Mark of dynamism

Those with emotional resilience at the core of their management philosophy will emerge as resourceful leaders when the going gets tough.

- K SHANKAR

The world has seen greater crisis than COVID-19 or other such distortions. Apartheid is one of the worst nightmares mankind has experienced to date. Everything that is oppressive, demeaning, disdainful, and all that created inequality was loaded into the apartheid system. It was not like a passing pandemic that has hope in the form of a vaccine; it was not about a corporate crisis, or an economic disaster that could be dealt with through policy. It was also not a systemic aberration that could have been addressed through talk and dialogue. It was a perpetually open-ended problem that had no contours, it was an issue that flared with every attempt of protest. People that suffered it were living every single day without expecting much when the sun rose the next morning. One of the greatest natural leaders to have graced this planet was born in the vortex of apartheid, dealt with it at different levels, showed tenacity to handle it during stressful times, and finally managed to put an end to apartheid in a way that was acceptable and beneficial to all those that were impacted then and would have been impacted in the future. At the core of Nelson Mandela’s leadership was emotional resilience and empathy. He overwhelmingly demonstrated to the world what could be achieved through emotional resilience, staying united, caring for each other, and progressing towards a goal. It looked like a street battle when it all started but Mandela did a lot of things right to get a country out of its darkest times. He famously said, “Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” It was all about ‘hanging in there’, with emotional resilience as the only weapon to take on the rulers.