Title: Unlocking the Natural Born Leader’s Abilities: An Autobiographical Expose
Author: Salar A. Khan, MD., MBA.
Publisher: Xlibris
ISBN: 978-1- 5245-9956- 0
Pages: 128
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Interviewed by: Allison Walker
Author interview questions:
Today we are with Salar A. Khan, MD., MBA., author of “Unlocking the Natural Born Leader’s Abilities: An Autobiographical Expose”. Thank you for joining us.
PBR: Your book is largely retrospective, but how do you actively cultivate the natural leadership qualities you possess in your work and life?
Throughout my career, I found myself working under time-sensitive, high-risk, and high-pressure situations, which allowed me to unlock and develop my Natural Born Leader (NBL) qualities. Therefore, my present is very much a product of everything I have done throughout my life. As a child, I had always taken responsibility for all household chores developing my time-management and organization skills. Obedient and disciplined, I was ready to help everyone even though I would be very busy in my studies. I would always find time to help others and being there for them gave me a sense of internal satisfaction. After becoming a doctor, I would without hesitation treat patients in my neighborhood without expecting anything in return. My parents were always modeling a clear set of virtues and qualities such as respect, honesty, hard work, self-sacrifices, discipline, and determination. As I gained more confidence in my abilities, it would set the stage for my successes as a pulmonologist and as an acting hospital director in Saudi Arabia under Ministry of Health (MOH) without any additional salary. I could do this because I never considered my occupation as a job, but I treated it as a calling. I was working toward a vision for the sake of the hospital management and patients to serve humanity to create a better world.
I always set targets for myself one week in advance as it relates to my job, home, and family needs. As I write this, my target for the day was to get my car checked out, cook food, and then spend the day completing my second book. Completing my tasks such as cooking, I tell my heart that I have completed this task, gives me happiness and ignites my desire to start the next task of the day. This type of feeling will not come automatically; you must be intrinsically motivated to achieve this state.
To achieve this state, break your day down into tiny bits that are manageable. Even things as mundane as taking the trash out, cleaning your room, and really anything else can be a source of joy and fulfillment. These abilities made me more target-oriented, focused, self-confident, and intrinsically motivated to accomplish tasks. I notice that I entered an uninterruptible state of flow when working on task because I was fully absorbed in my work, not paying attention to any factors external to that task. Once I returned from this state, I felt a sense of pleasure, invigorating me to tackle further projects.
This also happens because I am passionate about my work at home or at job. The state of flow I mentioned earlier leads to optimal experiences. On rare occasions, people feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment, when going through a certain experience. It becomes a landmark in our life. With the right mentality, this optimal experience can be obtained up to several times a day. By entering this state of flow over the course of a long period of time, it adds up to give a sense of happiness. Reaching the optimal experience can be exercised by anyone, regardless of age, gender, or cultural and religious backgrounds.
As a NBL, I developed a cohort of abilities and qualities over time that make me a great role model and help lead others. Today I am self-directed and often establish norms. I have developed the ability to inspire and motivate others to accomplish their goals with positive outcomes. As a NBL, I have an intuition, which is difficult to describe; but personally, I think it entails having an art of observation, integrating nonverbal information during high-risk, time-sensitive situations. I myself have obtained clinical and nonclinical intuition through my career using this approach, and I have been able to make several crucial decisions. Strong leaders are the ones that the company and other employees can trust because of their values, integrity, and morals.
Maintaining clear and consistent communication with everyone is also something I cultivate every day. Constant communication makes employees understand the company’s vision, giving them an assurance that they are working toward the desired goals. Confidence is essential for strong leadership when the future of their company, corporation, or organization is at stake.
My journey to evaluate my own personality started during my childhood through my parents and continues even today. I went through various hardships and many ups and downs in my life. At each step, I learned how to bring out my own personality, and I had a knack for immediately correcting myself to further refine my abilities.
I believe that every human being created equal and each one of them possess the essential qualities and abilities of a NBL, it is simply a matter of bringing out hidden talents and skillsets to the surface. According to my personal observation, experience based on trial and error, application of strong self -analysis of my mistakes and corrections on daily basis and finally my education helps to develop intuition as doctor and as a leader during my last fifty years started from age of twelve.
I unlocked at least my several hidden capabilities and convert into abilities to perform under adverse situations with strong positive outcome due to self-confidence, self-motivation, no fear of failure, strong faith on my own abilities, clarity of vision, goal, and know how to get results. Now my mind is tuned to think out of box to find unique solution of issues. Now I realize that all these abilities were built-in as a NBL which I unlock during my life and work career which make me feel that I am highly internally satisfied happiest man on earth. I strongly believe that hundreds and thousands of people around the globe leading people with confidence due to their perfection of work in whatever field they are working. Human beings are created with the element of curiosity to discover new knowledge in order to progress in this world. If they are lacking few abilities of NBL they can learn from my book.
