B-schools have long used sports and great sportsmen as analogies to teach management and

leadership concepts to students. Such examples create interest among students as well as help them
understand and retain such concepts easily.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s success record with Indian cricket team provides us with a wealth of material
for analysis and case studies. A strapping young lad, strictly middle class background, emerging from
outside traditional cricket centers in India, bursts onto the scene as an explosive batsman, reinvents
himself as a cool finisher of run chases, surprisingly chosen as captain over seniors like Rahul Dravid
and Anil Kumble. And then builds a new look team India that wins three world cups as well as reaches
No 1 ranking in Test and ODI. Clearly stuff from which legends are born.
What lessons can we draw from Captain Cool?
1. The desire to learn: the hunger to upgrade one skill’s is one of MSD’s biggest strengths. He started
of as a destructive batsman with scores of 148 and 183 very early in his career, which sealed a place
for him in the team. He could so easily have been content with that, the way Sehwag remained. He
quickly understood that Team India required a calm finisher rather than another explosive batsman and
recast himself in that mould. Think of the discipline that it would have taken for someone barely 25 to
curb his natural stroke play. And in double quick time he also became a master strategist, one who
could analyze players, teams and match conditions. All managers, whatever are their level need to have
a desire to keep learning, because the corporate environment is always evolving.

2. Lead by Example: They say that a team reflects the attitude of the leader. Team India once known to
snatch ‘Defeat from the jaws of victory’ now repeatedly wins from difficult situations. Dhoni is captain
cool, soaks in the pressure, takes the tough tasks unto himself, as in the match winning innings in the
World Cup Final at Wankhade, 2011. Yuvraj and Raina may have been in better form then, but he knew
that he was the best under pressure. Today the entire teams shares his ethos: the self-belief, the ‘always
in control’ attitude. Rarely does a good manager need to ‘command’ people. When he has earned the
respect of his team through example, people will follow on their own. If the respect is missing, even
direct orders or threats would not work.
3. Calculated Risks/Trusting his instinct: MSD is a master strategist. And like a master, it is not all about
analysis and numbers, he also takes calculated risks based on his instinct and he has the courage to
accept responsibility when they fail. But on so many occasions, they come of gloriously. From Joginder
Singhs last over in World T20 2007 to giving Ishant Sharma the 18th over in the recent ICC Champions
Trophy Final, many of MSD’s risks have become legendary. For all the management books and market
research that you do, management is also part art. You can’t always go by the book nor do what the
numbers say. You have to trust your instinct and innovate.
4. Managing talent: MSD is great at managing talent, especially young talent. People like Ravi Ashwin,
Bhuvaneswar Kumar, Jadeja have blossomed under his leadership. To put simply, he places trust on
them and gets them to believe in themselves. Also, he follows the simple rule, praise in public, and
criticize in private. In public, he takes the blame on himself when things go wrong and shares the credit
with the team when they win. Jack Welch, once said that a leader should spend at least 40% of his/her
time identifying, training and mentoring talent.
5. Focus on process, the results will follow: All teams win and lose, even great ones. Rather than worry
about the result of each game, MSD’s focus is on process improvements. If the quality of performance
improves, you will soon start winning more than you lose. This young team India is still work in progress.
They are developing a fine opening pair, they have a great pair of spinners, In Bhuvi, Ishant and Umesh
they have the raw material to create a good set of fast bowlers. They are now counted as one of the
world’s best fielding outfits. A few more things are work in progress. But with Captain Cool at the helm,
we will get there for sure. For managers, success is rarely about one greater moment of inspiration or
one knockout moment. Rather it is about consistent performance 365 X 24 that leads to long term
success.
Considering Mahender Singh Dhoni, who has set an example for many youngster not only in sports but
also in other fields of life especially in corporate. It’s very important for young managers to be soft
spoken, modest but have a will of steel to grow.
Story

Leader by instinct
N. Madhavan Print Edition: May 15, 2011

He led a young Indian team to victory in the inaugural T-20 Cricket Championship in September
2007. In December 2009, India became the top-ranked Test team in the world for the first time
under his captaincy. The team still retains that spot. He captained Chennai Super Kings (CSK) -
his Indian Premier League team - to victory in April 2010 and followed it up by lifting the
Champions League Trophy for the same team in September. The mother of all victories came in
early April this year: India won the ICC Cricket World Cup after 28 years.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the only captain in the world to have tasted success in all formats of
the game, and that too in just four years. No wonder, batting legend Sachin Tendulkar calls the
29-year-old the best among the nine captains he has played under in his 21-year career.
Australian great Greg Chappell calls Dhoni the best captain in the world today. Former Indian
skipper Kapil Dev, who led the country to its first major cricketing triumph - the 1983 Prudential
World Cup - has no qualms in accepting that Dhoni is a better captain.
 The transformation of MSD, as he is often called, from a long-haired pinchhitter
to a suave captain could not have been more dramatic. He burst into Indian
cricket in 2004 as a small-town boy with a penchant for whacking the ball out of
the ground with his trademark 'helicopter shot'. Captaincy came his way in
September 2007 when he was appointed skipper for the Twenty20 World Cup
championship. India won the tournament.

