introduction to the 3 basic kinds of leadership

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INTRODUCTION TO LEADERSHIP.

? What is leadership.

Many authors will define leadership as they deem fit, some will define leadership within the confines of their spirituality, religion or philosophy. As much as I do not have a universal definition of leadership, its’ my opinion that for any definition of leadership to be good, it should have a few components,

1- It should be aimed at perpetual self development of the individual and the society.

2- It should be humble enough to accept\tolerate differing opinion or method of doing things.

In simple terms, leadership can be defined as, “capacity to create a better society or to solve societal challenges through the creation of a vision, developing the self and all participants(team) working for the achievement of the vision, then, finally implementing the vision ”

From this definition,  we notice leadership has 4 stages,

STAGES OF LEADERSHIP

Stage 1

Solving societal challenge or creation of a better society. First we need to understand that not all persons can solve societal challenges,some people are a big problem to society, for some,society does not exist  beyond their personal aggrandizement and anything that does not grant immediate pleasure is not worthy of attention.

For an individual to be able to even understand that society can grow,he needs to have strong personal integrity,self knowledge and will have the willpower to dare himself to become a refined person. This he has to do because society does not and can never change when individuals or groups cast try to forcefully change others. The individual that desires to grow a vision for society needs to have a reasonable understanding of how thing are working and how they can become better starting from the man in the mirror. This greatest path to this vision starts wit the development of a moral value and development of “personal integrity”

Stage 2

 Deals with creating a vision. A vision is born from the self,a vision is an extension of the leader. Society is a social affair. Man is a social being whose interaction with others refine and empower him to become a better person.

“ Be fruitful and multiply”

 from how I understand this¹,multiplication can also be the ability for you to reproduce yourself in others. This means that if you are an honest person,multiplication is when you reproduce honesty in others or when you make dishonest people honest. There is no universal  method for this reproduction,every leader has to find how to do this for his team.

“ The gift of a person makes a way where there seems to be no way”

The way forward for the society is through the path way of the leaders.

When I saw a vision is born from the individuals moral value, lets take an example, let us assume a leader who has discovered himself and knows that he stands for enlightenment or education, this leader can go on to create a vision of owning a big school where he has the best teachers not found anywhere.

Another person who has a knack for business can go on to create a vision to become the greatest business person of all times.

“The gift of a man makes a way”

Stage 3 

The knowledge stage, this deals with perpetual self development and development of the team with which the leader will achieve this vision. Practically,this team can be a group of people,a team of people in an organisation, a community, a social setting, a nation or humanity at large. knowledge (knowledge, understanding  and the  constructive application of gained knowledge which over time we have learned to call it “wisdom”)

Perpetual self development put another way is “commitment to personal excellence”.

Excellence is attained through knowledge and effort. Excellence can be defined as blossoming the best that is within the individual. ( the use of the word individual here does not just imply a person,rather it implies a person who is actively working to discover,refine or redefine himself  in view of maximising his potentials).

Commitment to personal excellence is about learning and developing the self and all team members with the skill set needed to achieve the vision. This makes learning an integral and continuous process for all involved.

This means that leadership is self-made, we are not entrusted with a leadership responsibility from without (society or any external pressure), it must come from within for it to be successful, nobody can force us to lead our self or others. Learning is best from the self,nobody can force us to  learn anything,we can only be inspired by others but the ultimate responsibility lies with the individual.

Perpetual team development- knowledge plays a vital role here too, how,the development of society is a challenging task which one has to be very prepared for.  To become a visioner ,the leader armed with his superior knowledge sees beyond what others see, in some cases it is extremely difficult for the leader to make others see the vision properly. The leader is then tasked with the responsibility to find a way to make his team see the vision and want to work for its achievement. The can do this having proper knowledge of the different personality structure and how to motivate or inspire all personality type so as to achieve result with all.

Stage 4

 Deals with implementing the vision.

