INTRODUCTION TO LEADERSHIP.
?What is leadership.
Many authors will define leadership as they deem fit, some will define leadership within the confines of their spirituality, religion or philosophy. As much as I do not have a universal definition of leadership, its’ my opinion that for any definition of leadership to be good, it should have a few components, such as,
1- It should be aimed at developing society.
2- It should be centered on perpetual self development.
3- It should be humble enough to accept other components
not contained within its scope, components such as differing opinion or method of doing things.
In simple terms, leadership can be defined as,
The capacity to solve societal challenges through the creation of a vision, developing the self and all required participants working for the achievement of that vision and finally implementing the vision .
From this definition, we can deduce that leadership is built on some basic foundation such as
- knowledge (knowledge, understanding and contructive application of gained knowledge termed wisdom)
- Perpetual self development expressed as commitment to personal excellence.
- Perpetual societal development.
This definition is deeper than meet the eye hence it begs further explanation. We will come to that further down.
?But why do we even need leaders or leadership.
Before we delve into the explanation of this definition of leadership, let us take a few factors into consideration, factors that serve as foundation for leadership.
Every society seeks advancement, this advancement calls for effort, mental and physical effort. Mental effort calls to mind our innate ability for “excel-lence”, an ability brought about through thinking.
If we digress a
bit, the word “man” came from a root word
which means “to think” but ?why do we
have to think. We think because we are placed in a garden and
every garden has its beauty by virtue of the design and handiwork of the gardener. For
every gardener to design a beautiful garden
then he must think.
“thy will be done on earth
as in heaven”
Our rudimentary function as
thinking beings then lies in replicating divinity
here in the material world.
Thinking is one
key that differentiates us from animals, we
think out ideas and apply these ideas to our
wellbeing, thinking is what makes it possible for us to redesign
our environment to suit our need. Good thinking aims at producing
things that will enhance wellbeing, enhancing wellbeing is a process
of building our garden. The process of building our garden then, I call
civilization.
Civilization is geared towards
creating a better society for us and for
posterity. Civilization, then, can be another
word for leadership since they pursue the
same purpose. A society civilizes itself from the crucible of her past
experiences,her capabilities and her aspiration.
(Note , by use of the word critical, I mean pointing out a
constructive way something can be done to be
better than what it is. originally the word “critical” was
used by Greek philosophers, it meant a deep
analysis of a things with the view of pointing out
a way forward. It did not mean the destructive
condemnation which use of the word by ignorant men have made it seem.)
This ever continuous process of civilization is activated
by wise minds of the society, these wise minds are the leaders whose thinking
faculty is strong enough to truelly differentiate
them from animals. These leaders are the pacesetters, the possibility thinkers,
they are the stuff from which a society is built.
The important point here is that everybody
can belong to this few wise minds whose
impact resonates through posterity, yes
everybody can since we are all born great, we
are all born leaders, though some of us wait for
life’s challenges to force us inwards and activate our
leadership skills while for others,
leadership lifestyle is an ever continuous way
of life. Put another way,LEADERSHIP can be seen as a
commitment to personal excel-lence. This
definition begs further breakdown.
COMMITMENT TO PERSONAL EXCELLENCE. As incarnate humans,
we are all endowed at birth
with certain responsibility or ability to excel in,
we all carry a portion of the divine spark, it
animates us and can power every person to
great heights of sucex. Leadership is about
finding that rare gem in us, that uniqueness we carry,
our inner light, our best and standing on
the mountain of that best, we beam our light
into society.
This means that leadership is self-made,
we are not entrusted with a leadership responsibility from without (society or any
external pressure), it must come from within for it to be sucexful,
nobody can force us to lead others and most importantly.
Secondly, we must
acquire great personal leadership strength
before we can attempt to lead others else
disaster is inevitable. Any person who lacks a
proper self understanding gained through the leadership
process of commitment to personal
excellence will fail if placed in a position to
lead others. By this, every person is first
supposed to lead himself sucexfully before he
can lead others. We will see more of this when
we talk about the functional levels of leadership.
Another factor of this definition is
that in a true leadership structure, there are no followers,
everybody is a
leader. Followers are good at causing trouble
or making mistakes that will tear down the
functional structure built over time by leaders.
Let us go further to delve into the leadership structure
as that will help us understand the
true function of followers.
CATEGORIES OF LEADERSHIP
- AUTOLEADERSHIP
This is the
leadership of the self or a leadership attained through self discovery. It is the ability of the leader to find his center of excellence or power hub. It starts when an individual is able to
- Delve deeper within and have a clearer understanding of who s/he
is, his strength, weakness , motivations and demotivators. - Where one is going and how to get there by creating a vision and exerting oneself to achieve set vision.
A
simple example is a person who wants to be an
engineer, first he will read or go to school, then
write exams and
go to a high school or university, then he will
have the requirement to be an engineer.
After schooling in a university, he will still go for a
tones of courses, seminars and training aimed at
developing himself or his knowledge or his
skills. One thing is sure here, he must have the
thick skin to be able to overcome the
challenges of schooling, some go to school and
join social groups or fraternities that deprive them of
their academic pursuit, some are so wayward
they fail to learn anything from school even if
they were good students who went for classes
throughout the semester. Some are not
meant for schooling, some people’s greatness
is found in what they do with their hands, body
and or minds, so it’s the sole responsibility of
the leader to find out where he fits in and how
to fit into that area sucexfully. In this category
we have footballers, musicians, sports people,
actors and actress and a host of others.
