THE THREE FACETS OF LEADERSHIP
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| Photo courtesy http://thesalesblog.com/ |
1. Leadership is acquired.
Leaders are not
born. They are made. No one is born and right away becomes a leader. Even a
sole heir of a royal family doesn’t become a leader the moment he was born.
First, he has to undergo training in the actual world. If he is assumed to
take a leadership role someday, like a king for instance, he has to be trained.
He has to acquire the basic skills a leader must have.
Leadership is acquired either by choice or by no-choice.
Being the eldest brother wasn’t my choice! It was given. There is nothing I can do about it. But the decision to help my siblings’ college education was my personal choice. No one forced me to do that.
Being appointed
as an officer wasn’t also my choice. It was given to me. But I had to accept it
not because I necessarily knew how to do it. I just had to step up and function
according to the role entrusted to me. I accepted it because everything is
learnable. I had to learn the skills necessary to perform the tasks for the
given role.
There are skills a leader must acquire to become effective. They are
what I call the 5 C’s of a leader.
A. CONFIDENCE
A leader must be
confident. He knows what he stands for and he must be willing to present it to
the right audience.
Unfortunately, confidence wasn’t my strongest suit. If you could measure my self-confidence, I could barely fill a teaspoon. I always have self-doubt. It is probably because of my childhood experiences.
I didn’t have the experience most kids have. Their parents were always there by their side to support them. I envied other kids in school. On graduation, even with “most behave” awards, their parents gave them on stage psychedelic gifts. They’re all flashing smiles. I didn’t envy their gifts. I pitied myself most of the time because even with having honors, my parents were not there with me on stage. My high school graduation was epic! Before marching to the stage, I had to beg 2 people from the audience to act out as my escorts.
When I became an Area Governor for Toastmasters in the Province of Leyte, I had to practice being confident. At first, it was just an act. I had to act as if I were confident. As the saying goes, “fake it until you make it!” Eventually, it paid off. It was also very helpful that I expose myself to people who are confident, supportive and who have positive outlook in life.
Self-confidence was a personal issue. Though it was a thing in my past, but I still feel its sting every once in a while. I am fine with revisiting my insecurities every now and then, because it’s making me grounded and unassuming.
B. COMMUNICATION
Effective
communication is very important in leadership. I don’t just mean speaking or talking.
Communication is a two-way process. It involves speaking and listening.
Listening is
important if you want to get good inputs from your teammates. By listening to them,
you encourage them to be bold, open and tickle their brain. You might be
surprised that even the most silent person in your team has something brilliant
to contribute. You have to encourage them to be courageous in speaking their
minds out by sincerely spending time to listen to what they have to say.
Speaking is as important as listening. That is how your ideas and visions come across to your audience, your team members. It is not enough that you have plenty of brilliant ideas. It is not enough that you know a lot of things. They say knowledge is power.
However knowledge that is left to rot in the brain is not power. Knowledge has to be shared. It has to be put to action. Knowing is only a piece of the puzzle. Being able to transfer to the team some information and anything that you know is more important than having the information. Hording an important knowledge is selfishness.
The knowledge
that I am referring to is something that will benefit the whole team and
others. By the way, gossiping is also a form of transferring information, but
that is not what I meant. Again,
transfer knowledge that would benefit the team!
C. CHILL
As a leader, you
have to learn how to relax, to exhibit grace under pressure. You should not
crack under pressure. When there is a problem and you panic, your team members
would also panic. What they see, they copy. When there is a problem and
everyone is panicking, it would be chaotic.
D. CARING
Though as a
leader, output is your priority, it doesn’t mean you just ignore the welfare of
your subordinates. You have to show compassion for them; that you care for their
feelings and state of being.
If there are certain tasks they find hard to accomplish, instead of beating them up and crashing their spirits, you have to encourage them. You have to find options to boost their morale. Anyone who has good morale is inspired to perform their tasks and has the tendency to reach their full potential as an effective team contributor.
E. CHEERFULNESS
Life itself is
very serious. If you watched the news, you’d think there is nothing positive
left in this world. If you just open your eyes, you will see that there are so
many wonderful things in life worth celebrating for.
As a leader, you have to possess that kind of attitude especially when you are in front of your members. Your energy is contagious. You mood in front of them is easily transferred.So, you have to choose which attitude you want them to get from you. Regardless of situation, you have to show them that having problems is not really a problem.They should not let their problems affect their spirit the negative way.