/sucess by rwe/

BASIC PREMISES OF LEADERSHIP

1. We are all born leaders,we activate our leadership when we enter the school of life. Sometimes we have the impression that leaders are born that way. Experience in the school of life has shown that leader are molded from the crucible of experience in the school of life. We are all born leaders, the person we feel is a born leader is actually a person who has learned early in life to make the right decision (maybe by virtue of good parenting or good mentorship). Leadership is a learned art, this means that being in a leadership office does not automatically make one a leader,leadership cannot be thrusted upon us,no matter how much we think we are leading,if we are not actually doing the work of leadership then we are not leading anybody.

• There are no followers in leadership. We will talk more of this when we talk about the kinds of leadership.

• There are no failures in leadership. There are no failures in leadership,there are only setbacks, in the school of life every experience is a teacher and helps to mold us into who we will ultimately become. The experience one may have that makes him feel like a failure can be the same experience that will inspire him to success many years after the experience. Closely associated with this is the idea that opportunity calls only once in life……no,opportunity calls everyday,if we miss one,then we can create one when our understanding is ripe and ready to grow.

• Thinking is the foundation stone of leadership,without the ability to think,one cannot step into the path of leadership, how, for one to understand that society needs a vision he has to be able to think into his own life and see the character flaws that needs to be improved, he needs to be able to understand the maladies in the society and he needs the mental strength to be able to “will” growth emanating from within him.

Every individual seeks for a way to make life and society better, sometimes many are not comfortable with how things are,we all seek great improvement/change or advancement in our personal life and in our society.This advancement calls for effort, mental,spiritual  and physical effort. Mental effort calls to mind our innate ability for “excellence”, an ability brought about through thinking. To understand this let us look at the word “man” , this word came from a sanskrit root word which means “to think”  ? why do we have to think. We think because the whole of existence is one big thought in the mind of (God, the universe, Allah, buddha or whichever name is suitable for you) hence thinking is the only means by which creation expands or achieves anything. Energy(a scientific term for what in religion is called the “holy spirit”) follows thought and since energy is the stuff/material from which the universe is built it hen follows then that thinking is creation.

Lets dive deeper from a quantum perspective. Quantum physics has shown that an observer influences the thing observed,  ?How, I think this occurs because whenever we observe things, our thought influence and change these things at the subatomic level, this change manifests in the  result we see. Ourthought make the thing observed to conform to the outcome we project from our minds.

A simple scientific application of this is the work of faith.

Faith in simple terms is using our imaginative power to build our environment according to our need and desire. Put scientifically faith is influencing the creation process with our thought. Lets take an example of faith at work.

The placebo effect, this is when a sick person believe that a particular thing will cure him of his illness, ten when this thing he believes in is applied, he gets fine. In my childhood days, we knew some people who when sick believed that its only injection that will cure them , and true to the words,all other healing methods failed but when they were given injections they got better. To test if it was the power of their faith that was at work, Doctors gave injections that contained only water and after a few of such shots they became better. This confirms that it is not the medicine but their minds that healed them. Similar occurrence has been document  around the world. In my life this happens all the time, I believe so much in Essential balm( the Chinese balm), I believed in it cos as a kid I watched many Chinese movies and I appreciated and had a special respect for the monks in the monasteries, these monasteries were built with stepped roof and this same stepped roof is what is designed on the front cover of the essential balm. I liked the roof cos I enjoyed watching them drink tea in those tiny cups, whenever I saw them doing so in movies,I felt it like holy communion, so in a way,essential balm gave me a sense of heaven and honestly this has worked for me all the time. If am sick of malaria,sometimes I cure myself with only essential balm,I just use it on my neck and put a little in my nostrils,when I do this for 3 or 4 days,malaria is gone, if I have malaria and I treat with other medication, it will come back in a short while but if I add essential balm while treating the malaria,it goes final and never returns in a short while.

Explanation

The mind is able to heal them because it is able to transform the subatomic particles that make up their reality thereby making it conform to their expectation or need.

” As a man thinks………so he will be”

“THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IN HEAVEN”

Thinking blossoms heaven into earth if we envisage heaven as the highest good and ideal state possible and earth as the present physical state we are. To understand this better, let us remember that after creation,man was put in a garden.

