The first step towards a great leader.

A leader is not just a leader because people walk behind him or her, a good leader has the required qualities which makes him the right person to lead and whom people admire. The most important and the first such quality in a leader is “Taking initiatives”. This defines how good and worthy initiatives can the person take.

Now how do we define an initiative? An initiative is an action that is morally correct and motivates other people to follow it. Such action inspires people to do what the situation needs. Technically speaking this action is such that it has not been taken forward before or has induced a new thought into the minds of the witness to it. But I want to make it clear that here I want to talk about an initiative that is greater than a personal level and affects a group of people.

To make things more clear I would like to share a short story :

Once there was a heavy traffic jam because a tree fell on the road. All the pedestrians who were stuck on the road started cursing the tree while they were sitting in the car. There were school buses, ambulances, public vehicles, cars, bikes, etc. Out of nowhere a small boy in a school uniform came and started pushing the tree which was 10 times his weight. He couldn't move it a single inch but he kept on pushing it. Soon a man joined him and he started pushing it too. Gradually the entire traffic joined the small boy in his effort. And guess what? The tree was moved aside. The most ironic part of the scene was that the fire brigade which was called an hour ago reached then and started giving excuses for being late. The police van which was on the scene was waiting for the tree to be moved aside.

Who do you think was the leader of the scene?

Of course, it was the small boy who made the first step and at least tried to remove the tree. It was obvious that he alone wouldn’t have done anything but the matter here is not about successfully completing something but about trying to do it.

“Nothing can be done alone on a large scale,
But it has to start somewhere and by someone alone.”

From this passage, we understood that all leaders have a quality of taking initiative. But this doesn’t mean that everyone who takes an initiative turns out to be the leader. What I mean to say is that sometimes it is okay to not be a part of a situation you cannot control. It is okay to not be the hero. For example, consider the situation of two people fighting on the road. Someone must take the initiative to stop them. But do you think, as a small boy or a weak person it would be okay for you to get between two angry people bent upon violence? I am not denying that you cannot, maybe you are a bodybuilder and you can fight 100 people at a time, then go ahead be the hero! All I want to say is you can just call the police and let them have control.

“Learn to take good initiatives, the ones which needs effort but not that cause harm to you.”

When the topic of initiatives rises, another topic is worth noticing: “Risks”

Taking initiative towards something is directly related to taking risks because the initiatives we take are not 100 percent sure to be successful. But it also depends on the situation, for example, the boy who took the initiative had nothing to lose, he was getting late for school. That was a risk worth taking or in other words, there was no risk at all.

But imagine a situation where you are the lead in a company, you have to spend money on a new technology which is not currently at a higher sale but has the potential to turn the market. If you take the initiative of increasing production, you are taking a risk. Thus a leader must have a quality of taking good risks and must back off from taking wild initiatives.

Isn’t that fascinating how we started with initiatives and ended up with risks? But there is still more to this. What if you take a super calculated risk, you have imagined all the possibilities and prepared yourself for taking the risk and yet incur a failure. What then? Should you abstain from taking risks?
No, absolutely not,

“The biggest risk you can take is not taking a risk at all”

Here are a few steps for you that might help you learn from the risks you take and start again:
1. Reframe your goals
Once you fail do not think that your goal is not for you, try a different approach to it, a different path. We always tend to set small level goals that combine with our main goal. Reframing our goals means, to change or arrange properly those short term goals and sometimes changing the main goals by little so that it becomes more achievable to you.

2. Uncover your story
This means that you must look at the prior steps you took, how they ended up, and the most important of them all, what mistakes did you make. This will help you make better risks next time. It is like following your own footprints but not repeating the mistakes.

3. Be enduring
Do not stop yourself after a failure. If you stop trying to reach your goal means that you have made sure that you cannot achieve it.

“Losing hope and confidence is the first step away from your goal and a 100 steps closer to your failure”

So now you know all that you need to take good initiatives. So keep hustling keep striving and who knows you might be the next, Abraham Lincoln, Elon Musk, or the next yourself.