By Kibnesh C. Fulas
I attended executive leadership training at the beginning of
the year. It was one of the most effective and insightful
seminar that I ever participated on leadership. The training
allows me to define leadership, evaluate my
self as a leader and identify my strength as well as
points of improvements.
The best definition of leadership that I could come up is
“it is the ability to communicate, inspire and influence
others to follow and act towards realizing the common
vision.” This statement has key words like communication,
inspiring, action, common vision, which are essential in
meaningful leadership. There needs to be a common goal or
vision in the first place for the leadership to prevail.
Who is a leader?
A leader must be good communicator to ensure that there is a
common understanding of the goal within the team. Leaders
must listen, understand and be understood. It is very
important for me to realize the significance of
understanding how you are perceived as a leader by the
others. After all what people think of you matters,
especially if those people are the one you want to lead.
Not all leaders are inspiring but the effective ones make
you want to follow them. That is what makes a leader
different from a manager. There may not necessarily be a
legal binding for you to follow the example of a leader but
her or his action, principles, mission etc inspire and
influence you to follow them. This is why we see some people
without a rank but having better influence on a team and be
opinion leaders than the ones in higher position.
A leader must lead to action as the whole essence of
leadership is achieving the vision. Otherwise the vision
will remain a dream. Hence good leaders have to get things
done, and must be able to achieve their goals. But how they
achieve their goal distinguishes them as a leader. The best
leaders have inspired others and they have followers who are
behind the wheel. This brings in the element of flexibility.
Leaders should know when to direct and when to let others
take the lead. They should not necessarily be in the front
all the time.
I believe that a person’s leadership style is highly shaped
by his/her personality traits, which is formed by culture,
education, and life experience. The people that I work with,
lived with, or met briefly have left some mark in who I am.
I think presenting my personal principles and traits say a
lot as to who I am as a leader. There is no one best
leadership style, it depends on circumstances and looking
into my personality tells better as to what style am going
to adopt in different circumstances.
Principles
I see myself as open minded, objective and practical person.
Being open minded help one to listen and avoid prejudice. I
am always ready to learn and face new challenges and this is
probably the major factor, which made me reach where I am at
the moment.
I don’t often find myself attracted to unrealistic goals
like ‘changing the world’. Not that I don’t want this world
to change, but I want to spend my energy on something that I
can accomplish. I believe that I change the world if I start
with aiming at changing a village, a small community, or a
group. I am a strong advocate of bottom up approach or
starting with a small. This allows me to be part of bigger
cause.
Among several talks that I have heard this year, one
statement that stays with me and I relate to is about
building a cathedral. We have to see ourselves like those
people in the medieval period, who built cathedrals. They
might not lived to see the end result, but they knew that
their cathedral would not come up without their
contribution. This is useful to keep in mind specially for
someone like me who is in the sector, which is facing a
number of challenges and could be frustrating most of the
times.
A leader must have core value that she or he lives by.
Respect, trust, honesty, and positive thinking are my
principles; l live by them regardless of where I am, what I
do or who I interact with. This traits that define me and
are reflected in my leadership.
