It took a while, but my friend has come a long way. Studied and trained as an engineer, I had breakfast with him and his wife, and I asked him a question which I have asked before.
“What would you like to have done, if you could do it all over again?”
He said, “I would love to have gone to dance school and taken up all sorts and forms of dance.”
This was the first time he was able to clearly articulate what he dreamed of. I’m happy for him. Now I hope he makes plans to get that going.
People who cannot pull back their egos, thus allowing them to run amok, create a unpleasant taste for relationships. Leaders embody the trait that allow others to want to build a relationship with them, because they have consistently been about others, not themselves.
This trait of being selflessness is not about putting yourself down, but appropriately learning to understand others, while noting your own strengths. It is not about your own agenda, but how everyone’s agenda can be connected for the good of the team/group.
This trait does cross links with humility… so read there too.
Thus, ends my thoughts on leadership… at least for a time.
I still have to write the part 5. of the continuing past posts… but have not had the time to do so. However, while reading another blog, I chanced upon something that helped me articulate the common mistakes of people looking for a leader.
Some of us have time and again mistaken egotism for leadership. I’ve learned the hard way, and to watch and observe. Cavman observes that certain traits will tell you when ego is at work. Here’s the list:
I know that I am guilty of many of these… yet, I think that my propensity to Ignore Critics have helped become a much better leader, definitely less egotistical. Also, where I live, there seems to be a trend of point #2, Inflate Vision- consistently over-promise and under-deliver, that is that many of the previous companies I had worked for, had people from the highest tier to the lowest tier who tended towards over-promising and yet under-delivering. Which led to many communication problems as well as trust issues amongst staff.
In any case, it is definitely not the thing to do.
This is part 4 of the Leadership ideas I’ve been having and have read.
A leader is easily recognized when he takes the initiative to do what is right, or to do what is acceptable yet outside of acceptable, it becomes extraordinary. Naturally, you could immediately see that trends are started by leaders, even evil trends, like ethnic cleansing and drug taking.
What it is noticeable is that leaders take the initiative. They are hardly motivated by the externals, but more so by their own internal drive. What this means is that people perceive leaders to have a drive that is not a fad, but the real thing, a real vision that will sustain him/her throughout the duration of achieving what he has set out to achieve.
The motivation cannot be external, because the team/receivers of the inspiration might begin to be skeptical and start to be killjoys. How does a leader deal with this? He either quits, which tells us his motivation is external, or he ditches the naysayers and pushes on (indicating that there is an internal drive).
When motivation is external, the leader can become complacent upon achieving certain success. So again, the track record of a real leader is something worth taking note of.
To make it practical, a real leader is someone people recognize that is trustworthy, takes the initiative to make something work, to push for changes, and is and has been relatively consistent with what he is talking and doing.
The third trait of a leader that inspires and allows their influence to get to the masses is, the love for pressure. The saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.”
There are two kinds of people in the world, the ones who takes sees the challenge and hopes it does not befall them, and the ones who see the challenge and takes on it. Unfortunately, in my home culture, we call the latter group of people, the ‘extras’, the ‘wannabes’, but deep down, if we can get past ourselves, we truly admire these adversity-challengers, these bull-fighters.
It takes that certain courage, that certain kind of focus to get past the worries and just dive into the problem and work it out. Not many have this, and this is what makes leadership scarce.
We could also say that it takes a certain amount of foolishness to take on the crunch time situation. And we are, many times, secretly hoping that the person would fail. However, again, it is not about winning or succeeding then, but the courage. We must focus on the process (as well as the outcome, even though we tend to put too much emphasis on the outcome). Of course, it would be unfortunate when one fails to do the job, but usually with the courage and tenacity and the mind of a true leader is able to gauge and take on what he is able to handle and then more.
Still on the topic of what a leader would look like in a group of people, we have the second trait: Humility. In a world where the loudest person is the one who gets heard, humility is a difficult virtue to cultivate. Many times we want to be the best in the class or in the work place etc. This makes cultivation of humility difficult. In fact, this type of thinking, which I call it the Law of Comparison, is diametrically opposite what humility would embody.
