Leaders are those who make
good things happen. One of the best ways they do it is by giving people a
reason to believe and to follow. I have come across many leaders throughout my
life. Most of them have admirable qualities that I could follow while some
actually taught me what should be avoided in order to become a good leader.
My parents set an excellent
example on ways to lead the family while teachers, friends and bosses taught
what leadership meant in a broader perspective. I consider myself lucky to be
given the opportunity to become a civil servant right after completing my
tertiary education. Now, after almost three years being in the service, I realise
that a good leader is one who is able to bring out the best in others. It’s not
telling people what to do, but it is more about guiding people and giving them
the opportunity to get it done.
In order to become a leader,
one must first have the desire and passion towards the organization. Having the right leader is
absolutely crucial. We can have the biggest mission or goal but without the
right person to lead the team of people with specific skills to execute the
strategies, we can never really achieve the goal. Before
you can lead others, you must lead yourself. You need to know what you are made
of. Character and conviction matter. What
we do when we think no one is watching best defines our character. A
good character may help us to get the job we are longing for but it is what we
do with our character that matters. People of character are respected because
they have earned it. One must also act the role of a leader by being present
and available. Leaders set the right example. In truth, example is what counts
most. It creates the foundation upon which trust can flourish. Our example is our
character in action. Words matter; actions matter more.
I am particularly attracted
to the servant leadership style which is a philosophy by Robert K. Greenleaf. A
servant leader is someone who is servant first, who has responsibility to be in
the world, and so he contributes to the well-being of people and community. A
servant leader looks to the needs of the people and asks himself how he can
help them to solve problems and promote personal development. He places his
main focus on people, because only content and motivated people are able to
reach their targets and to fulfill the set expectations
The Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant
Leadership since 1990, has extracted a set of 10 characteristics
that are central to the development of a servant leader. The characteristics
are outlined below:
1.
Listening : Leaders are required to have communication skills as well as the competence to
make decisions. A servant leader has the motivation
to listen actively to subordinates and support them in decision identification.
The servant leader particularly needs to pay attention to what remains unspoken
in the management setting. This means relying on his inner voice in order to
find out what the body, mind and spirit are communicating.
2. Empathy : A servant leader attempts to understand and empathize with others. Workers may
be considered not only as employees, but also as people who need respect and
appreciation for their personal development. As a result, leadership is seen as
a special type of human work, which ultimately generates a competitive
advantage.
3. Healing : A great strength of a Servant Leader is the ability for healing one’s self and
others. A servant leader tries to help people solve their problems and
conflicts in relationships, because he wants to encourage and support the
personal development of each individual. This leads to the formation of a
business culture, in which the working environment is dynamic, fun and free of
the fear of failure.
4. Awareness : A servant leader needs to gain general awareness and especially self-awareness.
He has the ability to view situations from a more integrated, holistic
position. As a result, he gets a better understanding about ethics and
values.
5. Persuasion : A Servant Leader does not take advantage of their power and status by coercing
compliance; they rather try to convince those they manage. This element
distinguishes servant leadership most clearly from traditional, authoritarian
models.
6. Conceptualization : A servant leader thinks beyond day-to-day realities. That means he has the
ability to see beyond the limits of the operating business and also focuses on
long term operating goals. A Leader constructs a personal vision that only he
can develop by reflecting on the meaning of life. As a result, he derives
specific goals and implementation strategies.
7. Foresight : Foresight is the ability to foresee the likely outcome of a situation. It
enables the servant leader to learn about the past and to achieve a better
understanding about the current reality. It also enables the servant leader to
identify consequences about the future. This characteristic is closely related
to conceptualization.
8. Stewardship : Servant leadership is seen as an obligation to help and serve others. Openness
and persuasion are more important than control.
9. Commitment
to the growth of people: A servant leader is convinced that people have an
intrinsic value beyond their contributions as workers. Therefore, she should
nurture the personal, professional and spiritual
growth of employees. For example, she spends money for the personal and
professional development of the people who make up her organization. The
servant leader will also encourage the ideas of everyone and involve workers in
decision making.
