1. “Visionary leadership is not an innate skill you must be born with - vision can be learned.”
Having a vision is achieved as soon as an individual acquires conscience. A kid may already have a vision of himself in the future. However, not all people are the same because each person has his own pace of thinking. Different kinds of visions are formed by everyone but not at the same time and they may be subjected to changes. For example, Adolf Hitler, the once great and feared leader of Germany, dreamed of becoming an artist/painter. That was his earlier vision but in his pursuit, he was not successful so he reinvented himself. He then became a messenger of the army until he thought of another vision. He learned and sensed that with the situation of their country at that time, a weak leader may crumple Germany so he stood up, and made what was necessary to fulfill his vision - a vision of a strong and abundant country. Eventually, he became the strong iron fist leader of Germany. Vision is thus not an innate skill and it can be learned.
2. “Speak in a way that others hear leadership.”
The people will not listen to someone who just talks. But they will, to someone who talks and speaks to them like he is one of his listeners. Most especially when he leads them somewhere through the use of words although it may seem impossible, a normal person would always believe something he wants to hear. A manifestation of this is the victory of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines in 2016. He won simply because of the way he speaks. The statements he makes are direct to the point and with great emphasis unlike his opponents when he ran for the presidency. An opposite of President Duterte is former President Noynoy Aquino. The latter speaks in a very rhetoric manner that most of the time the essence of the meaning is spread out and often missed by some Filipinos. This contributes to his lax leadership in the eyes of ordinary Filipinos.
3. “The most effective leaders are adept at the art of managing up.”
It is true that successful leaders are adept at the art of managing up because they could control the situation most of the time. Whenever something comes up, appropriate action must be done and a good leader must know exactly how it should be executed immediately. If a leader is not adept at managing up, the whole group/team will fall down. The operation will not run efficiently and effectively which causes slow and stagnant progress. The employees, teammates, or the people in general, will not have a sense of direction as to what they should do resulting in an unorganized system that incurs a great waste of time and ridiculous outcomes.
4. Trust
The backbone of leadership is not money, relationship, physical appearance, or status but trust. It is impossible for someone to do something for another person if he does not trust the latter. In business, when a product advertisement says that it does heal a chopped-off finger and lets it grow another, no one will believe it. Why? Simply because it is impossible. But, if it says that it removes pain on injuries and that people already have tried it and it worked, then they will believe it. The same is true with the leadership trust in the government and its people. What a person says must live up to his words. This is related to the saying “word of honor”. Also, it is a person’s action of words that people will trust.
5. Influence
The partner of trust is influence. When someone trusts the leader, the former will surely follow the leader because with trust, comes influence. It is what makes people do something that is similar to what the leader does. It is a way of strong-arming a situation especially when there is a problem. For example, if a business lacks marketing and its sales abruptly went down, a leader would use his influence to gather up people to plan something and apply action to it. Those influenced people will gladly help the leader in dealing with the problem and making a solution. In this case, the people working and interacting in the leader's environment will be at par with one another and will stick together to act in unison.
6. Communication
The supplement of influence is communication. It is through effective communication that people will understand one another. It is important that the people understand what the leader thinks. This is done through the use of a common language. It will impart the ideas of the leader to the people. As a reiteration, communication will prevent misunderstandings. If the President of a country does not tell the people his agenda – specific tasks or goals, the people will definitely do something else that is outside their country’s designated objectives which gravely affects their unity.
7. Motivation
The more lively a leader speaks, the more interested the listeners are so a leader should be motivated when having communication. But it is not just communication that motivation is needed. Motivation is also needed in the personality of the leader. Having motivation will make a person do something. It gives him the energy to pump up his body and start working on something. It pushes him to move, act, and pursue. It is a human spirit that provides the determination to do hard work. Motivation is like having the aggressiveness of a lion. It has the eagerness to survive and do what it takes to be the king of the jungle. If it is not because of motivation, leadership will just be a simple word without meaning.
8. Confidence
The most of important part of leadership is confidence. It is a fuel to trust, influence, communication and motivation. It is the face of leadership because the skills, abilities and knowledge are shown off through confidence. It is the one that lets the leader communicate his ideas and execute his plans. A person who is intelligent but shy enough to even complete his sentence with a clear and loud voice will not be heard. Whereas, a person with a little knowledge but presents himself well and looks comfortable to the people when speaking will most likely be listened to by them. However, the ideas he has might not be applicable to the kind of leadership that is needed to the people. Therefore, in order for a person with great capabilities to inculcate leadership, he must be confident since it completes the whole purpose of leadership.
Note:
The best approach to leadership is performance-based because, with performance-based, a leader can see who among his people have the best capabilities. With this, he could choose the best people to work with him and they could work efficiently. As compared to the seniority approach, the good and capable people might not be used correctly which leads to inefficiency in the working environment.
In supplement to this, he shall inculcate fear among his people so that they will be afraid to fail. Although failure is part of leadership, preventing it is a bonus. If there are still failures in the process, it will give them a stronger boost in every attempt of starting again. The people will strive to always do their best and at the same time enjoy because, in this performance-based leadership, there will be rewards to those who are achievers.
The essence of this approach to leadership is that it aims to push the people to do their best because when they do good, they will be rewarded and when they are afraid, like losing their job, most of the time, they will do everything just to keep their job. With this kind of approach, the leader can produce outcomes timely. Due to the rising complexity of the world today, it is just reasonable to cope up especially in business. All there is to business is a pure competitive advantage as each country has. Tax is the lifeblood of the government. It follows that business is the backbone of the economy. Time is of the essence in this realm, so as much as possible, a strict yet rewarding leadership would be the best approach.
The leader can develop this approach to leadership by monitoring the achievements in each and every day and when there is a failed attempt to reach the target/goal for the day, he must immediately adjust his leadership. When it comes to rewards to be given to those people who’ve achieved substantially, a reasonably and mathematically devised compensation for that is indispensable to establish fairness and equity.
If the way of giving the people fear, like giving them penalties if the work done is not quality or is not timely, is not enough, the leader should devise a further penalty. For instance, it is more like a penalty if it removes the people from their job for failing three times. This is akin to be an appropriate addition to a lax policy. Another thing that can be developed for this approach to leadership is conducting a regular meeting where the leader will give his people speeches about motivation, loyalty and integrity.
No comments:
Post a Comment