Leadership Lesson -4 : Detachment

 Leadership Lesson -4

One of the qualities important in leadership roles is a sense of detachment when making any decision.

While it is important to be passionate in our sense of mission or even attaining a particular goal or objective, it is important to be emotionally detached when dealing with a particular difficult situation or taking an important decision.

We all may have our own personal likes and dislikes; own biases. We may like some people and dislike some people. We may get excited by a particular issue.

However, when we take a decision or dealing with a situation, it is important to keep our own biases out. It is important to have clear emotional detachment to take a relatively more strategic or managerial decisions. It is often not easy to do so. But it is certainly possible to do so.

One has to learn to develop a certain amount of professional and personal detachment to consider all the pros and cons of a decision.

Sometime we may have to take unpopular decisions that may have a long term positive impact on the organisation or for the organisation. A sense of detached and clear and objective thinking help us to take such decisions.

Organisational leadership can often be emotionally taxing unless we learn the art of optimum detachment as well as attachment.

Detachment helps us to make rational decisions. Attachment helps us to be in touch with the pulse and perceptions of people and take decisions that are more acceptable to people. Detachment requires a significant bit of emotional distancing and attachment requires a strong sense of empathetic sensitivity and sensibility.

Such a fine balancing can be nurtured over time with reflective experiences or learning to reflect on our experience or emotions with an everyday reflection.

Those who get so much emotionally involved in dealing with a situation or taking a decision get into emotional stress , personal ego, settling personal score and all these will create a lots emotional stress often leading to hyper tensions which affects the physical and mental health. Often such emotional stress also spill over to the family with negative consequences.

I have learned a sense of detachment from Buddha.

A sense of detachment from positions of power, wealth and immediate personal interest or a professional ambitions often help us to be happy.

This also requires an ability to forgive people and forget situations that affected us in a negative way.

Detachment helps us not to get emotionally hurt . Detachment also helps us to be clear in our thinking.

Detachment helps us to develop resilience in the face of difficulties or in the face of adversity.

In the absence of detachment even many people with good leadership qualities emotionally get burnt out leading escape routes or behaviour choice such as alcoholism or even workaholism. Detachment helps us to be healthy and responsible in our choices.

JS Adoor