10. Building
community: A servant leader identifies means to build a strong community within
his organization and wants to develop a true community among businesses and
institutions.
These 10
characteristics are by no means exhaustive. They should not be interpreted as a certain manner to behave and they do not
represent the best method to gain aims. Rather every person shall reflect, if
these characteristics can be useful for his personal development.
Tony Fernandes the CEO of AirAsia is rarely seen
without his baseball cap, open-neck shirt and jeans, and he is proud that the
firm’s lack of hierarchy which is very unusual in Asia. This means anyone can
rise to do anyone else’s job. AirAsia employs pilots who started out as baggage
handlers and stewards; for his part, Fernandes also practices what he preaches.
Every month he spends a day as a baggage-handler;
every two months, a day as cabin crew; every three months, a day as a check-in
clerk. This servant leadership style is important in order to
understand staffs as well as customers. It also helps to bring in more
innovations as the leader is being able to look at things in a bigger picture.
I like to read management books and I believe it will
help in enhancing my leadership skills. Howard
Gardner authored a book titled “5 Minds for the Future”. One of the minds
illustrated in the book is the Respectful Mind. A leader must have a respectful
mind. As human beings, we must be readily accepting differences among us and
genuinely respect souls around us. Many individuals in position of power
achieved their status due to the ability to flatter and serve those who already
occupy the position of authority. But these same individuals are seen to ignore
those with lesser influence. The author noted this act as “kiss up, kick down”
scenario. A truly respectful leader avoids thinking in group terms and remains
open to the possibility that his judgment may not be correct all the time.
Another
mind pointed out in the same book has attracted me as well. It is the Ethical
Mind. Individuals designated as professionals and dressed up in exclusive suits
may not act in a professional manner. They may cut corners, pursue their own
interests and perform a compromised work. Ethical orientation begins at home.
Children observe parents taking pride of their work, how they make decisions to
maintain a family and even note adults playing games on whether the game is
played fairly or they strive only to win. I was particularly attracted by a
case example referred by the author about Abraham Lincoln. Since his childhood
days till his campaigns for presidency, he strongly opposed slavery. Once in
office, he did not rapidly move to ban slavery but focused on maintenance of
the union. The reason was although he is naturally anti-slavery, he understood
the presidency conferred upon him was to preserve and protect the constitution
of the United States. He suspended his personal respect for individual of all
races in order to fulfil his ethical place as the elected leader of the nation.
Apart from reading books, I also surf the internet for
inspiring sources particularly on leadership. I actively follow posts by Robin
Sharma, a leadership guru who has authored several books. Robin was a
litigation lawyer before he left his job to look for the real meaning of life
and soon he wrote his first book entitled “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”. I
remember reading one of his posts on the importance of training people in an
organization continuously. The
Ritz Carlton, Nike, Amazon, IBM, KPMG and other organizations that consistently
deliver near flawless execution around world-class customer service have one
thing in common - Their management understands that money spent on training is
not an expense but an investment. If the greatest resource of our organization
is the people in it, then it only makes sense that our biggest investment
should be in our people. Developing, growing and training them. The best
organizations didn’t get to their positions by chance. As a good leader, we
must not forget that the true worth of our organization are staffs that walks
in through the front doors of the office every morning and leaves through them
every night.
At the same time, development of skills should not be
restricted to staffs but must extend to the leaders as well. A leader should be
able to understand his team, motivate them in a manner that suits them best,
communicate with them freely and chalk out a management plan that brings out
the best in each one of them. While some leaders may be born with these skills,
others may not. This is where the need for leadership training comes up.
Moreover, even successful leaders can benefit from training. I take every other chance to attend trainings while at
work. As civil servants, we are required to complete at least 7 days of training.
It could be in the form of seminar, talks, lab sessions as well as courses. I
carefully choose the trainings I plan to attend by discussing them with my
colleagues and bosses. I believe apart from character, readings and having a
mentor, continuous training will actually help in enhancing our leadership
skills.
