Shakespeare, the “Sweet Swan of Avon” displayed through Portia–the fairer than fair heroine of The Merchant of Venice– how a chosen role can be played better with sympathetic imagination iced with love, courage and self-confidence.
James Kelly and Scott Nadler are of the opinion that senior managers— the so-called CEOs, COOs, CFOs— are “hamstrung by the demand for immediate results” and hence “any change in the way companies operate often depends on leadership from below.” According to their study on the process of leading from below in hundreds of companies around the world that spread over a period of seven years, most of the managers are found to be performing either service or governance roles. It also revealed that a majority of them wanted to take on more of a leadership role and did not know how to proceed. Their study also found certain common threads that ran through each of the successful managers they have studied which transformed them into leaders. Based on the finding, they recommend that a manager who wants to perform the role of a leader must: “make the decision to be a leader; focus on influence, not control; make one’s own mental organizational chart horizontal rather than vertical; work on one’s ‘trusted adviser’ skills; and not wait for the perfect time, just find a good time.” All the managers, whom Kelly and Nadler found successful in their leadership role, have made a conscious decision to move beyond their hitherto governance role, without waiting to be told to do so.
This, incidentally, reminds us of one of Shakespeare’s plays—The Merchant of Venice—in which we come across a beautiful woman with wondrous virtues called Portia, whom Bassanio wants to marry. But not having money to present himself to her in a fashion befitting her riches, he requests Antonio to lend him three thousand ducats. Antonio having no money at that time, arranges it from a Jewish money-lender, Shylock, by subjecting himself to the condition that if he fails to pay the money within the time, Shylock will have the right to cut a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body. |
