What I learnt from interacting with Mother Teresa in high school?

In the midst of a Television documentary on Mother Teresa, my mind went back to my interaction with her in July 1991. Now is a good time to reflect on the learnings in view of my experiences over the past two and a half decades.

That was my final year at school (Don Bonso) and as part of graduation we were taken to Bandel Church, which is one of the oldest Christian churches in West Bengal, India. Situated in Bandel, Hooghly district of West Bengal, constructed in 1599, it stands as a memorial to the Portuguese settlement in Bengal (Source: Wikipedia)

Mother Teresa was invited to address the graduating group. Surprise…rather than making a speech she proclaimed her agenda as our agenda and set the stage for questions.

One of my colleagues asked the question: Do you have a vision or a goal like say elimination of poverty or disease?

Answer: My focus is always to help one person at a time.

One person at a time! How is this possible?

Mother Teresa had devoted her entire life to helping the poorest of the poor in a city that had millions of people living in the most extreme poverty imaginable, and her self-proclaimed goal was to help just one person at a time?

At that time, as I reflected and thought on that statement being conditioned to thinking in terms of big ambitions and goals, Mother Teresa's approach didn't sound very efficient. The scale of poverty present in Calcutta, combined with the idea of focusing on one person at a time was a goal so overwhelming; that it was crushing just to think about it.

Now after almost two and a half decades later it hit me. Mother Teresa had a point.

Many leaders be they CXOs, politicians, ministers, and so on have formulated big, systemic plans to address major issues. Coming up with a big idea is the easy part, however. The hard part is the implementation at the ground level. Are the people who deliver at the ground level making the right decisions? Do they treat each customer with respect and dignity? Do they approach their work with a laser-like focus in tandem with their mission?

When big plans do not achieve the desired results, it is often because we have failed to give enough consideration to getting it right at the front lines. When we fail, we fail one customer at a time-line.

Leadership Primer

It is important to remember that there are no short-cuts. Every leader needs training, mentoring, coaching and feedback. They also need varied and challenging experiences that will push them out of their comfort zone and provide the perspective needed to deal with many of the challenges they will face as leaders. We all know this - this is a clichéd concept.

What is not clichéd is that this approach is not enough when it comes to growing leaders. There has to be a commitment by individual leaders to take out time to mentor their junior colleagues. At the end when all is said and done, leaders learn to lead one person at a time.