No matter where this greatness issues from the
important thing is to find this center of
excellence within. This task of finding ones
“center of excellence” is the first key to
leadership as it’s the pathway to self-discovery.
Every leader must discover who s/ he is else he
will function abysmally wherever
s/he goes.
A crucial component of this self
discovery is the decision to function either as a
career person or as a worker. I conceptually
distinguish career and work.
Career path is the
path we take as a result of understanding the unique
role we play in the scheme of societal
development. A career comes from our core,
its who we are, that aspect of divine spark we
carry, hence we can invest all our energy into
it without remorse and have the satisfaction
that comes from fulfilling that which we are meant to do .
While work is something we do to earn a
living or a convenient lifestyle with all the
material vanity we want. This distinction is
necessary because of the globalized world we
live in now. A world that enters newer phases every day
with inventions that seem little but
have a revolutionalising power and have the
capacity to relieve thousands of people of their
jobs.
The internet closed down many bookform liberaries and today one can carry millions of books in his device inside his pocket, stores that sell CD have almost vanished cos why would I go buy a cd when he can download the movie online. In the past one had to go to banks for every transaction he needed to do but today with internet banking and online banking, you may run your account for years without stepping foot in the banking hall, you can do everything that formally you had to the bank hall to do, from sending your statement of account, to transfers, to payment……just name it. In the past when you had to go to the banking hall, then, they must have employed a larger number of people but today, there is no need for much.
Good thinking has transformed all that. The world we live in today is built by the product we consume, product built by hardworking minds in the privacy of a lab or a workshop or an office.
The thing about office management or
organizational management is that the main
ideas which drives the company from point A
to point B is the amount of innovative work it does,
it is about how efficient its machines or
invention can be, it about how better its product or
service can be when compared to
other similar products. This innovations and
inventions always originate from those who
have the passion for what they are doing, the
career people within these organisations/6ompany.
If left for only the workers, the organization will suffocate itself out of
existence because these guys rarely have
anything to offer, they are most satisfied with
“completing the square” the square created
by the engine room of the organization. This
type barely understands their organization beyond their personal work scope and salary.
When one is
sufficiently advanced as an AUTOLEADERSHIP then
he can effectively manage the other levels of
leadership such as socleadership and
adleadership. AUTOLEADERSHIP has to do with
ones capacity to know himself at a deeper level.
To know his strength and weakness,
strength necessitates more growth while
weakness means we need to build strength
from that weakness. This calls for perpetual learning in
the school of life with unending lessons where every experience
and every one we meet plays a role in determining who we will ultimately become.
A chain is as strong as its
weakest link. The process of building personal
strength from weakness is one that goes on
forever- this is why leadership is perpetual self
development cos as one builds from his
knowledge, new weakness is created, a weakness
needing to be corrected.
AUTOLEADERSHIP is a kind of extension of knowledge,
which consist in the investigation of things.
An investigation that leads one to a fuller
responsibility to himself and to society via
service on the platform of his inner source of
power as found in ones talents, potential and
capabilities.
- SOCLEADERSHIP
“Soc” from
social, This is the leadership responsibility each
person owes the society he belongs. This
responsibility built from our understanding of
The social status of the society, The moral
status of the society, The vision of the society,
How far the society is from its aspired
destination, How the society can get to its destination
The role one plays in this grand
scheme of things. These factors will guide and
instruct the leader on how to live his life. This is the real
intended meaning of the word social, a word social
came from a latin word
“socialis” meaning companionship.
Psychology has shown that man is a social animal whose
existence is solely dependent of
his interaction with his fellow men.
SOCLEADERSHIP, then, implies living a life that
reflects our highest moral ideals in our
socialization, be it in the office, at home, at
social functions, with our friends, on the street and even in our sleep.
Social here does not
imply a gathering of people for socialization
purposes, social here means the ability of a
particular people or culture to integrate/
enculturate other people and culture to itself.
At the personal level, it implies our ability to integrate others into our life without
ostracizing them due to negative judgment
from us or for whatever reason or difference
like race, tribe, nationality or philosophical
idealogy. At a higher arc, SOCLEADERSHIP is our
ability to learn from the same society we impact.
In the school of life with unending
lessons learnt through trials, challenges,
experiences and celebrations, every
experience and people we are exposed to
become crucial in the development of who we
will ultimately become.
This is so because in life our greatest philosophy or ideal
come from the experiences
we are exposed to, also they come from the people we
associate with and what we learn from them.
In this capacity do we get
coaches, mentors and other motivational
engines that drive us to our destination. This
being so, the application of SOCLEADERSHIP
has its purpose in building or adding value to the
life of society from our wealth of knowledge.
For us to implement socleadership sucexfully
there are factors to be taken into
consideration. The temperament, character
and personality of the people we are socializing with.
The social and cultural milieu
we live in and the milieu of the person we hope to
socialize with
Lastly we have
- “ADLEADERSHIP”
Adleadership (“ad” from administrative)
this is the leadership capacity we bear when
we have others within an organization to lead.
In this capacity do we find all political heads,
all administrative offices, and all who are entrusted
with the leadership mantle to lead
others.