Three lessons every leader must learn

The Thin Ice of Pride: From Napoleon's Glory to Defeat

Pride is a ‘thin ice’; highly fragile & short-lived. No matter how carefully you create and defend your pride, the end is usually terrible. Because pride, unlike temperature, does not increase or decrease; it either spikes or crashes. That is the sole reason why people spend enormous amounts of time and money to protect their pride.

Since pride is shallow; people continuously try to give it a concrete shape; by position, power, car, house, clothes, jewelry and what not! Then their entire life revolves around it to defend it from potential attacks because pride is built on the platform of fear.

A brilliant military leader after a series of defeats; lives in exile & dies of stomach cancer at the age of 51. The last decade of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life was strikingly different; losses, defeats & humiliations. Ambition, the strength of Napoleon; soon got laced with arrogance and became his weakness. In 1812, 42-year-old Napoleon decided to invade Russia which ended in a disaster due to several reasons; faulty coordination, poor discipline, and the terrible weather.

Napoleon expected a short war and wanted to punish Czar Alexander. With six lakh soldiers he planned to confront the Russian army, and he knew that he would win the battle. However, Czar Alexander knew this and adopted a clever strategy; he didn’t attack Napoleon’s army. Rather, he kept retreating every time Napoleon’s army tried to attack. It made napoleon angry, and he kept following and marching his army deeper into Russia. The war lasted much longer than Napoleon expected.

Moreover, Russian army adopted the “Scorched-earth” policy; whenever they retreated, they burned the places they left behind. It became a big obstacle for Napoleon’s army as they didn’t find food supplies and became weak; some soldiers left the war in between. Finally, Napoleon ordered his army of six lakhs to come back to France; but five lakhs' soldiers could never return due to several harsh reasons. It was a terrible defeat & a massive loss for the napoleon’s army.               

Be it at battle grounds, board rooms or operation theatres; experts make expensive errors. Their strength becomes their weakness. They stop listening to others, they overestimate their abilities, and it leads to the beginning of downfall. For a person with pride, candid feedback is a harsh criticism; a need for second opinion is a brutal rejection of his strategic thinking.

So, before anyone rejects them, as a defense-mechanism they attack and reject other people first. Eventually people around these prideful leaders stop contributing and as a result they are left with handful of yes-men only. These yes-men keep the pride inflated and protected, good for the leader but not good for the organization.

How do leaders cultivate a healthy pride?

1.       Share your failures & vulnerabilities: Make it a practice to shed the larger-than-life image; at least with your core team members. Be a normal human being with fears & faults. Share your stories of failures along with the learning lessons. Share your vulnerabilities and seek support from others.

2.       Compete less & collaborate more: Competition is not bad; but being obsessed with it is harmful. When you are obsessed with competition, you ignore many crucial factors which otherwise you should have considered. So, collaborate more because that is a better path towards winning.

3.       Create a rosy picture, also discuss the thorns: Creating a rosy picture of the future is appropriate for inspiration. However, for preparation, discussing about thorns is utterly important. For any successful strategy execution, inspiration & preparation; both are essential.

Published earlier in the newspaper tabloid "The Desert Trail"