Thoughts on leadership: Part I

Leadership is key to any team, no matter how big or small. One might be a cog in the machine or have their own small team or even lead an entire workforce for an event. But the key to success, I think, lies in how effectively the team lead can take their whole team together and create a good atmosphere for success. I think leadership skill comes to the forefront at every level, no matter where you are in life or in your career. To be more specific, I have now seen closely and been part of a few different event organization teams at various levels in my career. And, I see how the chaos or the meticulous planning stems right from the top.  

One kind of leadership involves making everyone feel like they're part of a team. There is positivity in the air, there is that feeling of doing something and organizing something as a group. And that positive energy percolates to the smallest cog in the machine. In this type of leadership, when there are problems, you can go to the team lead and they either help you think of the solution or they take it upon themselves to sort it out. They give you that necessary confidence to be a rock to lean on in case of difficulty. This kind of leadership brings you closer to people and gives you the opportunity to make friends.

Then, there is the complete opposite type of leadership, where things are quite chaotic and you can see this right at the beginning when agenda items and people's time is not respected. On top of that, you get the feeling that if anything goes wrong it is completely your responsibility and your call. You don't get feedback until the last moment and when you do it is not given in good spirit. This kind of leadership definitely does not make you feel part of a team. The entire structure is completely chaotic and plans are not in place. This negative energy then feeds into everything and leaves a bad taste, when this should have been a fun exercise. This kind of leadership makes it difficult to even work with people you like in general, forget making new friends.

There is of course also a third type of leadership, where the team leader is not good at allocating jobs and keeping track of various sub-committees and therefore, ends up doing most of the work. This is not helpful as big events are not really a one person job. 

In my experience, there are three specific events that come to mind when I think back on the best organized events with the most fun planning sessions. Two of these were events I helped organize during my postdoctoral research at Harvard. These include a symposium on Data Science from different fields and a postdoctoral research symposium. Both these events had approximately 100-250 participants. We had quite a lot of fun organizing this, which eventually led to some of us becoming close enough to even form a volleyball team the same year. Another event that I remember fondly is CompFlu-2019 organized at IISER Bhopal. It was my first year here and the planning sessions of this event were so positive that I ended up making quite a few friends amongst my colleagues. It gave me an opportunity of meeting people in a setting that was filled with positive energy. And, in my opinion, this positive energy stemmed right from the top, where every problem was a challenge to overcome together and every win was celebrated.    

I think, when it comes to organizing anything for a large group of people, the key is to keep your team close with you, to lead from the front, to take responsibility when things fall short but give credit and encouragement to your team as freely as you can. This, I believe, is the true sign of good leadership. May every event be organized with this kind of positive outlook.

xxRS