Leadership Lessons 8 : "Quitters never win and winners never quit".

 Leadership Lessons 8

"Quitters never win and winners never quit".

This is one sentence that in many ways influenced my choices and life

I took up a new task of setting up an institution around 27 years ago.I was not even 27 years. It was not easy. There were too many cooks. There were too many actors.

I was too young- and was doing an exploration and experiment, taking few months of leave from my teaching job in a constituent college of a University in North-East.

I shifted to Mumbai, to set up this brand new institution on a rather brand new idea. I was completely in a new and unfamiliar terrain.

I was in an arena beyond my comfort-zone; largely among colleagues who insisted speaking to me only in Marathi. Few of them taunted me as "Mallu bhai' etc..I thought they didn't want me in that leadership role. Hardly anyone, except two of my younger colleagues, supported me.

Robin

will know this .

I was beginning to get frustrated as many treated me like a football, often running from X to Y to get things done with hardly any support. I was tempted to go back to my regular academic job and research, my familiar terrain of comfort zone.

But temperamentally ,I have always been an explorer who experimented with choices and life. I was getting in to the mood of Hamlet " To be or not to be". I was thinking of quitting as on one evening I walked the the streets of VT/CST in Mumbai. Then I stopped near a street vendor, selling posters. My eyes got stuck on one particular poster : " Quitters never Win and Winners never Quit". It came almost like revelation. A new omen.

I bought the poster and I put it on my single room apartment in Vasai east , Mumbai.

When more people said "He cant'" I said to myself ' I can ' and I will' and I did.

I did make a choice- decided to confront adverse conditions, won over people who were skeptics and decided to make change happen within and beyond. There was no looking back.

I did establish the organisation- made it one of the most respected institutions not only in India but in the Global South. Justice PN Bahawathi was the founder president of the organization: the National Centre for Advocacy studies.

That gave me a confidence that I was never familiar with: it is indeed possible.

When many people told me it was not possible, i wanted to make it possible. That is what took me to the wider world to bigger and bigger challenges- and prompting to say -- it is indeed possible!!

The point is simple. Unless you go beyond your comfort zone, learn new things and learn to work with people unlike you across the spectrum, in a multi-cultural environment, it will be difficult to bloom in to leadership roles.

There will always be adversity. There will always be challenges. There will always be people who mock at you. There will always be people who belittle you or laugh at you. There will always be people who talk behind you.

There will always be people who ask you not to take 'risks'. There will always be people who discourage you or dishearten you. There will always be people who will be skeptical about your ability or identity

Many of us also get in to the dilemma of Hamlet " To be or not to be ". Many times we will have self-doubt. Many times we will be confused. Many times we will be worried whether we will be successful. Many times we are reluctant to deal with uncertainties and ambivalence. We all go through this.

And we feel like 'quitting' or 'leaving'- as it helps us to be 'stable' or to get a 'good job' that pay well, Or a predictable trajectory that get us more immediate benefits or quick 'return on investment'. We usually feel like quitting very difficult tasks; quitting a subject we may find it too difficult to understand or grasp; or quitting a course mid way because we feel that we would not be 'able to make it'

However, there is only one way to win or succeed. It is the Will to Win. It is a sense of sheer determination and passion to to take on things which you may find impossible to do. Or some people may think you are simply not up to the mark. And you tend to give up fast.

Never ever give up, if you have a will to win. Prove it yourself first before proving it to anyone else. Don't try to impress others. Believe in what you do make all the difference.

Here is a litmus test of the leadership. Are you making a choice out of convenience ? Are you making a choice out of compulsion? or Are you taking a choice out of conviction?

Those who take choices and decisions out of conviction prevails. Convictions do not come easily. It requires a lots of self-reflection, meditation and then you reach a state of internal coherence and rationale you are convinced of. You discover this within.

You discover your sense of purpose.And then you will be driven by the sheer capacity of your conviction. You don't then follow a career. You follow something with a sense of mission- with sheer passionate determination to make it happen, despite all sets-backs and difficulties.

It is impossible to stop someone who is deeply convinced about purpose within- and go all the way to make it happen. It is those people who changed the world- whether it is Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela or hundreds of unknown people.

Making change happen is like a marathon. It is not like a sprint. What matters is the staying power, the sheer will to go to the extra- mile and an ability not to get disillusioned fast. Quitters never win and Winners never quit.

It is the sheer ability to take up very difficult tasks and survive in an unfamiliar terrain beyond your comfort zones that give you the sheer force of achieving something that might look almost impossible.

Making impossible things possible is what made history. All those who made history are those walked beyond comfort zones and never gave up in the midst of any storms or difficulties.

Making seemingly impossible thing possible is what makes life exciting. Why not?

JS Adoor

To be continued

75Methilaj MA, Sajan Gopalan and 73 others

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