3 Leadership Traits That Made Mohandas Gandhi An Interesting Person

It is not always easy to determine what makes someone more interesting than another person. There are a lot of subjective viewpoints that are hard to measure especially when it comes to personality traits. When it comes to historical world leaders, how interesting a person was is the difference between those who are remembered and those who are rather forgettable.

One thing is certain — Mohandas Gandhi was truly a charismatic leader and one who left an equally amazing legacy. Watching the movie, Gandhi, it was impossible not to note the lessons on leadership that are woven throughout the story. He was an unconventional man, one with a passion the engrossed everything that he was and represented. He is not remembered for his wealth or possessions, but for being a man of the people ? and that is certainly an interesting trait about him. Here are four reasons why we think he was an interesting individual.

Risk-taking initiative
Gandhi spent his formative years in South Africa, where he arrived at the age of 24, as an expatriate lawyer on an assignment to represent a local Indian trader in a commercial dispute. His initial experiences in a country that strongly discriminated against non-whites including Indians who were initially brought to the country as slaves and later became indentured laborers was testy at best. He was pushed out of a train from Pretoria to Pietermaritzburg, Natal for defending his right to travel in the whites-only wagon. He stood up against the discriminatory laws at the time, and challenged policies that were meant to disenfranchise Indians.

Curiosity
Gandhi was curious about what a life of servitude was like, particularly in the shoes of his own people in South Africa, which is one of the many reasons why he decided to live in the country. While building the Tolstoy farm, an Ashram in Transvaal, he participated in what would be regarded as menial tasks — preparing meals and cleaning toilets — in an effort to level the field. His curiosity had him questioning his new reality in South Africa and his place in it, and he went from being a passive bystander to being a more active citizen.

Opinionated
Everyone has opinions, and as history depicts, the Mahatma went from being a timid young man to become an opinionated leader?who would eventually lead India to its independence. What sets him apart from others is that his opinions were unique and showed a drastically different point of view from other people of?his time. His opinion on peaceful protests was legendary. He was able to influence millions of individuals around the world to pursue passive resistance or Satyagraha, as a way to bring about socio-political change.

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