Leadership lessons from JFK

Leadership lessons from JFK

John F Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States of America was responsible for bringing many firsts into the Oval office. He was the first and only Catholic President, the first Irish American to be elected to the highest position, the youngest to be elected at 43 and the only President to have won a Pultizer! More than four decade after his untimely death, he remains a charismatic figure who left an indelible imprint on the world. What he is most admired for till date was his leadership. As a recent book on JKF's leadership legacy proclaims - 'From the day of his death, every President and Presidential candidate has to varying degrees, sought to portray himself as the heir to the Kennedy legacy.'

To me Kennedy is the personification of a man who made leadership seem effortless. But what went into making him the accomplished, charismatic leader the world came to love? The hard work, the pain, the challenges... as I started reading more and more about Kennedy's life and his legacy, five key principles stood out. Five principles that are applicable in any field of endeavour if you aspire to be a leader.

1. Challenge the Status Quo. Organisation against you? Create your own.. - If you find that existing systems are not working for you, then you create a system of your own. You create it from scratch and set the trend that others will follow. There can simply be no excuse for failure.
2. Start early, work late. - Get there before anyone else does. That gives you an advantage over your competition. If you want to sew up support for something, just getting there early enough and drumming up support long before anyone else wakes up to the idea, works to your advantage. Working hard, will always give you a leg up on your competition.
3. Hire Sherpas - Behind every successful man, there is a team that helped him get there. Sir Edmund Hillary scaled the Everest, but it was Sherpa Tenzing, a young sturdy Nepalese guide familiar with the rough terrains, and indispensable for his local knowledge, who helped him get there! Where are your Sherpas?
4. Disarm acrimony with wit. - Learn to see the humour or irony of any situation, even if it involves you and use that to your advantage. You can neutralize a tense situation or a particularly negative opponent with a little wit and self-deprecating humour.
5. Find issues that resonate. Find your greatest weakness and make it an asset. - Identify issues that are of interest to the person you are talking to and stick to them. Draw parallels from your own experience when necessary or use that to your advantage to strike a chord. What you may have considered your weakness could well be your asset in certain situations.

You may not be aiming to become president, but if you are looking to bring about a change in yourself for the better, to improve upon yourself, understanding and applying these five simple lessons from JFK will go a long way.