It was Admiral Arleigh A. Burke who was quoted as saying that leadership is understanding people and involving them to help you do a job. That takes all of the good characteristics, like integrity, dedication of purpose, selflessness, knowledge, skill, implacability, as well as determination not to accept failure.
But those we are under in this country hardly learn from our mistakes but they preferred rebuking us for our mistakes and even theirs. They mistake greed for wisdom. And this could be the reason a Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying: People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. . . The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
Many of us have worked tirelessly in this country in our various areas of endeavour hoping that the king would locate us. Our assiduous works were noticed but we are not noticed. Some of us that were noticed were noticed by the King’s aide. The aide makes pound of flesh from our input, and would not allow the King to notice the potentialities we are made of. The aide uses scandals against us, so that the King would not have a heart and eye to notice us within his firm and make us to grow.
The reason those we are under would not want us to grow and be having meetings with the King is something that does not meet the eyes, even when we look at it, we do not see. They forgot that life is full of countless numbers of wrong twists and turns. They forgot that it is always right to carry the next person along because when you make the next man to feel better you get the world right and the world would look perfect without these everyday human skirmishes. It is imperative that we love people when they least deserve it, because this will be when they really need our love.
Sadly, just few people in the world think more about the other person than they do to their selves, without minding about the reactions of the person they are thinking for. This attitude is when love stops to be manipulated. It is essential we reveal ourselves wholly and be vulnerable to the welfare of all. A Warren Bennis was quoted as saying: A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless … someone’s got to make a wake up call.
Not humiliating the person under you is a powerful part of leadership development plan. You have to admire and spend some time with the people under you, and deeply, thinking about their growth in totality. This will help better to amend the mindset behind greed. Always cover a number of leadership qualities and develop the people under you for a much better understanding of the people and how their perspective about the world would change for better.
It is important we do not limit our potentialities because of greed, which tells us ‘do not allow the person under us to grow’; always applying this theory only on what we think is possible for our self-aggrandizement is a big barrier affecting mankind today. We have to understand the cosmic laws of when to be flexible and when to be rigid. Rigidity should not always come into us when we are supposed to be flexible and help the people under us to inhale fresh air.
A good leader would always presume that he is also led, but a greedy leader always repeals this theory and believes that leadership kleptomaniac. You can never be a leader when you are leading the people to poverty and do not practice leading to come to terms with the word leadership. A Henry Kissinger in his quote said: The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. His critics say that Kissinger knew that it was no great feat to get people to do something they had done before. Real leadership skill is getting them to do something they haven’t ever done or aren’t even sure is possible. And a David Harold Fink said: People are more easily led than driven.
When the King locates you in your endeavours, and not his aide, the Fink’s quote would be an excellent reminder that leading is different than forcing people to do what you say. You will also enjoy a Marian Anderson’s quotes saying: leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.
Those we are under are hardly being truthful and practice in reality the language of the visionary and the idealist they preach to us; their behaviours and ulterior motives toward us are not ideal. They just don’t follow a Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote saying: Do not follow where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. And this is why a Colonel Dandridge M. Malone said: The very essence of leadership is its purpose. And the purpose of leadership is to accomplish a task. That is what leadership does – and what it does is more important than what it is or how it works.
Today, many of us have no peace. And as Mother Teresa was quoted as saying: If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in that action. Spread love everywhere you go, let no one ever come to you without leaving happier. Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.
Instead those we are under would do the humble work as has been admonished above, they do the humiliating works. They behave like people who need to be directed before they can be focused on what it takes to be a leader. They exhibit what a Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying: Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power…. But the man with power forgets Proverbs 29:18 saying: Where there is no vision, the people perish…. They forgot a Ross Perot thus: Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.