The Law of Comparison tends to skew us towards comparing ourselves with others. The problem with this sort of thinking is that everyone is unique, and comparisons cannot be accurately done. It is like comparing oranges with apples, it just does not make sense. When this sort of comparison is done, negative competitiveness comes into the play, which leads to competing against each other for attention/honour/performance bonuses/recognition/whatever, which in turn can create the hostile environment.
Humility, on the other hand, allows you to be the improving human. It is the “understanding that I’m not always the best, and that another person on any given day can win,” says Wade Rowatt, a social psychologist at Baylor University. And, this tends to foster the Law of Comparison in relation to self. That is to say, you would be comparing yourself today and yesterday, or today and 3 years ago, to see if improvements have been made for yourself.
Other than that, humility will and can foster a basic respect for everyone, and that would include your enemies/competitors/siblings/spouse (if you see your spouse as an adversary). When you do not see yourself as someone who will always win, you would see yourself as someone who is as good as everyone else. You do not see yourself as someone a cut above the rest and therefore deserve special treatment. Rather you see yourself as a special part of the machinery (like the liver in the body, or the lungs uniquely different but others but as important), and that everyone HAS to work together for the betterment of the goal.
A person who feels he/she deserves special treatment never inspires greatness. A person who feels he/she is special, like everyone else… tends to respect others, which becomes inspiring.
Accordingly, leadership is said to be the power to influence others. Of course, leaders influence others to achieve their goals. We also hope that these leaders have goals that benefit everyone.
The word “influence” becomes key on what leadership is. I observed a group of friends, and while a few seem to want to be the ‘leader’ or ‘head honcho’ of the group, I realized that the real leader was the one whose views were heard and carefully considered… which then led to the group action.
This then let me to thinking… how is someone a leader? What allows him/her to become one? Are there certain traits or values? While reflecting on this, I read an interesting article which list down a few traits that made sense to me.
The first being, the person’s work ethic: If you are seen as someone who is constantly working to improve, not in a hey-look-at-me-as-I-improve way, but more of the well-just-doing-my-best-where-I-am attitude. Then you are probably one step to getting closer to being seen and heard as a leader. The focus isn’t really about how good you are or have been, but it is the focus on getting better, inherently encourages everyone else to move with you.
It is about being a continuous learner, willing to learn and improve. Anyway, enough said. The next post will detail other traits.
The much less talked section of leadership is that of authority and responsibility; more so regarding responsibility.
In my younger days, when I was still in school, I realized very quickly that I did not want to lead groups to do anything, simply because my teachers did not give me certain authority to make decisions. Responsibility without authority is frustrating, it feels like being a hapless helpless servant. Thus, I shunned from leadership positions like being a student councilor, or even being a drill sergeant for my extra-curricular activity. The fact is, I learned to detest authorities who held on to their power in fear that something might go wrong.
Now, as I am older, and hopefully much wiser, I learned that I probably did not know much about responsibility. When authority was given to me to complete tasks, I had tended to abuse this authority, not by giving people hell in what they do. When the project failed, I, who delegated the work to my team members, refused to take responsibility for the project, but rather blame my group members for the incompetence. This is harsh, but I’ve done that before.
So, I learned, good leadership is not easy. Authority must be backed by responsibility and vice versa. Someone who does not take responsibility for his own life, becomes a liability to society. Another who does account for his actions, becomes a valued member of society. And this is just the beginning journey of being a good leader: First to yourself and then to the community as a whole.
An article from Psychology Today explained what “mindfulness” is, and how it is functions, or allow us to function better in the real world.
It claims that people who are high on the mindfulness scale are “more aware of their unconscious processes” , this possibly leads to better control of their cognitive ability and thus they are able to respond proactively, rather than reactively.
My take on mindfulness is that when it is practice, it allows the practitioner to be more aware of his surroundings as well as his own actions, and thus, it allows the beginning of change to occur. Decisions can be made with the new awareness. However, the steps to which change actually occurs has not been detailed out for my own understanding… till the next time then.
An article in Psychology Today has shown how forgiveness can be explained and applied in a non-religious way.
While this is sufficient for understanding, application is usually more difficult than understanding.
