We know the director Ang Lee for his Academy awards and accomplished direction, the most recent being Life of Pi. He gets the best people together, displays their acting skills to the world at large and reaps the benefits by way of polished movies, box office hits and plenty of awards.

Today’s CEO does the same thing. The CEO hires the best minds, taps into these minds, creates something novel, sells it and gains a bottom line benefit. The CEO is known to all over the globe for his/her leadership abilities and qualities. Leadership can reside in everybody. Are you a leader?

An image of a successful leader brings to mind a person who displays energy (Richard Branson), great presentation skills(Steve Jobs or Barack Obama) or flamboyance (Donald Trump). But leadership qualities are present in soft spoken, and mellow individuals as well ( Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Ang Lee)

The director Ang Lee is not the head honcho of a company or a country but leads and drives his people to perform and deliver. Ang Lee has a creative mind and is soft spoken. He does not yell when he needs a message to be conveyed to his actors. He personally walks over to the actor, conveys the message and leaves. The director is highly sensitive, creative and according to one of his actors, the director has a silent energy about him. Ang Lee is known to be focused, calm and someone who knows what he wants.

All the attributes discussed above make the director a person who is emotionally intelligent and an introvert. We normally attribute extroverted personalities to strong leadership. But that is not true!

Read this article that refers to emotional intelligence.

In the coming weeks we will discuss more on the power of introverts as leaders