Soon after, he was given charge of the team in the other two formats of the
game too - one day internationals and Test cricket. (Sure, there have been
temporary stumbles, like the exit at the league stage in the 2010 T-20 world
championship.) The manner in which he has gone about transforming a formerly
'also ran' team into the best in the world offers valuable lessons in management
and leadership.

Keep it simple, silly

Unlike most other captains today, Dhoni does not believe in strategising
excessively before a match. In fact, he seldom watches match videos or pores
over statistics. Team meetings on match days are mostly standin sessions lasting
no more than 10 minutes, say colleagues. "I like to keep things simple. Cricket is
a simple sport and you complicate it by thinking too much. More you think,
more complex it becomes,'' Captain Cool said at a press conference days after
winning the ICC World Cup.

Dhoni employs sleep as an effective tool to beat pre-match tension. On the day of a big match,
people close to him reveal, he wakes up just two hours before the match starts. Keeping it
simple also helps him to remain calm in live wire situations. Former Australian wicketkeeper-
batsman and Dhoni's idol Adam Gilchrist recently said the Indian skipper's biggest plus point
was his ability to remain calm under pressure.

Venkat R. Krishnan, professor of Organisational Behaviour, Great Lakes Institute of

Management, sees merit in Dhoni's methods. "Successful managers take decisions on the fly
and abhor paralysis by analysis," he explains.

Dhoni's self confidence has rubbed off on his teammates.

They have also started believing they can achieve greatness
and this helped them to win the World Cup.
MSD's ability to read the game and the weaknesses of his
opponents, more than compensates for the lack of major
prematch brainstorming. "He has always flummoxed rivals
with his field placements, his use of bowlers or his frequent
changes in the batting order, which invariably turned the match in his team's favour. This is
because he reads the game very well," says Ravi Shastri, commentator and former Indian
skipper. For instance, when West Indian all-rounder Kieron Pollard walked in to bat for Mumbai
Indians at the 2010 IPL finals, Dhoni was quick to place two fielders at extra cover. Pollard fell
for his weakness - an uppish cover drive straight into the hands of one of them.

Also, instinct - more than a wellthought out strategy - predominantly drives Dhoni's decision
making. It was in-stinct that prompted him to bring on an inexperienced Joginder Sharma to
bowl the last over against Pakistan in the T-20 finals in 2007. Or more recently in IPL 4, when
opponents Kolkata Knight Riders were cruising to victory chasing a modest CSK total of 153
runs, Dhoni overlooked the more experienced Scott Styris and handed the ball to Suresh Raina.
In both the matches, the bowlers delivered and Dhoni's team won.

ALSO ON CRICKET: But there have been failures too. In the ICC World Cup,
South Africa needed 13 runs to win from the last over in
Brands bet big on cricket its Group B league match. Dhoni brought on pacer
Ashish Nehra though he had the services of the more
IPL-4 may yield Rs 350 cr in taxes experienced off-spinner Harbhajan Singh. India lost the
to govt match. In this instance, it didn't click, but says Shastri,
"Great captains go by instinct when it comes to big
Cricket gear may be in short decisions and it works."
supply
High on emotional IQ
According to Krishnan, the management professor, "Traditional intelligence alone does not
deliver results, emotional intelligence produces better outcomes." And for now, emotional
intelligence is something the Indian skipper seems to have plenty of. However, the success rate
of such decisions will remain high only as long as Dhoni's emotional intelligence is good enough
to size up issues, warns Krishnan.

Also, when it comes to owning up mistakes, Captain Cool has never had any problems. "A good
leader takes bold decisions. But if they go wrong, Dhoni promptly admits his mistake," says
Krishnamachari Srikkanth, former Indian captain and chairman of the Indian selection
committee. After beating Pakistan in the World Cup semi-final, Dhoni was quick to admit he
read the pitch wrong and opted for an extra seamer instead of a spinner.

"After winning the match, it was not necessary for him to say that. But he owned up," says
Srikkanth. Another attribute Dhoni seems to have oodles of is self-belief. "Self-belief is his
greatest asset and enables him to lead from the front," says Kapil Dev. He gives the example of
Dhoni's decision to come in to bat at number five, ahead of the in-form Yuvraj Singh, in the
World Cup finals. Dhoni was not exactly in the best of form.