A garden needs creativity to maintain its beauty, without the creative ideas of the gardener,a beautiful garden turns into a bush. Thinking is what makes it possible for us to redesign our environment to suit our need. Good thinking aims at producing things that will enhance well-being, enhancing well-being is a process of building the garden of our life, The process of building the garden of our lives I call “civilization”.

 Civilization is geared towards creating a better society for us and for posterity. Civilization, then, can be another word for leadership since they pursue the same purpose. Lets remember I defined leadership as the  

“capacity to create a better society or to solve societal challenges through the creation of a vision, developing the self and all participants(team) working for the achievement of the vision, then, finally implementing the vision ”

A society civilizes itself from the crucible of her past experiences,her capabilities  and her aspiration.

This ever continuous process of civilization/leadership is activated by wise minds of the society, these wise minds are the leaders whose thinking faculty is strong enough to truly differentiate us humans from lower animals. These Leaders are the pacesetters, the possibility thinkers, the progenitors of the future, the prophets of time,they are the stuff from which a society is built. The important point here is that everybody can belong to this few wise minds whose impact resonates through posterity, yes everybody can since we are all born great, we are all born leaders, though some of us wait for life’s challenges to force us inwards and activate our leadership skills while for others, leadership lifestyle is an ever continuous way of life.

“We are all born as leaders,everybody can become a great leader at any stage of their life, irrespective of their past. Leaders are made from the school of life”

• Every individual who aspires to lead must acquire great personal leadership strength before we can attempt to lead others else disaster is inevitable. Any person who lacks a proper self understanding gained through the leadership process of commitment to personal excellence will fail if placed in a position to lead others. By this, every person is first supposed to lead himself successfully before he can lead others. We will see more of this when we talk about the functional levels of leadership. Another factor of this definition is that in a true leadership structure, there are no followers, everybody is a leader. Followers are good at causing trouble or making mistakes that will tear down the functional structure built over time by leaders.

FUNCTIONAL LEVELS OF LEADERSHIP

1-AUTOLEADERSHIP

This is the leadership of the self or a leadership attained through self discovery. It is the ability of the leader to find his “center of excellence” or power hub. It starts when an individual is able to,one Delve deeper within and have a clearer understanding of who s/he is, his strength, weakness , motivations and demotivators, two, Understand,build or create ones destination in life.( lets note that build implies effort on the part of the leader)

Autoleadership implies being able to set a self development goal for yourself and working towards the achievement of that goal. Auto leadership is self directed,its primary aim is to acquire a skill set that will enable the leader navigate his way effectively in life. It has the purpose of

1. To find inner strength or build inner strength.
2. Direct that strength in the properly either in a career or a job path.
3. Know whether one functions best as a line leader or a point leader.
4. Know ones sphere of influence.

I  -INNER STRENGHT

A simple example is a person who wants to be an engineer, first he will read or go to school, then write exams and go to a high school or university, then he will have the requirement to be an engineer. After schooling in a university, he will still go for courses, seminars and training aimed at developing himself . The important thing is to find or build this center of excellence within. This task of finding ones “center of excellence” is the first key to leadership as it’s the pathway to self-discovery. Every leader must discover who s/ he is else he will function abysmally wherever s/he goes.

Ii –  CAREER PATH OR A JOB PATH

A crucial component of this self discovery is the decision to function either as a career person or as a job person. I conceptually distinguish career and job. Career path is the path we take as a result of understanding the unique role we play in the scheme of societal development. A career comes from our core, its who we are, that aspect of divine spark we carry, hence we can invest all our energy into it without remorse and have the satisfaction that comes from fulfilling that which we are meant to fulfill in the scheme of creation. Career path easily inspires passion. Career leaders do their thing irrespective of the financial gain associated with it, even if they earn a little they will not quit and even when they earn more than they need they will joyfully keep doing what they do,for them money is a side attraction, the real joy is in doing.

