In July this year, Forbes magazine reported that N Chandrasekaran, who took over as CEO of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., India’s largest computer services exporter, just 18 months ago, has “quietly shaken up the foundations” of the company: TCS’s market value almost doubled, Forbes reported, and it is perceived as the “new bellwether for the sector,” a reputation that hitherto belonged undisputed to Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In the 18 months, Chandrasekaran’s leadership brought a spring to TCS’s steps and “delivered dramatic results,” the magazine reported. That is at the heart of all leadership: dramatic, or what I call ‘breakthrough’ results.

The Big Shift

Leadership has become a buzz word and, I believe, with good reason. Earlier, business was about predictability and efficiency. Today, it is about uncertainty, ambiguity, flexibility and effectiveness. And this, places new and unknown demands on individual performance.
Business executives must perform consistently in a complex business environment in the face of intense competition, coping with technological disruptions, and staying ahead of rapidly changing customer habits and so on.
The underlying expectation is that greater leadership – initiative and risk-taking by employees – is a must to address these new demands. We are saying, ‘here’s my problem, grow my business, improve my customer satisfaction. I don’t necessarily know or care how you do it, just figure it out.’
This is an unrecognisable change and responding to it is what leadership in the new age is about. Managers who want certainty and ‘merely do what they are told to do’ are ineffective and out-of-place in this world.

Why it is relevant to CIOs

All business roles demand leadership – also that of the CIO. In fact when it comes to the CIO, the requirements are compounded because of the ‘single-minded’ nature of the role in earlier years. As they get to the C-suite and in some cases aspire to diversify and grow, complexity gets enhanced because of the need to get comfortable with new areas, skills and competencies. These are unfamiliar areas and demand ‘comfort with transitions’ – a difficult quality to learn.
Commonly, transitions require that CIOs behave like ‘keepers of the organisation’ and leaders as opposed to custodians of one function, a habit that many find hard to let go of.
They have to, at this stage, take charge and figure out on their own how to deal with this transition, which is different for each leader, industry or company. This is the context.

Leadership: Results, Not Attributes

While leadership is the buzz word, my concern is that too many people focus on the attributes of a leader as opposed to what leadership is about. This is truer of functional leaders who are making the transition into general business roles, such as CIOs, CFOs, CHROs and so on, in organizations across the board.
When I ask what leadership is about, responses include ‘leaders should motivate’, ‘have charisma’, ‘be inspirational’, ‘lead teams’, ‘bring out the best in people’ and so on – and the most quoted examples are from sports and politics. I do that too.
Increasingly, however, it is becoming apparent that for a person aspiring to become a leader or a better leader, these analogies can be rather confusing. Should you be like Gandhi or M S Dhoni? What if you identify more with  Sachin Tendulkar? What does one do with all these options?
All of this focuses on the attributes and misses a fundamental message – that ‘leadership is about delivering results’ – particularly in the business context. One can get into an intellectual debate about the importance of the effort versus the result, but at the end of the day, continued effort with no results is unlikely to be recognized as leadership.
The necessary condition for leadership, then, is to show results and breakthrough results at that, with breakthrough performance. It’s the difference between writing exams and failing often versus writing exams and clearing them with an A+ in a significant number of them.
The quality of outcomes differentiates real leaders from others. It is about looking for opportunities for breakthrough performance rather than average results for their own sake. Examples of this ‘kind’ of person are everywhere – look around you - in your own family or in your sports team: sure they may have great attributes, but chances are, the real reason you respect them is that when they apply themselves to something, they deliver results, breakthrough results.
I draw on my personal experiences to say this with some confidence. All my life, I have done good work, been committed and put in effort – but what I really get remembered for is the Indian School of Business (ISB). Frankly, of my entire professional career, I spent only 1 year at ISB but that’s the one thing that stands out because of the breakthrough result: the school became famous and world-renowned. If the result had been moderate, it is unlikely that I would have been invited to speak about leadership at important forums!
Most people would probably say ‘oh, he was a McKinsey consultant’ or ‘he’s now the CEO of 9.9 Media,’ but wherever I go, there’s a 90 percent chance that people will identify me with ISB, most people don’t even know the name of my company today.
Ultimately, disproportionate output or breakthrough results are what make a leader stand out. Attributes are important to deliver results, but not for their own sake. So to assume that ‘since I have these attributes, I am a leader’ is to catch the absolutely wrong end of the stick…
For several potential leaders, it is easier to grasp the concept of leadership if the focus is on tangible output. If they were told, ‘go get this done and then you don’t have to worry about who you’re like’ – we would probably see a larger number of leaders amongst us.

