To Lead the Leader

By Sharmila Bhatt ~ Co-founder & Director at Soft-Tech on 01 May 2020Leadership

Empower

The lawyer and the judge cannot be the same. You need someone outside of you to have an objective view of what you do and what you don’t. A coach is like a third eye. A small difference can be the defining criteria between a good player and a great player and that is where the coach comes in.

 

So a desire entertained and not fulfilled becomes an incomplete cycle. Every incomplete cycle in some way keeps nagging one from within. There is a constant sense of incompleteness. Either we need to release the desire or fulfill it. We can’t leave it hanging. Every incomplete cycle saps our energy, leaving us drained and fatigued. That’s why it isn’t the day that you worked a lot that tires you, it’s the day where many things remained incomplete that tires you.

 

Swimming was my incomplete cycle. My son was a national level swimmer and I was a wayside coach never having really been in the water, but it was one of the things that remained incomplete for me. Desire to learn swimming was there but had many excuses in terms of constraints of time etc. When I did have time, life became so purposeful to pursue individual aspirations. The mind knows the reason, but the heart doesn’t care.

 

So, in order to complete my incomplete cycle, I enrolled myself in a swimming class with a personal coach. I often told others keep the student in you alive and now I was a student. After every spell of my kicking I would look at my coach with longing eyes – only to be told that the feet are down, or the knees are bent. I had so much visible joy in me when I could move from one end of the pool to the other.

 

Success is role dependent. Success is task dependent. When a fortune 500 CEO make coffee for the first time that’s a moment of success for him, all the more if coffee tastes good. So, what if I was an expert in other trades, in the swimming pool I was still a novice. After every lap, I was so convinced of my fabulous attempt but when I turned towards my coach – his remarks would still be my elbow was down, or don’t hold the body so tight.  What if so, many accolades had filled my shelf here I was craving to hear one good job from my swimming coach which still eluded me. 

 

One day as I was going towards my parking lot – a set of thoughts flashed through my mind. My coach wanted me to get a 100 and his feedback was from my shortcoming of not reaching the 100. In my mind I was elated because I had moved to 65, I am celebrating my progress and my coach is aiming at perfection. If he becomes ecstatic with my 65 the loss will be mine. Every human being has the potential if harnessed to reach a 100. While a player is happy with a 65, we all need a coach who is dissatisfied with anything less than a 100. Therefore, u know a lawyer and a judge cannot be the same person. You need an outside person to have an objective view of what we do and what we don’t. 

 

When we have lived next to a busy road for too long, we no longer will hear the traffic sounds. Even for the most objective of people, when we have lived with objectives for too long, the objectives then become subjective.

 

By Sharmila Bhatt ~ Co-founder & Director at Soft-Tech