To become a successful leader, one must create a personal brand and visibility. And doing that is essential, because invisible leaders do not make a difference. If you do not have a voice, then you cannot align the people. And in order to align the people & bring about change, one has to influence the 'one', the 'some' and the 'many'.

      Firstly, you need to be excellent at one-to-one interaction. In order to bring about change, you need to be very visible to other influential people who also bring about change. Let's take an example. If you were trying to bring about change in a particular community, you might need to bring the corporator of that community on board. There also might be a politician of the opposition party or a leader from a volunteer organisation or somebody else who is not an elected leader, but who has substantial influence. You might have to bring those people on board too. These leaders will then help you succeed by influencing their followers. This is what I mean by influencing the 'one'.

      Secondly, you should be able to influence the 'some'. This is a one-to-many interaction. Even if you talk to a thousand people, they can be broken down into certain segments. These segments might have a designated or unspoken leader amongst them, who influences their thoughts and actions. So, if you want to convince those thousand people, then you have to convince those unspoken leaders of those subgroups. Similarly, while driving change in an organisation, you might have to influence the business leaders or the functional leaders.

 

      And lastly, one should be able to touch the hearts of the 'many'. Unless people participate in the change, the change is not going to happen. And one needs to be a great orator to influence people. While first two interactions could be based on tangible objectives or aligning of agendas, influencing the 'many' is based more on feeling and emotion.

​

      Thus, in order to make a difference, in order to drive change, in order to uplift the masses or implement an agenda which benefits a lot of people; you have to be very visible and you have to use many different styles of communication. Therefore, I have followed certain principles in life to effortlessly connect with people. I call them my ten commandments of leadership. I have followed them for many, many years as I have tried to work on bringing about transformation wherever I go. They are as follows:



1] Learn the difference between marketing and propaganda.

2] Win hearts & minds by becoming a Chief Storyteller.

​

​

3] Create a vocabulary for desired repetition and usage.

​

​

4] Kiss many frogs and do the million-dollar walk.

5] If you lose power, it’s your fault. Manage your board.

6] Create a reputation and manage perceptions actively. Polarise.

​

​

7] Internal selling is hard. Prepare for it with paranoia.

​

 

8] Become a thought leader & public speaker of repute. 

​

 

9] Find co-conspirators. Careers are built in pairs.

​

​

10] Visualise your future. Have no wiggle room in commitments.
 

 

These are my ten commandments. I will be expanding more on each one in my future posts. What do you think these ten commandments are about? Do let me know in the comments below.