The Leader’s Solitude

Leadership has been described in countless ways—vision, influence, execution, character. Each has its merit, and in practice, all have worked in different contexts. Yet conversations about leadership often carry a certain rigidity, as if there is a single, definitive template. Perhaps it is easier to describe leadership by what it is not. It is not simply the balance of hard and soft skills. It is not a checklist of KPIs. And it is not always defined by business outcomes alone.

We have all seen good leaders who, for various reasons—market shifts, timing, resources—presided over weak results. Conversely, we see a few others who delivered exceptional performance but left behind a toxic culture that dissipated slowly, or took years to mend long after they had gone. Outcomes matter, of course. But they are not the whole story.

Leadership: skill or culture?

Can we gain a deeper understanding if we see leadership less as a palette of interchangeable skills and more as part of one’s culture? In Indian organizational scholarship, culture has been described as “the medium by which an organization expresses itself, rooted in shared, largely invisible values that guide behaviour even as personnel change.” In simple terms, culture is the way we do things: the embedded do’s and don’ts, the silent code of what is acceptable, ignored, or forbidden.

This idea also resonates with our classical traditions. The Tirukkural, for example, emphasizes that virtue and conduct are not surface acts but enduring norms—how one lives is inseparable from one’s character. That is culture.

Leadership, then, is the invisible part of all actions—including the act of identifying which actions to take. It is like Brahman in our philosophy: permeating everything, yet neither seen nor touched.

My experience

When I began my career at Unilever, we were deliberately moved across products and businesses. Technical learning came quickly, but what stayed with us, and grew within us, was the innate leadership we absorbed along the way—learned, seen, acquired, heard, missed, and sometimes burnt by. All senses were in play.

Later, when I moved mid-career into a completely different industry, nothing could have truly prepared me for the technical complexity I faced. There was too much to absorb, and no amount of reading could have bridged it in time. What helped me establish myself were two things: the presence of good leaders around me, and the leadership lessons I never even realized I had acquired until I needed them. That was culture at work—because it certainly wasn’t intellect!

Seeking a mentor: A sign of weakness?

A question arises: if leadership is culture, can a mentor really change culture? No—and nor should they. Culture is too deeply embedded to be altered from the outside. Mentoring, then, is not change management, though it can bring about incredible changes. It is the act of holding the torch. Eyes may see, but it is the senses that interpret and decide. In this metaphor, the mentor is the eye—casting light, revealing patterns, broadening the field of view. The leader is the senses—perceiving, judging, and ultimately acting. One without the other risks incompleteness. Together, they sharpen clarity without displacing instinct.

Our tradition: the best had mentors

Our own traditions reinforce this perspective. In the Guru–Shishya relationship, the disciple did not seek the Guru because of failure but in pursuit of mastery. In our epics, the Sarathi—the charioteer—was not the warrior but the tactician with the wider view of the battlefield. Could we, as modern executives, not benefit from a similar guide—not to fight the battles, but to expand perspective and sharpen clarity?

Confident Leadership

If leadership is woven into culture, then the issue is not whether outcomes matter—they do—but whether the culture being built will sustain performance long after the leader has moved on.

A culture that normalises seeking wise counsel signals humility, confidence, and a commitment to continuous growth. One’s own leadership journey, at any stage, is strengthened not by pretending to have all the answers, but by having the courage to seek a guide.

And the study of leadership remains endlessly interesting. When does leadership truly arise? When does one choose to deploy it? Must leadership always involve followers, or can it also mean the discipline of self-leading? The questions endure—and perhaps that is why leadership continues to fascinate us.

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