Leadership

                                                                                   Prof Satish Dhawan                           

Everyone wants to be a leader, but we all know that there are very few true leaders around. In the book Wings of fire Dr Kalam explains with a real life example what true leadership is? In 1973 Dr Kalam was Project Director of SLV-3(satellite launch vehicle).It was his responsibility to launch the satellite by year 1980.He was heading team of thousands of people. By 1979 India under Leadership of Dr Kalam was ready to launch SLV-3.Just moments before the launch the onboard computer of the satellite gave a message indicating trouble with the control system.Dr Kalam consulted team of experts under him.Based on their calculations they advised him that everything was fine and satellite could be launched.Considering advice given by experts Dr Kalam launches the satellited putting it in manual mode.First stage of the satellite performed well.But the second stage failed and down went the satellite in to the Bay of Bengal. It was a big failure and as project director Dr Kalam was responsible for the failure.

Prof. Satish Dhawan was the Director of ISRO and boss of Dr Kalam.That night Prof Satish Dhavan attended the press conference. Media as always was searching for a scapegoat and Prof Dhawan took full responsibility for the failure. But he assured the country that his team was capable and would launch the satellite successfully in a year’s time. After this Prof. Satish Dhawan consoled Dr Kalam who had offered to resign.Prof Satish Dhawan refused to accept Dr Kalam’s resignation and asked him to continue leading the SLV project. After a years time in 1980 under the leadership of Dr Kalam Indian successfully launched SLV-3.Whole nation become jubilant due to this mammoth achievement of Indian engineers. But this time Prof Satish Dhawan asked Dr Kalam to attend the press conference.

Great lesson is when the project failed Prof Dhawan as a leader took responsibility and when the project succeeded Prof Dhawan gave credit to his team. The rest is history and Dr Kalam was awarded Padma Bhushan in the year 1981.Later on he was even awarded the highest civilian award  Bharat Ratna.If Prof Dhawan had not given moral support to Dr Kalam in 1979 during bad times ,India might have missed a great leader and scientist.

Dr Kalam has listed down following qualities which are a must if one wants to be a leader

a. Leader must have a vision.

b. Leader must have passion to realize the vision.

c. Leader must be able to travel into an unexplored path.

d. Leader must know how to manage success and failure.

e. Leader must have courage to take decisions.

f. Leader should have nobility in management.

g. Leader should be transparent in every action.

h. Leader becomes the master of the problem, defeats the problem and succeeds.

j. Leader must work with integrity and succeed with integrity.