BackLeaders can use rituals to radiate happiness among others around
Reminding ourselves of our good fortune could help relieve personal unhappiness and spread cheer
PremiumLeaders ought to be happy. Not just for themselves, but also because a leader’s happiness quotient has a direct impact on the happiness, innovation, creativity and productivity of the teams and organizations they lead. However, like all humans, leaders too are plagued with their own share of woes and sadness, which invariably radiates to the team, often with devastating effects. Which is why leaders need to develop rituals that recalibrate their happiness quotient to defuse angst and tension within themselves and their teams. Here is how I found one of mine.
About 15 years ago, I moved to Delhi for arguably the most challenging assignment of my career. I used to run fairly regularly those days and started developing a severe pain in my knee. The situation got so bad that even walking up steps would trigger sharp spasms, so I started visiting some orthopaedic doctors. Their diagnosis and line of treatments ranged from complete rest for weeks (which was impossible for me at that time) to surgery. One doctor even wanted to try out some experimental treatment of injecting gel into the knee. It was in this confused state of mind that a senior bureaucrat friend and mentor recommended that I visit an orthopaedic doctor at the Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital, which is close to the central government’s and my office in Delhi. His logic was simply that a government hospital doctor probably sees more cases in a week than most private sector doctors would examine in a month and that the latter probably had no agenda in advocating any line of treatment because it would make no material difference to him.
And that led me to my first visit to a government hospital in a long time. It was a humbling experience, to say the least. There were literally thousands of patients and their relatives packed into every inch of the space. Most were from the lowest financial strata, illiterate, bewildered, struggling to navigate their way from one counter to another. Several patients were from out of town, brought by their relatives who languished in the corridors or camped on pavements outside the hospital for days on end because they had no place to go or couldn’t afford accommodation. Most patients suffered for days before they got their turn with the doctor. Some returned without even being able to see a doctor because they ran out of what little money they had.
The hospital was understaffed with overworked doctors and nurses, with bloodshot eyes and gaunt faces, aged beyond their years because of the punishing 12–14-hour workdays with no respite from the never-ending lines of patients. I noticed a small frail child about seven years old, sitting alone in a corner, holding a pouch attached to his catheter, struggling to keep his tired hands up, switching between them every few minutes. I discovered that his father had left him to go and stand in line for some token and he was waiting on the floor, holding his catheter bag for two hours all alone, scared, hungry and thirsty with no recourse or even any idea of when his father would return. I came out of the hospital, drained, depleted and chastened by the blessings that many of us take for granted.
Not only was my assignment urgent, critical and stressful, I also reported to very hard taskmasters, so ‘bad’ work days were par for the course. But I found a ‘ritual’ that constantly reminded me not to sweat the small stuff. Whenever I had one of those gutting workdays, I would tell my driver to drive past RML hospital. He would drop me at the entrance and wait at the exit gate. That 20-minute walk from the entrance to the exit, through a corridor teeming with thousands less fortunate and conversations with a few of them would make my ‘bad’ day just evaporate and remind me of how blessed we are.
Happiness comes from many sources like material acquisitions, social validation, satisfaction of achievements, etc. but probably the most effective of them all is a sense of gratitude for the blessings we were given and curses we were spared. There is an old parable about Emperor Akbar and his courtier Birbal in which Akbar draws a line on the wall and challenges his court to shorten the line without touching it in any manner. Eventually after everyone fails, the wise Birbal walks to the wall and draws a line much longer than Akbar’s next to it and says, ‘There... your line is shorter now’.
Most of us belong to a minuscule Indian minority who have already won a big lottery of life, and at an intuitive level, we know it. However, like any value system or culture, this source of happiness and joy also needs structured rituals that constantly remind us of why we should be happy and radiate that happiness within our spheres of influence. And spending physical time in a sustained cadence with those less fortunate and if possible helping them out is perhaps the most effective ritual of finding joy.
As an endnote, the good doctor in RML did correctly diagnose my knee problem as ‘overpronation’, which is common among runners and just needs a simple shoe insert to fix. And though the experience itself was painful, it taught me another lesson that sometimes pain comes to us bearing a gift far greater than the hurt caused.
Raghu Raman is former CEO of the National Intelligence Grid, distinguished fellow at Observer Research Foundation and author of ‘Everyman’s War’.
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!