An impactful leader has to be
knowledgeable and approachable. There are some things that need to be avoided
in order to become a better leader. Firstly, a leader must be able to differentiate
between the urgent and important. Some leaders rush about and pull others down
with them, obsessed with the urgent rather than the important. The key is to set aside time on the calendar that is
only for the important activities, and have the activities clearly prioritized
so that when an urgent item is screaming at you, you can logically decide what
important task can be set aside.
Weak communication skills may
make us a weak leader. In this age of information overload, we have to communicate
well, because staffs may not have fully taken in our message the first time. We
have a huge range of communication technologies available; in-person
discussions, written material, either in hard copy or electronic, audio and
video. Leaders must use them, frequently and consistently. Too often, leaders
ignore behaviour that concerns the organisation but is viewed as insignificant
to worry about and unlikely to be repeated. But the behaviour is repeated, and
then becomes tolerated, as the leader avoids conflict. The best time to provide
feedback is immediately after the behaviour is observed. A leader must be clear
about what is observed, the impacts, and ask for ideas from your employee about
how they could approach it in the future. And then get their commitment to make
the change. This process focuses more on the future as the past can’t be
changed, only the future.
On the other hand, defining clear
objectives is crucial as it provides a road map for staffs and if the staffs
are involved in setting the goals, it becomes a map he or she is committed to.
Without goals, staffs will not meet our expectations because they won’t know
what they are doing. As leaders, we all must always remember that we can’t force
motivation on someone. We must help employees to operate in an environment
where their intrinsic motivation will flow. Following the model set out in
Daniel Pink’s book, Drive,
you must meet employee’s needs for salary and benefits, and then focus on three
attributes that are the basis for intrinsic motivation; autonomy, a chance for
mastery at something, and purpose.
If one is getting into a leadership
role for the first time, the main thing to be kept in mind is that people do
want to be lead. People don’t want to be lead in a way that causes them to feel
badly about themselves, they want to be lead in a way that will enable them to
grow, love their role and take full responsibility for their actions and
results. People don’t mind being told when they don’t do something right, but
don’t challenge who they are as a person, challenge the job that they did and
show them that they are capable of doing better.
As
a leader in any organization one must accept greater responsibilities to carry
out the vision of the organization. As we develop these responsibilities our
problem solving abilities increase because while our responsibilities increase
so do the number of problems that will come across our desk. This happens because
everyone else will look to us for our expertise and knowledge. Leaders have to have enough confidence to go forward against
odds, and also have enough common sense to not go forward when there are
dangers.
Most importantly, effective
leaders do lead from the front, but the heavy lifting is done by the people in
the organization. Leaders must show their faces but they must reflect credit
for the hard work of people actually doing it. For example, when a product
fails at launch, it is not the CEO who must spend long hours trouble-shooting
the flaws in the system. It is the engineers on the line who do it. Yet when
the problem is solved, the CEO must step forward and discuss the solution. That
should provide an opportunity to cite the special effort of the team and the
long hours they spent doing it. Being present does not mean hogging the
limelight, it calls for sharing it, too.
I
would like to end this article with a quote taken from the memento given to
Capt. Thomas Vaughn, U.S. Naval Reserve. “A True Leader has the confidence to
stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions and the compassion to listen
to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by
the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. In the end, leaders
are like eagles, they don’t flock, you find them one at a time.”
References:
Books:
1. 5 Minds For The Future by Howard
Gardner
2. Lead by Example – 50 Ways Great
Leaders Inspire Results by John Baldoni
3. How the Mighty Fall by Jim Collins
4. 7 Steps of Highly Effective People
by Steven Covey
5. Drive:
The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel H. Pink
Online resources:
1. http://EzineArticles.com/4571397
2. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on business/careers/management/morning-manager/
3. http://robinsharmaarticles.com/
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership
5. http://kbalbify.com
Sangeetha Tannimalay
Sidang B - DPA 1/2012
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