Correction: The word “servant” should be replaced with “slave”.
I feel that it is particularly apt that the topic of leadership is discussed just weeks before the upcoming Student Councillor (SC) elections. What I attempt to discuss here is 3 properties a leader should have. Moreover, I will try to dwell into what separates a leader from someone who is only plainly enthusiastic.
The most important of a leader is not leadership but the moral values he/she holds. History has many examples of people who have much leadership qualities but fail in terms of moral values. An example that we can all relate to is Adolf Hitler. His success as a leader can be clearly seen from the fact that he was Chancellor of Germany and leader the Nazi Party. Unfortunately he was also a racist, persecuting people that have no German blood (especially the Jews) through the Nuremberg Laws. (Wikipedia, 2005) claimed that during World War 2, the Hitler led Holocaust effectively caused the deaths of 9 to 26 millions victims. There is more to leadership than the ability to lead. This does not mean that to lead, we don’t need leadership skills, but it means that having leadership skills isn’t the only criteria of a good leader. I feel that the most important characteristic of a leader is that he/she has accurate moral values. Without good moral values, that person will never make a good leader. So what moral values are considered accurate and essential to a good leader? I listed a few more important ones below:
- Patience
- Integrity
- Equality
- Sympathetic
- Sincerity
There are so many qualities that a good leader can have. But the above 5 is what I feel are the more important ones. Patience is needed with dealing with people who like to take their time to understand issues. Integrity is one of the most important as it will cultivate trust among members of you. You have to treat all members equally otherwise they wouldn’t treat you equally and will short-change you. You have to be sympathetic to the needs of others so that you would actually know what to help them.
I would like to elaborate more on the quality of sincerity. Being sincere is as important as having integrity, because while integrity can be shown, sincerity can be felt. Sincerely treating your members from your heart (even if you don’t like that person) is something that is rather difficult to master, but a must for a leader. If you try to treat people “sincerely” only on the surface, you would tend to look like a hypocrite. Sadly, I have seen these types of people before in leadership positions. Thus, sincerity must come form the heart.
The next important aspect of being a leader is that he/she must be a servant leader who is willing to serve. On one extreme, some think of leaders as dictators who stand by the side giving commands to his/her followers who are expected to follow and not question the leader. While this can produce good results, this is not what leadership is about, in fact this is closer to dictatorship than anything else. On the other extreme, being a servant leader is very different from being just a servant. While a servant simply carries out his master’s orders without questioning the master, a servant leader does much more than that. Generally, the servant leader serves the group by ensuring that decisions are made, equally delegated, and completed before the deadline. The concept of a servant leader can get quite abstract, so I constructed a table to illustrate my point. It is based on 4 main stages of group work: Discussions (brainstorming), decision making, task delegation and fulfilment of tasks. The motivation behind each character is also shown.
| Situations |
Servant |
Servant leader |
Dictator |
| Role in discussions |
Contributes nothing but accept results |
Contributes ideas (if possible) and respect other member’s ideas |
States his ideas as commands |
| Decision making |
Accepts without questioning |
Respect the decision of the group |
Makes decisions without input from the group |
| Task delegation |
Does everything |
Delegate the work to members including himself/herself |
Does nothing; commands members to do all the work |
| Fulfilment of tasks |
Finish the work given to him |
Finish the work given to him ensuring that others finish their work too |
Does not do work but forces all members to finish their work coercively |
| Motive |
To finish everything in order to rest early |
For the benefit of all members of the group |
To get members to finish all the work (so that he/she can claim credit ) |
The easiest way to identify whether a leader is a servant leader is through observing whether he puts the group’s interest before his, and is willing to sacrifice time and effort for the group. This does not mean that the servant leader does everything (as a servant would) but that he/she is willing to do things like:
- Update members when they miss meetings
- Give constructive suggestions about the work of other members even though they might be doing a different task from you
- Ensures that everyone finishes their work by constant encouragement, reminders and setting of deadlines
- Plans out in advance the details of a meeting
- Improve on the work of others by looking through all their work
- Help members who are unable to finish their work (for valid reasons like if the member is ill)
- Always does extra work to help other members (e.g. help do part of the member’s task on your own initiative)
The above list is a few of the many things that a servant leader would do for the interest of the group, at the expense of his time and effort. As you can see, it is not easy to be a servant leader, but it is within the capabilities of many. Thus, being a servant leader is the second most important thing of being a good leader.
The third in order of importance in being a good leader is that the leader must have a right motive. People do work out of various reasons: interest, passion, money, fame, pressure (from others or oneself), laziness (finish early so that one can rest early) and the list go on. What I feel that a good leader’s motive should be is summarised in a short sentence below:
“To serve the members of the group by placing the interest of the group before the interest of self, in order to benefit the society and mankind at large.”
While this might be seen overtly noble, or seemingly impractical, it should be the maxim of all good leaders. The sentence can be broken into 3 parts and can be explained individually. “To serve the members of the group” is to remind us that all good leaders are servant leaders (as explained above). “by placing the interest of the group before the interest of self” inform us on how to be a servant leader. “in order to benefit the society and mankind at large” reminds us that moral values are important, because only with good moral value, are we able to “benefit the society and mankind at large”. Therefore, I feel that motive is another important aspect of deciding whether someone is a good leader.
People that are enthusiastic about their work are commonly confused with being good leaders. While all good leaders are enthusiastic about their work, not all people who are enthusiastic make good leaders.
Let’s use an example to illustrate this point. If a person is particularly interested in joining SC because he/she is enthusiastic about what the councillors are doing (e.g. organising events, making announcements, cheerleading, doing councillor duties) and not because he/she is interested in serving the students in the school, he/she will not do a good job. This is because that person’s motivation is based on the fact that he/she is enthusiastic about what the SC does and not because he/she wants to serve the students of the school (which is really the purpose of the SC). This particular person would not be able to do a good job because he/she is not fulfilling the purpose of a SC but fulfilling his/her own desire. This makes that person self-centred instead of group centred.
Another analogy is that a chef who cooks with the motivation of making his customers happy will probably satisfy the customer because he/she is always trying to please the customer. Another chef who cooks because he/she loves to be in a kitchen would probably not satisfy the customer that well because his/her objective is not to please the customer but to stay in the kitchen as long as possible. Since chefs who cook poor food are fired, in order to stay the kitchen, this chef would make an effort to cook good food. However, don’t we agree that the second chef will ever surpass the first chef in terms of culinary skills or customer satisfaction?
In summary, we have identified 3 most important aspect of being a good leader. A good leader should have accurate moral values, be a servant leader, and have a right motive. We should also not confuse an enthusiastic person with a good leader. Let us learn how to become a good leader.
Reference:
The Holocaust (2004). [Online] Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust (Accessed: 27 January 2006)
