Leadership

LEADERSHIP

"The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership." Ð'- Colin Powell, United States military leader and Secretary of State.

Leadership is much more of an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed ultimately in its practice. It is the ability of influencing other people to cooperate towards some goals which they come to find desirable. Leadership is getting someone to do what they do not want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve Ð'- a challenge to be something more than the average. It is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence by seeing how you react. If you are in control, they too are in control.

A leader should definitely know the changes that are happening to his followers, knowing that they absorbed the knowledge that you shared with them. Are the followers reaching their potential? Are they learning and serving? Are they achieving the required results? Are they changing significantly? Can they lead on their own? An outstanding leadership can be determined based on these observations. Also, one can measure one's leadership through the caliber of people who chose to follow him.

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders than followers. Lao Tzu once said, "To lead the people, walk behind them. A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally." It can be said therefore the leader's role to raise people's aspiration for what they can become and to encourage them to give their best. According to James Crook, "The man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd." A leader is humble but in a way that his actions are kept organized. To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you for nobody wants to follow someone who do not know where he is going. As Abraham Lincoln said, "Whatever you do, be a good one." You do not have to be an expert to lead; however, you do have to be human. When you bring humanity to your effort, you come to your team with open eyes, mind and heart. From this openness grows creativity,