While job is something we do to earn a living or to be able to afford a convenient lifestyle with all the material comfort we want.  This distinction is necessary because due to the wrong definition of success,I.e defining success as how much material vanity someone has, many people today try to do or become who they are not just because they want to make so much money and buy what they don’t need to impress people they don’t like. This trend has created a huge stress on society because many people are now where they don’t belong. This is disastrous because it does not inspire people enough to enable them bring out their best hence mediocre effort becomes the order of the day and even when those who produce these mediocre stuff try to put in more effort to better their creation,they fail to achieve anything worthwhile simply because they are in the wrong place.

The world we live in today is built by the product we consume, product built by hardworking minds in the privacy of a lab or a workshop or an office. The thing about office management or organizational management is that the main ideas which drives the company from point A to point B is the amount of innovative work it does, it is about how efficient its machines or invention can be, it about how better its product or service can be when compared to other similar products. This innovations and inventions always originate from those who have the passion for what they are doing, these are the career people within these organisations/company. If left for only the job people, the organization will suffocate itself out of existence because these guys rarely have anything to offer, they are most satisfied with “completing the square” the square created by the engine room of the organization.  Job people barely understands their organization beyond their personal work scope and salary, if and when they desire change is only a change or increase in their salary. They are not interested in if the organisation is running at a loss or if it is progressing.

“ What shall it profit a person to gain the world and lose his soul”

Iii- POINT AND LINE LEADERS

True leadership has no followers,everybody is a leader, everyone is either a line leader or a point leader. Point leaders are the perceived heads,those whose leadership is followed by others, e.g a head of department in an organisation, a head teacher in a school. Let me explain, in a school,the head teacher is the admin head who guides others leaders into becoming their best, for these teachers to be their best,they must have the desire to become the better  teachers, only then can the  head teacher administer them into becoming better teachers. If some of the teachers do not have the desire to good teachers or if teaching is not their thing,it will make it difficult for the head teacher to make them better teachers simply because the willingness is not there. From this,we can see that a leader can only influence leaders to become better. Followers are just a waste-pipe waiting to burst, they are full of mistakes and have to be guided even for the simplest task, they lack any willpower to understand what their organisation stands for or how to build the organisation from point A to a higher point. A human resource management they say that “if you employ the wrong staff even with the best management training they will give you below 5o% efficiency but if you employ the right staff even without management training they will can give 70% efficiency, you can then train them to get 100% efficiency. The wrong staff are followers who have no desire to become leaders in their personal life.

Iv – LEADERSHIP SPHERE OF INFLUENCE

Auto-leadership is about finding ones sphere of influence. I define the leadership sphere of influence as the highest point of success a leader can attain based on his strength or based on the skill set he wants to acquire. For this to be realistic, You have to be willing to put in the required effort needed to achieve this sphere of influence. Lack of understanding this can cause setback for some people. ? how, when people fail to understand this,they over exact themselves to achieve heights that are impossible for them. These heights are impossible to them not because such are impossible in life,they are impossible to the leader because he lacks the skill set required to actualise those heights of achievement. Everybody cannot be an entrepreneur business involves multitude of risk,what if you invest your money and it collapses,how would you handle it. Would you handle it through high blood pressure or say God has abandoned you.

Not everybody cannot be a boss of himself, everybody cannot be a business person some people are better suited to work within an organisation and receive their paycheck at the end of the month. Business involves creating an organisation and a system of doing this,these require great mental and physical strength and it not for 9 – 5 people . if someone lacks the great mental and physical energy needed to build a successful orgainsation then he had better relax in a 9- 5 environment where other take the responsibility of building the organisation principles,structure and many other key factors needed for success for him so that at the end of the month his paycheck comes. It will be a complete disaster if this person lacking this skill were to launch out on his own into business where he can be investing for the next few years without a substantive return on investment.

When one is sufficiently advanced as an “AUTOLEAD”  then he can effectively manage the other levels of leadership such as socleadership and adleadership.

