What leadership is and how one defines it is often difficult to identify, yet you know when you see it. You also know when it’s absent.
Leadership is one of those subjects that is often discussed and written about. It, however, remains an inanimate topic as the feeling of unanswered questions always seems to linger. All the past years of my life I have been searching for what true leadership could be because some of the books I have read demonstrated true leadership in what I will term “The Old Psychology of Leadership” yet this view of true leadership seems to be incompetent with the current breed of followers. Leadership is a quality that everyone is capable of, whether we realise it or not we all do take a leadership role at some point in our lives. Think about it…when you choose or suggest to go see a particular movie, have coffee, or manage your care attendants etc.
Leadership can be defined as a set of skills and attributes by which a person influences, motivates and elicits the cooperation of others in order to accomplish a goal. The old Psychology of leadership insisted that leaders were born and had to possess certain qualities like physical qualities, affluence, connections, command language and much more. Many of us would remember growing up all the way from Pre-school, you have actually seen how prefects were selected. They are usually described as leaders in every aspect. I know most of you at some point in time you once argued with those that were appointed to oversee you citing reasons like incompetence of the leaders.
This is probably because you did not see the leaders as being a part of you. With the new psychology of leadership, we believe that leaders should be one of us. They are supposed to make decisions that would benefit us all. This selfish view where the leaders have taken it upon themselves to make decisions that entirely benefit themselves and also advance their interests is detrimental to our society.
Many we times have grumbled and complained over poor leadership but the truth remains that we all have the capacity to lead. We all have that leadership spirit in us and this is why we pained by poor leadership. Our spirit of leadership complains when the leadership principles are broken and that is why we are able to pin point where our leaders would have failed us.
We all have the capacity and mandate to lead each ourselves as well as others. It all begins by making the right decisions in our lives. Leadership has to begin personally before it can transcend to others. Leadership is responsibility- for yourself and for those around you. Leadership is making decisions that will benefit not just yourself but also those around you.
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