Most people in India and many worldwide, love to watch the IPL (Indian Premier League) cricket matches. Watching the game, backing the teams, your favorite players and occasionally getting into friendly betting challenges (not the web of seriously dangerous betting) is all great fun year after year. Some even plan to watch the match live in the stadium and it turns out to be a great outing with tons of excitement.

In addition to the entertainment, if you wear the leadership lens and watch these matches from that perspective, there could be many more insights and learning about team functioning and how leaders behave. Let us enlist some of these behaviors that one can observe closely and learn from.

1. The most visible aspect is that of leadership presence on the ground. How does the captain of the team carry oneself on the field? Does he look confident, self-assured, energetic and excited? Does he give a feeling that as a captain he is on-top-of things? Some look really lost and clueless. With the right leadership presence comes authentic smiles, claps, and cheers on the field. When you watch next time, look out for these self-management aspects in the leader!
2. Reading the environment and circumstances to the best of ability, taking appropriate decisions and owning the same are some of the characteristics that can be witnessed while watching the toss, and post-match interviews.
3. Team leadership is another prominent feature that gets demonstrated vividly on the field. How do you tap into your team talent, who to deploy when, motivating & cheering for them, backing them when they fail to live up to their potential and so on can be closely witnessed on the ground. Also, how the leader listens to the team members or how much one goes with personal conviction is interesting to watch.
4. Dealing with under performance, below par commitment and effort during the game are special cases for the team leader to handle. Some make faces, some shrug shoulders, some get angry, some shuffle the field placements, and some look lost.
5. Handling team failures and loss of the game brings out another facet of a leader. Some look demotivated, some blame it on one or two players (though indirectly), some analyze and learn from, some re-strategize for the next game. When handled correctly, you notice the grace in the leader!
6. IPL team leaders are closely scrutinized as to how he treats the senior members in the team. Seniors could be by age, image, experience or track record. Whether or not he consults them, listens to them, involves them or respects them is watched with keen interest.
7. Finally, it is a great learning experience to watch how the leaders deal with the huge expectations from the fans, critics, team owners, and public in general. They can also haters who keep booing, blaming or writing poor things about the leader. How to cope with such stress, operate beyond all of these, manage the stakeholders delicately and stay focused highlights the mettle of the leader.

Watching an IPL match is fun; but watching with a leadership lens is learning!

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