How to Get There

For even the smart, it is difficult to predict, what project will deliver that disproportionate result. The outcome is seldom completely under your control. There may be great ideas that don’t   work because of external factors; and equally there will be simple ideas that work very well because external factors are all conducive.
Here, then, are some broad prescriptions that those looking to be leaders or aspiring to be better leaders can test themselves against.  

Keep looking for opportunities:
By definition, the context can’t be controlled. How does one then ensure that one delivers breakthrough results. One way to do this is to constantly search for opportunities that could lead to disproportionate results. Often the strain of routine work leads to a situation where we stop looking for those opportunities.
Between answering emails, managing hundreds or even thousands of people in multiple locations, and sitting in on meetings – one can start feeling ‘oh wow, I’m running such a large operation, I’m a leader,’ but that is pretty deceptive, since all you’re doing is maintaining status quo.
The answer lies in scouting for opportunities where you can either deliver or contribute to breakthrough performances by harnessing your own expertise for the organization.

Keep trying, even different things:
Success doesn’t always come in the first try, but it is important to not give up. To discover what you can do and do well, you have to try doing different things – and for this strategy to work, one must be prepared to falter or even fail. Often individuals try something new, and if it doesn’t work out, they conclude that they aren’t good at it and therefore shouldn’t attempt it again.
The second prescription is that you must try multiple things simultaneously because you don’t know which one will get you a sixer! Sometimes you’ll get bowled out too but you have to look for the next chance and try again. The courage and persistence to try, a second or a third or a sixth time is an important step in discovering your leadership potential.

There is no one formula:
Once people have achieved breakthrough performance by doing things in a certain way, they believe they have ‘the’ recipe for success and can repeat it. This is a big pitfall - Because more often than not, that doesn’t happen. The only way out is to try different things.
As an illustration, a CIO may witness huge success through an SAP implementation. His experience could push him to consider himself ‘an SAP deployment king’ and recommend it in the next organization he goes to as well. There is every chance that it will fail there – because changing the context changes everything! There is no room for complacence in the leadership journey.

Sustainable Performance:
A leader has to deliver results – again and again. There is no room for comments like, ‘I was in a role for six months and while I was there, wonderful things happened. But when I left, things fell apart...”
This is typical of people who do things solely for the sake of achievement. While focusing on disproportionate outcomes, good leaders don’t lose track of a very important aspect, which is ‘how to build followers,’ i.e. the pipeline of future leaders.
The sustainable model of delivering results demands that a leader takes people along: As you deliver breakthrough results, make sure you take your people along. These are the people who then take things forward, they become your followers, and they are the people who carry your legacy and passion forward, who get motivated by you.

In summary: The True Connection
The ability to deliver sustainable breakthrough results, taking people along and instilling in them the ability to carry forward the momentum so they perpetuate that kind of leadership, is the real connection with all the talk about various attributes.
Inspiration and motivation is not about just doing something and feeling good about it, but to actually get people to achieve something and see it as their achievement. As you mature as a leader, just as you achieve breakthrough performance for yourself, you need to help others achieve breakthrough performance.
‘How can you make them experience the same high that you experienced as a leader and get them inspired to do that again and again?’ That is what will make leadership sustainable. That is what eventually connects to the idea of a leader having attributes such as charisma, energy, and so on.
It is about getting the people on your team become better leaders at whatever they are doing. That is the true connection.