I notice that I am never under any stress or pressure during these situations. I would always stay calm and confident. Under those situations, people around me would ask how I managed to combat the adversities so successfully. I always tell them that it is only due to optimism and confidence in my own abilities. No one is born perfect in this world, but in due time, we overcome our mistakes, increasing perfection in our careers as we are cornered to make difficult decisions to progress and succeed in life. In my estimation, human beings were created with many hidden qualities and characteristics, which they start using in their lifetime even without any education. I grew up in a developing country where most people are illiterate. Nonetheless, I still knew many high-functioning individuals with no formal training who were running great businesses. This came to show me that there was something natural about leadership that could not be taught in a classroom but was rather cultivated from within. When one thinks of a leader, the first thing that comes to mind is a political leader or any successful CEO or entrepreneur; some of them may very well be NBL. Most people think that a third leaders have intrinsic leadership qualities, and the remaining two-thirds obtain these qualities extrinsically through training.
Despite this statistic, I believe that the number of NBL is much higher than those that attain leadership skills through training. People born with leadership qualities are most successful in their life because of their strong decision-making capabilities in time-sensitive, pressured situations and their strong vision and forethought. They have no fear in making decisions because they are not afraid of failure. Upon experiencing failure, they self-analyze the errors in their decision-making process and come back with innovative ideas and a stronger determination to resolve the situation. They have tasted the bitterness of failure and have a desire to taste the sweetness of success. After experiencing success, an indescribable pleasure overcomes them, giving them strength to move further in that direction. I have a strong belief that the progress in this world is made because of the uncanny abilities of these natural-born leaders. The NBL is always firm in their decision-making due to the confidence in their own abilities and their vision of the future in successfully accomplishing short-term and long-term goals.
When not assigned to perform a task, and noticing that a particular task needed to be performed, I did not wait for someone to tell me to take charge. Instead, I myself would go and provide any extra help. This is especially true for my projects that I face at work. I personally derive great pleasure and happiness when helping others. It truly invigorates me, motivating me to tackle other tasks and projects. I would describe this feeling similar to that which one feels after exercising, in which endorphins, serotonin, and norepinephrine increase one’s feeling of pleasure.
I also try to spend more time listening to others’ opinions when appropriate and to assess their opinion in context of the issue or task on hand to make well-informed decisions moving forward. I am always open to new ways of doing things. I have a strong ability to learn from my past mistakes and the courage to make better decisions. I always consider and try multiple options before finding the most optimal one. I am not afraid to be original and always ask questions for more clarity. I never stop learning. I always try to remain focused on my daily agenda of tasks. A sign of a truly great leader is the success of the team underneath them. This is my strength, and I want to accomplish work by any means on time and with great success—nothing less than 100 percent, which is my goal all the time.
Furthermore, I have possessed clinical intuition through my work as a physician and a nonclinical intuition through my experience as a research compliance director and administrator. This pair of intuitions has allowed me to make decisions in novel circumstances—those in which I have no prior experience. As I have noticed in my career on so many occasions, I am very good in finding immediate solutions for complex issues, yielding strong, positive outcomes. My experiences have built my intuition, allowing me to have epiphanies when searching for solutions. To me, it feels as natural as breathing.
Aristotle once said that “quality is not an act, it is a habit.” These habits are learned through interactions with our environment on a daily basis. The various attributes I have described above can be encapsulated by the following qualities: insightfulness and self-confidence, intrinsic motivation, integrity and unlocking trust, communication, sacrifice, patience and composure, open-mindedness, courage, compassion, and optimism. These qualities are imperative to becoming a NBL and thus vital for success. I will articulate how I uncovered these qualities within me through my various life experiences and hope you introspect and recall your life experiences to uncover and draw these qualities within yourself.
In daily life and work, these are the most important characteristics that must be cultivated as an NBL.
- Insightfulness and Self-confidence. Insightfulness is the deep understanding of task or challenge which reinforce intuition in a continuous cycle result in well informed decision- making and positive outcome. When observing the fruits of decision making, it will serve to build self-confidence. It leads to develop clinical and leadership intuitions.
- Intrinsic Motivation. It is the desire to accomplish tasks or do activities based on internal rewards for one’s own pleasure and happiness.
- Integrity- unlocking trust. It is the most difficult concept to teach leaders. It depends upon honesty, moral, and ethical values of individual which develop trust of public on their leader or patients on their doctor.
