I read a beautiful quote today – “Leadership means partnership, co-operation, mentoring and support. It does not mean dominance. Dominance is tyranny”. What a beautiful statement, true not only in the context of leadership but possibly all relationships.

Many years ago I was having a discussion with the CEO of my company when his telephone rang. At the other end was my colleague and another department head. The CEO was getting worked up with him since his subordinate had messed up an important issue. This happened even though my colleague was a thorough professional and was meticulous in his work. He controlled everything happening in his domain very tightly. Though the CEO was angry he managed his emotions well and told my colleague at the other end, “Sunil, I’m aware that you normally do a good job. But it needs higher level of skill to get it done through someone else”. I never forgot these words. In fact in organizational scheme of things there’s nothing new in this. Many significant issues related to this subject like leadership, training, delegation, motivation span of control etc. are well researched and mature topics that are taught not only in B-schools but throughout the working lives of professional managers.

The reason I decided to write on this today was not because I’m a great authority on leadership but because of its relevance to our personal lives. Words like Control, Perfection and Letting Go have a meaning far greater than what we initially feel on reading them. Let me start by giving few examples.

Some people around us are perfectionists in whatever they do. So long as they deliver output with their own efforts life is quite predictable. But problem comes the moment they desire the ‘same’ perfection in output with the efforts of others. These others could be children, spouses, students, domestic helps, drivers or anyone else. The quest for the ‘same’ perfection often results in one becoming ‘control freak’. Since we desire a particular kind of output and believe that we ourselves do things the best, we start desiring that the other person thinks from our mind, behaves in a way we would behave and delivers a quality that we would have delivered. Now that’s a tough call. Though this desire is very common and almost everybody would have felt it in varying degrees at some point in time, possibility of it getting fulfilled doesn’t really exists. This has its own consequences. Though in the short term it is likely that control freaks win and make people behave as per their definitions and make them do things as desired by themselves, in medium to long term it results in friction in relationships. While the relationships which are in the nature of employer and employee get inevitably broken, family relationships like spouses or children go through a rough patch.

I’m sure people who have stayed in hostels would agree with me that children who lived a controlled life at their homes are the first ones to misuse the freedom that they get in the hostels and are the first to get into the forbidden territory. Excessive control exercised by the parent(s) often not only results in children eventually going in the direction opposite to what they were supposed to go but results in long term friction in their relationship. On the contrary children who have lived a life of freedom at home manage the transition from home to hostel quite well. Exactly the same thing exists in the husband-wife relationship also. If one of the partners is a control freak then the latent friction won’t be far away. Results could be anything ranging from mental agony, arguments, alcoholism to extra marital affairs and separations. Perfectionists becoming control freaks’ leading to breaking of relationships is a silent and gradual but unavoidable process.

We have people in the opposite category also. They are so busy in enjoying their lives that they have no desire to control others. These happy go lucky types live their lives as it comes, generally remain content and happy and don’t achieve anything significant in their lifetimes. But they are not the subject of my discussion today since they are not control freaks, they don’t ruffle feathers and generally are not high achievers. For them life is as it comes and people around them enjoy lot of freedom to behave the way they desire.

We go back to the statement of my CEO, “to get the work done by others we need higher level of skills”. This is where higher level of thinking and leadership is required in our day to day lives. There can be no better example than a good teacher. For society to progress it is essential that every subsequent generation is better than the previous one. Imagine a situation where the teacher is control freak, believes that he knows the best and genuinely wants his students to know everything that he does. In his worldview he may be the best teacher since he wants to impart all the knowledge that he has to his students. But a good teacher is the one who not only imparts all the knowledge that he has but kindles a fire in his student to know more than him, gives him freedom to think, allows him to question his own views, fans his desire to get into unchartered waters and supports him if and when he fails. While a teacher may initially begin by being a strict disciplinarian outwardly, his real success is in mentoring his students, partnering them and supporting them. This can never happen unless he slowly starts loosening his controls, stops imposing his own definitions of perfection and ‘letting go’ the student in his own quest. That is when new benchmarks of perfection get created, that’s when Guru feels happy and satisfied with his own teaching, that’s when the student feels he has done something in life and that’s also when we create a harmonious relationship. I have given the example of a teacher since I’ve seen both types – ones who want good results for their entire class in the board exams and insist that students cram everything that they teach to be able to give right answers and also the ones who allow students to think freely beyond what they teach, understand the concepts, go deeper and have a permanent understanding of the subjects. For former the importance lies in being able to give right answers in the exam and do well there whereas for the latter importance is in deeper understanding of the subject to be able to answer not only any question but also to go beyond.

If we look around us we will find some people whose domestic helps and other personal employees keep leaving in quick succession. They are never satisfied with anyone. Whereas on the other hand there are some other whose employees not only never leave them so easily, even if they have to do so due to some unavoidable reason they are in great demand. Is it because of the money? I don’t think so. More often than not the reasons are on account of desire for control and perfection which starts reflecting in behaviour leading to parting of ways. A good employer on the other hand will use a good mix of control and ‘letting go’ to achieve a degree of perfection which is ‘acceptable’. The reason I’m saying ‘acceptable’ is because it is very difficult for a human being to accept that someone else is doing a job as good as him, forget better than him.

Same thing is applicable when it comes to our own children. During a certain period of life in their upbringing it may be essential to have greater control on them, but eventually children who grow up to be mature adults are the ones who were given little more rope and freedom while they were growing up. The ‘letting go of control’ by the parents along with inculcating a sense of responsibility in them is what makes them good human beings who also do well in their lives later on. I’m sure all adults would have memories of their childhood friends and the ones who lived their lives under ‘control freak’ parents and the ones who were ‘let to go’. Chances are that they would find the ‘let to go’ friends better placed in their lives than the ‘controlled’ friends.

When it comes to spouses I don’t think that there’s anything for me to write here. We all have people and families around us. Happy are the couples who don’t like to exercise control on each other, give each other adequate space and don’t look at perfection in the other. The marital battle ground is full of the corpses of many marriages where one or the other or even both the partners wanted to exercise control on the other, wanted to have their own definitions of perfection imposed on the other and were not willing to ‘let go’ of the ‘control’ on the other person. It is not only in terms of leadership, but also in terms of harmonious married life that we require partnership, co-operation, mentoring and support. Here also we don’t require dominance. Dominance is tyranny.

So what is really the right way to conduct ourselves? Is there any mathematical formula? Is there any firm statement? Is it something that can be taught in schools and colleges? Is dominance ever required? Is it true only in the context of leadership?

My Little Thought Of Life in this context is that essential ingredients of leadership which are partnership, co-operation, mentoring, support and lack of dominance are equally relevant in our personal lives and relationships. In today’s environment the only area where dominance may make sense is in geopolitical context, where also instead of two dominant players we were reduced to having one and whose dominance also is now under increasing threat. Challenge of leadership or any relationship is in having a right mix of control, perfection and ‘letting go’. Successful and sustained leaderships & relationships demand partnership, co-operation, mentoring and support. But the question is what the right mix of all these things is. This mix not only changes with relationships but also with different faces in similar relationship. It also changes with time even if the faces and relationships remain same. Knowing the right mix then becomes an art rather than a science where personal assessment becomes very important. What is however certain is that any extreme of establishing perfection through ‘control’ or not having any control will only result in disaster in leaderships and relationships.

I wish my friends and readers to be good leaders in professional and personal lives, by not trying to achieve ‘perfection’ through ‘control’ but by nurturing relationships with a right mix of partnership, co-operation, mentoring, support and also ‘letting go’.