Pretty much every organisation or entity needs leadership. Leadership, much as it is prominent at national or international level starts within the family and as such its importance cannot be overemphasized.
Important as it is, there are some standards that have to be followed by all leaders at all levels. The unfortunate thing, however is that many people have not grasped the concepts of leadership which has so many negative effects on both the leader and the followers.
Some little experience with leadership coupled up with some reads have left me with a couple of insights as to how leadership should be. I must say I enjoy leading, but with a diverse range of followers, leadership can be a challenging thing as some of the people seem to be frustrating you for the fun of it. Another part of me thinks that it is lack of knowledge which leads to the sort of frustrations that come to leaders from followers and this has led me to thinking that the whole concept of leadership is grossly misunderstood and that it does not receive the attention it deerves. This is probably because people think that issues to do with leadership are for a certain group of people and not others. Truth is, however, that everyone needs to understand leadership in order for our families, societies, organizations and nations to move forward at the pace and above all in the direction that we all need to be moving.
Perhaps one of the things that has led to the leadership crisis that we have is the lack of understanding of the sort of leadership that John Maxwell advocates for. John Maxwell once said that a leader is the one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.
This quote could use some cracking, so let's get to it. Leaders know the way. What this means is that for every entity someone is leading, there has to be a clear direction of where the organization is going. The leader just has to know that whether everyone else knows it or not. The key of this whole thing is direction and vision. Any organization needs a vision which might need to be redefined from time to time to be in keeping with the ever-developing and changing world. Leaders have to be there to define the vision and to redifine it constantly if necessary.
Going the way. This is about doing the things that take the organization and the people in it to the vision or ultimate goal. The leader simply has to do what it takes to reach the goal and this becomes important when it comes to showing the way. Particularly important for religious leaders for obvious reasons.
Showing the way is all about showing the people the way to the goal. The interesting part about this is that way back people used to respond to authorities but in the later day what we have learnt is that people can be resistant to change for the better even for things that can benefit them. This, from my little experience is the biggest challenge of the 21st century leader and it is even tougher for a leader in Malawi where people promise to do one thing and do the exact opposite. To be honest, there is no single formula for circumventing this taking it from how dynamic leadership is. I will let the critical thinker figure it out. Musova.
Having talked about that, we might think that the problem is only with people who are in leadership positions but are either clueless (do not know the way), hypocritical (do not go the way) and uninspiring (do not show the way). That is not the case. In fact it is those people who define themselves as followers who frustrate leaders and delay development or achievement of goals.
If we are to look at leadership from the perspective of the wording, it will not take a professor of linguistics to define that a leader is a person who leads. Some people who are lazy misdefined this and decided to think of a leader as a person who does every single thing in an entity. The result is that there are people who are followers by definition; the sort of people whose most important contribution to anything is destructive criticism.
What everyone who reasons has to understand is that leaders are there to initiate things and to help everyone move towards the goal, and not to get the burden of having to do all the work themselves. After all, in every leadership system there has to be some sort of succession or mentorship of new leaders, which means everyone needs to be actively involved as they are also potential leaders. Above that, we need to understand that there is a "dormant" leader in every passive follower.
One misconception that we also have to put out is the one that leaders are those in positions. If I am to use my sort of language, I would say the definition of a leader includes but is not limited to a person in a position. There are many leaders who are not in positions but because of how they know, go and show the way a lot of lives are being transformed. Something a lot of us should learn. We can lead without a position. In fact I think that is when leadership becomes more enjoyable because there tends to be less of the binding obligations.
With everything that has been said here in mind, I think the most important thing is that leadership should be goal directed. It should not just be about enjoying the benefits of being a leader but rather something that should see an entity, be it a family or a nation go to another level. It shouldn't even be about credits even though credits might be important at one time or the other. The 21st century leader has to be the one who can groom some future leaders and make himself unnecessary for the sustainace of the entity he is leading and that is for continuation. Good leaders are not power hungry.
There is one inspirational leader that comes to mind when I think about the issue of credits, which I think is one of the stagnators of development in this country. That is Jesus Christ himself.
A story is told of how His disciples found some people who were not official members of his "cabinet" driving out demons in His name (Mark 9:38-40); and of course like a typical person would have done, they tried to stop them from using their Rabbi's name to cast out demons. Jesus' reaction? "Don't stop them. If they are doing that they are not against me."
Now that I have understood some of these principles, I have come to imagine what was going through the mind of the Master. You probably have too.
Some important man (just forgotten the name) once wondered how much we could achieve if we did not do things for credits.
That is the challenge to true leadership. The 21st century leader has to understand all this to be good. He has to be goal directed, to know the way to the goal, walk it and bring along others who can walk with him to the goal. He needs to rise above personal benefit and mediocre routines to make a positive and lasting impact and that is what will make a good leader in our age.
I hope you will be one.
No comments:
Post a Comment