The highest he had scored in the previous 21 innings was 38 runs. He still walked in and created
history with an unbeaten 91-run innings, which also won him the man-of-the-match award. "A
good leader does not sit and wait for an opportunity. You need to knock on opportunity's door
and grab it. That is what Dhoni did," adds Kapil Dev. Krishnan attributes this to the
phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy which is considered to be a miracle in the domain of
human behaviour. "If you think you can do wonders, you will do wonders," he explains.

Evidently, this trait has also rubbed off onto his teammates. They too have begun to believe
they can achieve greatness and this helped them to fight back and win the World Cup, adds
Krishnan. No wonder, teammates adore the man. Dhoni's room is always open for his
teammates and they spend most evenings together discussing movies, bikes, planes - not
necessarily cricket.

On the ground too, rather than impose his own views, the skipper allows teammates the space
to perform, say insiders. Once he was asked why he never shouts at his players on the field.
"What is the dressing room for," Dhoni replied without batting an eyelid. However, teammates
say they have rarely seen him losing his cool even in the dressing room. The skipper, though,
does convey his displeasure in his own subtle way when players fail to deliver.

On April 6, at a dinner hosted by the CSK team management prior to the start of the current IPL
season, Dhoni surprised everyone by walking over to a table that security guards were at and
having dinner with them. Success, those present there said, has had little impact on the Ranchi
boy. And more importantly, it has not dampened his insatiable hunger for more. Recently,
asked what next, Dhoni's answer was: "I don't mind repeating it all over again."

Harsha and Anita Bhogle

Dhoni proves the difference between instinct and luck:
Harsha and Anita Bhogle

Midway through the World Cup there were references to

Dhoni's luck - that India could win it because he was lucky.
Isn't it interesting that the best leaders in the world tend to be
lucky? Or is it because they have an ability to read a
situation quickly and back the right person? Dhoni's success is proof of the difference between
instinct and luck. Dhoni's instincts stay sharp because he is calm, and a calm opponent is the
most dangerous opponent. When things start going wrong, everyone looks towards the leader.
If he is chewing his nails or stomping around, it means the situation is getting to him. When the
leader is calm, the team believes there is still hope.

Ian Chappell once told us the first principle of leadership: congratulate in public and criticise in
private. The world can celebrate your success but being berated in public is humiliating. Except
for one occasion when he urged his teammates not to play for the crowds but for the team,
Dhoni has hardly ever lashed out at his team. He must have done it within the dressing room at
times, but by doing it that way he showed respect for his teammates, strengthened the bond. He
seems very secure in his job and has a way of respecting seniority. He did that with Anil
Kumble and with Sourav Ganguly, and made himself invisible when Sachin Tendulkar was
having his moment immediately after India won the World Cup. It was Dhoni's and India's
Cup, but he let it be Tendulkar's moment.
And he is not afraid of admitting his mistakes. No leader gets it right 10 out of 10, but insecure
leaders try to cover up mistakes. Honesty is an essential attribute of a leader.

Harsha and Anita Bhogle run Prosearch Consultants. They do corporate programmes on
lessons from sport for managers. Their book, The Winning Way, will be published next month.

Professor E.S. Srinivas

Dhoni is at once dignified and candid, grounded but with high
aspirations: Prof E.S. Srinivas

Intuitive decision-making is based on identifying organised patterns and

underlying structures in our experience. To take such decisions, the leader
should have a strong sense of assurance and confidence, and needs to
communicate that confidence by not being shaky or projecting insecurity.

Charismatic leaders are not necessarily very bright or great advisors. Dhoni
seems to have a simple and clear view of cricket. While acknowledging the uncertainty
involved - "on my day I will succeed", he does not worry too much about it.

Though it may be too early to evaluate Dhoni as a leader, he has shown traces of a
transformational leader, flashes of charisma and indicators of a Level-5 leadership.
Transformational leaders inspire followers to transcend their self-interest for the team. Dhoni
demonstrated this many times by sacrificing his record for team performance. These leaders
communicate high expectations and express important issues simply (playing for the country
and not for the crowd or gallery). Charismatic leaders are willing to take personal risks to
achieve their vision, exhibit behaviours that are out of the ordinary.

Dhoni's unconventional behaviour - batting style in the initial years and leading style in later
years as captain - reflects this tendency. As a Level-5 leader, Dhoni blends personal humility
and strong professional will, takes responsibility for failures and gives credit to others for
successes. Dhoni is at once dignified and candid, grounded but with high aspirations, cool but
determined.

He demonstrates equanimity by being graceful under pressure and his body language exudes
confidence even when the situation is not going well for the team.

Professor E.S. Srinivas is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Leadership, Innovation and
Change at the Indian School of Business. He has also conducted leadership development
programmes for organisations.