- Communication. It is the art of conveying information between two or more parties. It starts with listening from others and observation skill require to recognize nonverbal message to come up with appropriate responses. It is a part of patient doctor relationship. Successful communication with patients develop trust and patient will become more open. This is the art of taking good history from patient about illness. Leaders communication with public or CEO communication with staff to operate work with flow.
- Sacrifice. The biggest part of my success is accepting challenges and doing additional projects without expecting any rewards. The people who are doing the job are usually not flexible and reluctant to take on additional project to work but throughout my career I was taking additional projects and sacrifices to my personal time for my internal happiness. This attitude lead to my hidden talent and skillsets and more exposure to adversities and gaining confidence.
- Patience and Composure: This entails having ability to tolerate, withstand, avoid certain action, or behavior getting frustration. It is important for leader and doctor.
- Open-Mindedness. It is the ability to accept novel ideas and thoughts into one’s repository of thoughts. It means thinking outside of box considering unique uncommon solutions to common and uncommon problems we face on daily basis.
- Courage. It is a quality or mental state that allows one to face difficult challenges and overcome their fears with confidence. Leaders and doctors have courage to make tough decisions when necessary.
- Compassion. It is an ability to motivate people, ability to listen, maintain eye contact and show genuine concern. As a doctor, it is also important to let patient know that you are interested in treating and try to reduce patient suffering or as a leader address the genuine concern of public with sincerity to assure public that as a leader ready to sacrifices for them.
- Optimism. It means to think about positive outcome as being equally possible as a negative outcome. Always have a positive thinking to convert negative out come into a positive outcome.
As a process, actively cultivating NBL abilities in two steps:
Step 1: Sincere intention & honesty using base knowledge of issue/ problem/particular task→ analyze root cause with positive thinking → get 2-3 novel thought and make good solution of issue → this process will develop intuition → build insightfulness → self-confidence → clarity of vision.
Step 2: Accept challenging task & apply skillset by using intrinsic motivation to go to hyper-focused state which lead to state of flow → gain optimal experience → finally lead to happiness and internal pleasure and become a NBL.
PBR: When was the defining moment for you, when you realized leadership is not a learned trait, but one developed from within?
Prior to working in Saudi Arabia, I did not have what I call leadership intuition because I never got the chance to play a leadership role. It was tough in my early tenure working in Saudi Arabia because the hospital director wanted me to accept the position of the chief of medicine. He praised my insightfulness, self-confidence, and composure in the medical field. I give him immense credit due to the intense pressure and scrutiny he placed me under giving me the opportunity to see what I was made of. I think finding out who you are, where your values are, and what you are capable of are all integral to becoming a NBL. I think everyone has these things built into them and the challenges life throws at us helps us uncover them.
Those struggles led to my first leadership position as the chief of medicine, which ultimately served as the stepping stone in developing my leadership intuition. These included integrity, communication, open-mindedness, insightfulness, self-confidence, and composure. These qualities provided me with the foundation to manage about two hundred hospital staff, doctors, and nurses and treating approximately sixty-five thousand patients in outpatient, inpatient, ICU, and ER services in Saudi Arabia from 1988 to 1993. I was working 18 hours a day and having one day off every two weeks. It has allowed me to combat complex issues in a timely manner even until today.
I unlocked my hidden talent and skillsets in Saudi Arabia as internist and pulmonologist and soon hospital director promoted to chief of medicine, later acting director of medical services, and acting hospital director. This was the time in 1988 to 1993. I unlocked my NBL abilities in this span which I was only vaguely aware of before this span. As I found myself rising to the challenges and finding success, it further led to building my foundation as a self-confident leader with clear vision about my goals and full implementation.
PBR: You cite research which suggests employees are mostly unsatisfied with their managers. What do you think accounts for these unsatisfied opinions?
Today, leaders (managers) strive to be truly understanding of others and have a desire to build a strong culture but are often burned out due to the concomitant stresses of leading their respective organizations. I believe these leaders lack the proper mind-set to overcome these hurdles. The skills to work with our minds, our emotions, and other people are essential but rarely developed. According to Gallup 2013, leaders failed to provide genuine leadership to 70 percent of employees who were disengaged and had low productivity and innovation. Only 8 percent of people strongly agree that they experience overall well-being because of their work.
In my observation, leadership is a combination of talents and hidden skills. Research on leadership indicates that 50–75 percent of organizations are currently managed by managers who are lacking in leadership competence. Many leadership researchers have weighed in on NBL, but surprisingly, there is very little literature that fully explores this theory.