A chain is as strong as its weakest link. The process of building personal strength from weakness is one that goes on forever- this is why leadership is perpetual self development cos as one builds from his knowledge, new weakness is created, a weakness needing to be corrected.

AUTOLEADERSHIP is a kind of extension of knowledge, which consist in the investigation of things, investigation starts from the self. An investigation that leads one to a better understanding of himself and have a clearer knowledge of his responsibility to himself and to society via service on the platform of his inner source of power as found in ones talents, potential and capabilities.

• SOCLEADERSHIP

“Soc” from social, This is the leadership responsibility each person owes the society. This responsibility built from our understanding of

1. The social status of the society.
2. The moral status of the society.
3. The vision of the society.
4. How far the society is from its aspired destination.
5. How the society can get to its destination and the role the individual plays in this grand scheme of things.

SOCLEADERSHIP has to do with impacting on society using our lifestyle as a tool. This is done unconsciously,that is,the aim is not to change anybody or correct anybody. SOCLEADERSHIP means living our lives aright knowing that society will learn a few things from us. Psychologist have a name for the process where we acquire trait  from others without our knowledge, it is called “introjection” .

Leaders are meant to lead their lives with strong conviction in their moral principles.

These factors will guide and instruct the leader on how to live his life. Man is a social animal whose existence is solely dependent of his interaction with his fellow men. Interaction here implies giving our best to others, on the good side humans love to exhibit their best when dealing with others, this is why a man will try to put himself together before he approaches a woman,he does this because he wants the woman to see him as a good guy. Also this is the reason we say first impression matters,why,because we want to make others see us as good people so we try to create or fake a good personality when we met people for the first time even if our real character that will unfold later is worse than that of the devil,we really don’t care all we want is to deceive others into thinking we are nice people. Since human love to exhibit our best,I will adjust the word “social” to go beyond mere interaction between two or more people, I will add that social also means giving our best to others in view of enhancing their well-being. Let me explain this, if you have kids there is no way you will give them a live snake when they ask for bread to eat. So also you will like to be nice to your friends and associated, because the aim to give your best……….always.

In view of the above, SOCLEADERSHIP implies living a life that reflects our highest moral ideals in our socialization, be it in the office, at home, at social functions, with our friends, on the street and even in our sleep. Social here does not mean a gathering of people for socialization purposes, social here means the ability of a person, people or culture to integrate/enculturate other people and culture to itself. At the personal level, it implies our ability to integrate others into our life without ostracizing them due to negative judgment from us or for whatever reason or difference like race, tribe, nationality or philosophical ideology.

At a higher arc, SOCLEADERSHIP is our ability to learn from the same society we impact. In the school of life with unending lessons learnt through trials, challenges, experiences and celebrations, every experience and people we are exposed to become crucial in the development of who we will ultimately become. This is so because in life, our greatest philosophy or ideal come from the experiences we are exposed to, secondly they come from the people we associate with and what we learn consciously or unconsciously from them. In this capacity do we get coaches, mentors and other motivational engines that drive us to our destination. This being so, the application of SOCLEADERSHIP has its purpose in building or adding value to the life of society from our wealth of knowledge.

For us to implement socleadership sucexfully there are factors to be taken into consideration. The temperament, character and personality of the people we are socializing with. The social and cultural milieu we live in and the milieu of the person we hope to socialize with .

3-“ADLEADERSHIP”

“ADLEADERSHIP” (ad from administration) this is the leadership where the leader is entrusted with the responsibility to lead others . in this light,the people being lead are the one that chose the leader to lead them or by virtue of organisational structure the appropriate leaders fill in the gap. In this capacity do we find all political heads. Though we must be careful not to confuse leadership and politics. Leadership is the art of leading the self in view of empowering other while politics is about scheming oneself into leadership adleardership office.

Note

¹ what I mean by from what I understand is that, this is not necessarily what the bible says rather it is my understanding of what it says. I put it this way cos I do not know who has the most accurate understanding of what is contained in any of the Holy writs hence I interpret what is contained there as a motivational tool to self development.