5 Entrepreneurial lessons from the leadership of MS Dhoni

Mahendra Singh Dhoni or MS Dhoni is one of the most successful sportsperson and an iconic captain of the Indian Cricket team. His skill and ability have given great success to Indian cricket. He has his unique leadership skill. His skill can be useful to any entrepreneurs who are handling a team or running a business.

Here are these 5 lessons from MS Dhoni that can be practiced and learn to become a great leader:

1. Dealing with failures & success

Failures can lower the morale of any person. It is an art of how one handles failure and could not let it affect you. After a chain of losses and question raised about his captaincy in 2010, MS Dhoni comes back with a bounce that is the victory of World Cup 2011. All it requires is a great character with some healthy attitude. Entrepreneurs must be focused on the work rather crying over the spilled milk.

If we talked about success, Once you attain success, you must be down to earth. Dhoni followed this policy of sharing the credit of success with the team. Whenever he wins the match, He gives credits to his team. When he won the trophy he handed over that trophy to his team member and always stands behind the team during a final photo shoot with the trophy. So as an entrepreneur learn to shear your credit of success with your team, your customer and your family.

2. Building a team

Dhoni understands the idea of building a world-class team from beginning. He has set his high standard after becoming captain of Indian team. In the starting years of captaincy, He had clearly mentioned to team management he would love to have highly athletic and dedicated players instead of players with an excellent record in the past. He knew that a highly motivated and dedicated team can only bring glory to Indian cricket.

In 2007 He went to first ever T20 world cup with a relatively less experienced team, He inspired his team members to give the best performance. And as a result of this India won first ever T20 world cup.

So, Dhoni has a very clear idea of what kind of team he wanted from the very beginning, He faced challenges initially but he did not give up the idea of his ideal team. So every entrepreneur needs to find out what kind of team he wants to build and keep working towards building such a team.

3. Dealing with criticism

Handling criticism is a very important lesson to learn. Dhoni behaves calmly and presents himself as a confident man enough for handling such situations. Whenever India lost any series captain has to face a lot of criticism. The critics must be shown respect and not anger or frustration. Starting from the family and friends, employees, customers all would be commenting on our acts. But as an entrepreneur you must not get disheartened by that at the same time you should be focused on your goal and try to learn from the criticism instead of reacting to it.

4. Calmness in a tough situation

Dhoni is also called as Captain Cool, which indicates the calm attitude in the toughest situations. his ability to stay calm in a very challenging match situation makes him a great leader.

When he was asked how did you keep yourself calm in such a pressure situation. He gave a beautiful answer; He said that it’s all about getting sorted in your mind about the situation. As there is only two possibilities in such a situation either you win or you lose. So more you worried about pressure, more there is a possibility about losing. If you start worrying your mind lost the capacity to think. So its always important to get sorted in mind that both results is possible and let me try my best without worrying about the result.

Being an entrepreneur, you are bound to face such situations. It’s always better to get sorted about this kind of situation in your mind.

5. Trust your team

MS Dhoni shows great trust in his players. Whenever he is on the field he allows his players to do things their way. If he knows that experience bowler bowling from another side he doesn’t try to teach him how to bowl, he allows his bowler to express himself. Same when someone makes a mistake in the field, he stays calm and never criticise anyone on the ground. So being an entrepreneur, you must display confidence on your team members without any fear of failure. Your act of showing faith will improve the morale of the team as well as smoothes the functioning at the workplace. The employees will be blessed with a sense of responsibility.