Managerial leadership can come in different flavors. One way to think about it is according to the differences in thinking styles, namely convergent and divergent thinking. Convergent-thinking leaders have a limited predetermined number of options and will look for data that supports one or the other. They don’t consider things outside the box and, consequently, miss answers that can be equally viable or perhaps even superior. While divergent thinker leader always thought out of box and find various solutions for same issue and can make clear strong decision with confidence with positive outcome. This is the quality of NBL. I have my thirty-seven years’ experience to use my clinical intuition as a doctor and leadership intuition as a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) taught me how to reach on balance decision according to the available information based on my previous observation and experience.
Personally, I think that this sums up the acquired-skill leaders. Acquired-skill leaders are people who just receive education and training about leadership, but they don’t fully grasp the essence thereof. They are poor decision-makers because they answer problems with a narrow-minded approach and don’t consider novel or unconventional options. They are focused on improving their administrative skills to run the organization, but they simultaneously lack the confidence in their own abilities to make critical decisions regarding complex situations with great success. This is because they do not have the mind-set to perform under pressure situations and hence are unable to figure out the situation, leading to a total leadership disaster and trickling blame down to the employee level.
Many leaders therefore just end up following the status quo unable to lead due to fear of failure. They are unable to take risks, play safe, and don’t address issues until they spiral out of control. These leaders do not have trust on their own abilities. When leaders become followers of the status quo, they make excuses and blame others for poor performance. Therefore, employees are mostly unsatisfied with their mangers or leaders.
PBR: How do you think the role of a leader has changed since you were a child?
According to my personal observation during last 2-3 decades’ majority of leaders developed fear of failure and losing job lead to reduce confidence in their own abilities and job securities. Therefore, leaders want to play safe to keep their job and become more defensive. Now most leaders are scared to take change initiatives in the institutions or organizations which is the main cause of suffering and shutting down the organization. This leads to a vicious cycle of low morale and low trust in their own abilities which further leads to poor productivity and decreased expectations. Failure of leadership further erode trust in management. Failed leaders are quitting jobs and redeployed in other organization and if failure continues then again removed from a company. If they luckily succeed, then they play defensively to maintain their position. Now time is money, life is fast, expectation to success of organization is very high, nearly everyone is materialistic, market competition is tough, and difficult to find job according to skill of individual. Job mismatch with skill is also a huge issue these days which probably lead to burnout. Fear of failure is the major issue due to which leaders developed reduce focus on issues leads to reduce clarity of mind, and losing control, therefore, leaders are not accepting challenges or not taking any chances due lack of confidence. Many leaders choose to follow instead to lead due to fear of failure and unable to take risks, play safe, keep quiet when thing get worse. These Leaders do not have trust on their own abilities. When leaders become followers, they make excuses and blame others for poor performance.
During my childhood period life was simple because I grew up in third world country, people were not too much materialist, they were sincere, lack of social class completion among people, market was not very competitive. Leaders were comparatively confident and have skill to run the organization.
Currently, there is widespread lack of confidence in leadership – whether in business, govt, education, or elsewhere. Leaders have fear of failure, and therefore, they cannot perform well. These organizations or institutions are managed by people who lack leadership competence. I believe the world is facing a crisis when it comes to leadership; our society needs more positive thinker leaders. A vision of self-confident NBL is necessary for the betterment of the world. We need NBL who lead us towards more peace & success in this world. My book includes self-assessment tool for readers to find where they stand today in terms of leadership role in any organization or institution.
PBR: On an international level, what is the primary difference you’ve observed in how people may become natural-born leaders?
There is no difference in my observation between NBLs internationally and nationally. This is because they are all intrinsically motivated and in my opinion less materialistic in their personal life. There is a sense that they never use short cuts in life, are authentic, always putting sincere effort to perform any task, and most of the time accept challenges with full dedication. They always went through a self-process of deep observation, thinking, analyzing own personality, correcting negative thinking (I called weakness) and always approach life positively.
I think however the environment affects how leadership evolves. For example, in the US there is a perception of stakes being much higher for failure than internationally. In places like Pakistan, with poverty being so widespread, there may be less of a social stigma attached to failing. For example, if a person becomes a baker after failing to gain entrance to medical school there is less stigma due to the difficulty of becoming a professional in a country like Pakistan. In the US due to stigma, it may lead to more of a deflection of responsibility. For example, in the aftermath of the BP oil spill in 2010 one of the executives famously remarked that “they would like their life back” and “what…did we do to deserve this?” To be clear, leaders such as these are present both nationally and internationally. The NBL way is to take responsibility, analyze what went wrong, and rise to the challenges to contribute to something larger than the self.
PBR: Do you plan on writing any more books?
Yes, I am working on writing a second book and have ideas about several books in the future. I view writing as an opportunity to share my experiences so that I can best serve humanity and trying to provide good guidance to improve their personal and professional lives. If someone gains that rare insight that they need from reading my book to unlock their potentials, that would be the best reward in my eyes.