A cheerful leader makes a cheerful follower. A cheerful person easily finds a way to blossom wherever he’s planted at.
2. Leadership is ability to L-I-F-T.
To lift is to
empower people. That is the most important skill a leader must have. There are
times team members become so down, especially when faced with trouble and
defeat. As a leader, you must be able to point that out and be able to give
encouragement to them. For a team composed of a few members, to approach each
member and know their situation is crucial. Even if there is no trouble, when
one of them gets something done that is worthy of commendation, you have point
that out. By announcing one person’s achievement to everyone, you encourage not
only that one person but also the rest of the team members.
If they do well and you have never pointed that out, it is as good as shredding their output. Being ignored is the worse feeling one could ever get. To be recognized every once in awhile, at least through a thumbs up is a longing each person wants. It boosts our moral to continue doing something good and become even better at what we do.
A. LEAD: Leadership is ability to Lead.
To lead is to
have some people following your footsteps. Some call it leading by example.
Let’s say, you have been appointed as the new manager of a department. You are expected to lead the team and to represent them to the top management. As a new manager, you can’t expect everyone to simply follow your orders. Only the naturally submissive people will do that. Unfortunately nowadays only a few of those types of people have left. Most people will look for clues and reasons why they should follow you and your orders.
Your success as a leader depends on your team’s participation. You have to win their support. Some managers rely on Martial Law and claim “I am your boss. You should follow my orders!” Martial Law is the thing of the past. It is no longer effective nowadays. People have become wiser and more inquisitive in terms of following orders.
To win their support, you have to show them you are worthy of their trust and support.
B. INSPIRE: Leadership is ability to Inspire.
How to inspire
varies from one person to another. But the most common way is to target their
hearts.
Every person has a heart-trigger. It is something that when you start talking about it, they can’t help but listen to you. And they start to talk about it, they can’t seem to stop. If you show them that you care for the things that they care about, they would be inspired. By simply listening to what they have to say, that is something precious to them. They tend to seek your opinion about it.
I didn’t know I am capable of inspiring anyone! Soon, I realized that anyone can. You don’t even have to try hard.
I invited my 3 little half-brothers to stay with me for a week during summer. I just wanted to see them and to get to know something about them. There was no agenda about it. Every morning for the whole week, I had breakfast with them. Then, I just left them in my room. They just watched movies the whole day. The only request I had for them is to fix my room, arrange my books, fold neatly my clothes in the closet and wash the dishes after eating.It was executed perfectly!
When they went back home after their one-week vacation, they all talked about it as if I were a hero. I was flattered, somehow. They talked about my ref that was filled with food. They talked about wanting to have their own room with air-con someday. They wanted to have a swimming pool nearby. They wanted to have a closet filled with clothes of their own. They wanted to be called “Sir.” They didn’t know that those people they saw who called me “Sir” were janitors. They didn’t know that the janitors in our place were trained to be polite and to call everyone “Sir” or “Ma’am.”
“I will do better
in school to be like Kuya,” they told everyone at home.
C. FIND OTHER LEADERS: Leadership is an ability to find other potential people who could step up to become a leader.
It is important
to look for potential leaders to step up and take a lead role especially when
you’re not around.
Some position-holders
fail to recognize the importance of mastering this skill. They think it is not
their role to find other leaders. Some of them are maybe selfish enough not to
do it because they believe in their leadership skills so much that that they
think they are irreplaceable. They feel threatened someone might take their
place. The truth is if you don’t perform well, someone will take your place.
Finding other potential leaders helps smooth transition. It also helps topass on the good practices of the team.
If you spotted one or two, you have to help mold them. You have to mentor them to help them discover their full leadership potential.
D. TAKE ACTION: Leadership is ability to take action.
It is not enough
that you tell your constituents to do something. You also have to exhibit the
willingness to do it. As a captain of a ship, it is not right to tell your
crews to say “let’s jump!” but you don’t. It is more than words. It is best
demonstrated by your actions as a leader. What you do on a regular basis is
what fuels them to follow you. They will listen to your words but they will
ultimately measure your character by your actions on a regular basis.
3. Leadership is a process.
Everything
evolves with time. Tasks change. The essence of success also changes. What
people call a success in the past may no longer be applicable in the present.
Success then is a process. It does not happen overnight. To achieve something
that continuously changes also requires a leader who is open to change.
It does not
happen overnight. A leader must also seek for ways to improve his skills and
not just rely on what he already has.
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