Why leaders tend to fail

This is an old story dating back to the year 1976, when the term of the lower house of the Indian Parliament was extended by one year. I was sitting in the house of an elected Member of Parliament (MP) discussing something not quite political. It was during this discussion that an aide of the parliamentarian entered the living room where we were chatting and informed him that some people from his constituency were waiting in the lounge to see him. The MP though known for his literary leanings and poet-like humility rather curtly told his aide, “Let those people wait”. The five years of his tenure he owed to them, but the sixth year was a grace given to him by the leader of the house. The answer certainly had an element of haughtiness and surprised me, given the fact that the MP was known for his sweet tongue. And the first thought that came to my mind was that this pride may become a cause of his undoing. The results of the next parliamentary elections did prove this, and with a bang. He lost and his party was wiped out from large parts of the country. Any conclusion? Well, yes. It only reaffirmed the age-old wisdom that pride comes before a fall. Leaders realise this only after their fall. However, the question why leaders fail is not easy to answer. But that they do fail, and most of the time it is sooner than later, as history suggests. Many theorists have tried to find out the answer and typing the question “Why leaders fail” may give hundreds of results on the internet. Some reasons are as simple as failure to communicate while others are complex ones like the fault of self-leadership. But these hardly sound convincing. The one widely agreed upon reason is that the leaders fail when they stop taking feedback and start assuming things on the basis of their whims that get endorsed by the yes men who have been allowed to surround them. These sycophants are perhaps the greatest threat to a leader’s survival because they are only concerned about their own survival. If leaders allow feedback to come to them they would be able to understand what people want and will continue for long.They need to be in tune with peoples’ aspirations. This, however, needs a humble mind and a responsive heart. Allowing the critics to show them the reality is the way to effective and lasting leadership. A cue can be drawn from a very famous couplet from the mystic poet Saint Kabir whose golden lesson on the subject is paraphrased here — ‘let the critics be around you by giving them all facilities, as they cleanse our mind without using soap and water’. Listening to the critics helps the leaders in realising their weaknesses. But the sense of invincibility developed due to the ego and reinforced by the sycophants and the yes men make a leader turn blind to his weaknesses. This is more so in the case of charismatic leaders. These leaders gain popularity due to some uncanny attribute of their personality that creates an illusion that their status is invulnerable. But charisma is transient and can wane easily. You cannot fool all the people all the time. Thus, there may be many reasons why leaders fail, yet the most important one is to remember that pride comes before a fall.