By: Michael D. Ringrose
So you want to be a leader. What is stopping you?. What is it about leadership that attracts you. Are you influenced by the public profiles of those who grace the world stage, in the fields of politics, economics, religion? Are you more attracted by those who prove their physical prowess? Famous athletes, of one kind or another? Runners, boxers, basket-ball champions, baseball heroes, tennis champions, auto racing drivers? Are they leaders?
Often, it seems the title is loosely attached to individuals who are identified as the best in their particular field. Sometimes, those individuals are not capable of offering leadership to others. They are "loners", consumed in the pursuit of their own ambition. Sometimes picked and selected to posts requiring demonstrable leadership skills, experience and qualifications solely on the basis that they possess public profiles as being on top of their particular league. Delving deeper into their attributes and one may find a dearth of the necessary ingredients that enable and encourage others to follow.
So what is it that makes a difference? What is it that makes a leader? Are leaders born? Can they be shaped, crafted, formed and honed? Does this formation need to be external? Can one make oneself a leader or develop the necessary skills to allow one to grow into leadership.
Is the drive to become a leader influenced by intrinsically good values, service of others, community, nation or is it driven by the desire or need to dominate, control, coerce?
Can we learn from the profiles and characteristics of world leaders? To what extent is the profile we see and hear on TV and radio, a managed, artificial product, occasionally fractured with glimpses of the human being behind the public face? World leaders include Ghandi, Hitler, Tito, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Clinton, Lincoln, Putin, Bush, Senator Mitchell, Jesus Christ, and a disparate selection of people who are described as either terrorist or hero and patriot, depending on what side of the value system one is viewing from.
So where is the compass that guides your journey to becoming a leader? Reflecting on the question adds its own value to the question. What guides us as individuals essentially are the values that we hold most precious in our lives. They vary from person to person and from community to community and are absorbed at various levels, as we progress on our development from children to adulthood. Some of those values are held in highest esteem when we are young, immature and have not sufficient understanding and maturity to take personal ownership of them. Others become more internalised as we grow through life and the choices we make assist in enshrining certain values deep into our personas. Whether that is due to conditioning or conscious selection is dependant on the opportunities we met or were deprived of along the way to develop a personal critical capacity that enables a distancing from our subjective judgements.
Opportunity and choice are part of the equasion that need to be factored in, coupled with the inate sense of importance one attaches to our value system. Do we wish to share it or coerce others to absorbe it? Is leadership imposed on us or do we subconsciously need to be lead? If we desire to be leaders, is that pushed by choice or obligation to others? Is it service or is it power?
