In 1988, early in my work with tribal communities in the Western Ghats of Mysuru, I walked into Chillemastihadi, a small hamlet on the edge of the forest. I was convinced I was there to make a difference. We had plans and we had medical supplies. But the village had different priorities.
Bommi, an elderly tribal woman, listened to me with great patience and then asked me a question: “Will you still be here when the monsoons start and the rains cut off the road?”
That question shook something loose in me. It was her way of telling me, without ceremony or elaborate explanation, that leadership is not about arriving with answers. It is about staying, listening, and earning trust. Those three things, I have since found, are far rarer than we acknowledge.
The months that followed were humbling in the best possible sense.
The monsoon washed out the mud track just when we needed to move a patient. A health camp we had announced with great enthusiasm drew only a handful of wary families. Funds we counted on were delayed. Our small team was stretched thin.
I remember sitting more than once under an asbestos roof, rain hammering above, genuinely wondering whether we should pack up and leave.
What the people wanted was not our grand vision. They wanted reliability. They wanted regular clinic hours, the doctor who would be available tomorrow, and medicines that would not run out when a child fell ill at night.
Promises, however earnest, were not the currency they trusted.
Slowly, the village taught me how to lead.
Women from the self-help groups showed me that a small, steady loan mattered more than a grandiose livelihood initiative. A schoolteacher asked us to fix the leaking roof and the broken door before we spoke about quality education. A farmer explained that our calendar must follow the crops, not the other way around.
We began to sit in circles rather than at the front of the room. We scheduled our health events around the sowing season and harvests. We kept our word in small things. We invited local youth to run the programmes.
The moment I stopped trying to be the hero and started being a partner, the work began to move.
That is when an ancient counsel became real for me.
The Bhagavad Gita, in its second chapter, offers one of the most enduring descriptions of leadership paralysis. Arjuna stands on the battlefield of Kurukshetra with every advantage that a leader could want. He has the mandate, the army, the strategy, and unmatched skill.
And yet his hands tremble. His bow, Gandiva, slips from his grasp. His mind, once sharp and resolute, floods with doubt, grief, and a growing sense of paralysis.
This moment does not belong only to ancient battlefields. It visits boardrooms and war rooms, NGO offices and the quiet corridors of public institutions.
The numbers may be strong. The vision may be well articulated. The external world may still be looking up with expectation. Yet an emptiness takes hold inside. You begin to question not just the decision before you but your very capacity to lead. The outer world demands action while the inner world rebels.
Krishna’s response to Arjuna is not a pep talk. It is not a management framework dressed in metaphysical language. It is an invitation to a different kind of clarity: do the work that is yours to do. Loosen your grip on applause and outcomes. Act from duty, not from desire for recognition.
Every serious leader I have known has had their version of that asbestos roof in the rain. Every one of them has faced the moment when the plan met reality and lost.
What distinguished those who endured from those who did not was not superior intelligence or a more refined strategy. It was the capacity to stay when leaving felt entirely reasonable.
There is a seductive quality to the idea of the visible leader. We celebrate the arrival, the announcement, the bold stroke. We build institutions around the charisma of individuals. We measure leadership by the noise it generates.
The problem with this model, as I learned in that hamlet and have relearned many times since, is that it confuses performance with purpose.
Real leadership, the kind that creates change which outlasts the leader, is fundamentally an act of self-effacement. It is the patient cultivation of other people’s capacity. It is the willingness to be proved wrong by those you came to help. It is the understanding that the highest form of influence is the kind you can no longer take credit for.
I have worked with leaders across sectors over many decades. Those who leave the most durable legacy are often the ones who are least insistent on being seen.
They build systems rather than dependencies. They ask questions rather than deliver lectures. They celebrate others’ breakthroughs rather than their own. When they leave a room, something continues without them. That continuity is the measure.
The village of Chillemastihadi did not need me to be exceptional. It needed me to be present, consistent, and honest about what I did not know.
The elder’s question about the monsoon was not a test of my dedication. It was a test of my understanding. Did I know what the work actually required, or was I still in love with my own intention?
Leadership, I have come to believe, is not the noise you make when you arrive. It is the quiet you leave behind when others can carry on without you.
That is a harder thing to build. It takes longer, demands more humility, and offers fewer occasions for applause. But it is the only kind of leadership that truly serves.
The monsoon always comes. The road always washes out. The question is always the same one the elder asked me that afternoon in 1988:
Will you still be here?
The answer a leader gives to that question, not in words but in action, is what defines them.
(Dr R Balasubramaniam is a leadership expert and is the author of the bestselling book, ‘Power Within: The leadership legacy of Narendra Modi.’ More info about him is at drrbalu.com.)
Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.
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