Posner, 2012).
Finally, after a detailed study of Gandhi’s success practices, I adopted a decision to continue the process of self-development and self-education to actualize self-awareness. One of the key aspects of Gandhi’s excellence is his belief that he had to enlarge the body of his knowledge on a daily basis and he made it the sense of his life. This remarkable attitude encouraged me to acquire new knowledge and regularly exchange positive experience with my colleagues to become more skilled in diversified areas including solving problems and anti-crisis management.
References
Bligh, M., & Robinson, J. (2010). Was Gandhi “charismatic”? Exploring the rhetorical leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. The Leadership Quarterly, 21(5), 844-855.
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2012). The leadership challenge (5th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Munshi, S. (2010). Learning Leadership: Lessons from Mahatma Gandhi. Asian Journal Of Social Science, 38(1), 37-45.
Northouse, P. G. (2012) Leadership theory and practice. (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.