Art of Leading

Leadership has been perceived wrongly by many people. When we spoke about leadership, we always look upward to our superior or someone holding high position that providing the guidance as our leader. It is nothing wrong with that assumption as considering the views of our boss as guidance and direction in our work is part and parcel of the job specification. However, to me leadership is more than listening to the superior and take queue from him/her what to do. We conveniently make excuse of lacking leadership if something did not perform as desired. To me, leadership exist in all levels and everywhere. It is not confined to our politician who lead the country or our bosses who lead the company or even our community leader who lead the society. You might be the leader on your own field. For example, as head of the household you are definitely a leader. Similarly, become leader of a group if you are leading a tour or a project. In this respect, the assertion that I cannot lead because I have no power is not accurate depending on what circumstances you are in. For example, people always condemn the failure of recycling because of lacking leadership. They reckon that leader must make extra effort to encourage wider recycling programme. They always excuse themselves for not recycling due to other shortcoming such as lack of recycling centre or bins, no proper collection, lack of incentives and etc. For me, this is a mere excuse. As a leader in the house, you can and able to practice 3R at least within your own compound. We have millions household and with that we have millions leaders. Collectively minor acts of these leaders can bring changes, I presume. While everyone is of course the leader on his own account, the quality of his leadership is varied depending on his competency, capacity, knowledge, skill and even to some the charisma he might have. A good leader is the one who are able to command others to listen and work for the causes he envisioned. A bad leader is the one who have nothing to lead but allow the followers to act freely without any direction. Thereby, acquiring the art of leading is very important. While some born leader can lead easily, many have to acquire the skill of leading through learning, relearning and life experiences. Leadership means the leader leads the followers. Being a leader means shouldering a higher responsibility and setting an example for others, either good or bad. To be an effective leader, you must first equip yourselves with the knowledge of managing human and its relationship. You must be able to motivate and encourage the followers to share your vision and actions. You must be able to guide them through even though in the infant stage of a programme and during difficult time. A good leader is the one who is there to cheer you up during bad time and to fire up feel good feeling during good time. A leader who run away from dilemma and take a back seat during controversial time, to me is definitely not qualified being a leader.