➢ To introduce
Cohabitations of family members, people living together in communities, cities, and between ethnics or socials groups in cities, they relationship between cities, countries and continents, whether pacific or disturbed can’t take the path of peace and happiness for each without the entire implication a kind of men of women who give evidences of selfless, invest themselves, carrying people to share ideas, put things together to fulfill high goals in the interest of the most. Those people who facilitate conversation, help, guide, are what we name leaders. To take a group from an initial position to a higher or best needed one require to the leader some important qualities that does not happen by accident; they may no doubt encourage, empower, inspire, and give the ability to imagine, to brainstorm, and to help in decision-making, to realize things in order to achieve goals. Leadership is how you bring people to trust you, allow them to make their mind, to win their commitment towards your ideas, but also to be able to learn, to ask, to know and to make all that valuable for one purpose, to give the goal a lasting impact. In the following, my insights about that.
➢ To reveal my personality
I can picture myself through 5 main points:
• Hard work: I am usually the kind of person who does his bit; I do not mind neither the challenges nor obstacles we daily face nor how tough it is to get things put together since the goal ahead is a great achievement that may have positive impact in one’s life. And on my labor, I do not fear high pressure. That can lead to a certain impatience that may hurt some people.
• Adaptability: like a chameleon I am likely to put myself at the level of people under my leadership to facilitate mutual understanding, help people grow by my pieces of advice, my ideas, by making them develop many views of a trouble, so they can easily make right decision.
• Justice: my worst enemy is the lake of justice and equity; people must have what they deserve and no one should pay for the mistakes of other people. By that way I use to be nervous when people do wrong, in addition to my lack on patience.
• Imagination: In my environment back home if they have to say quickly two things about it will be I bet my sense of creativity and imagination before talking about any talent of doing things.
• Trust: what I have no game with is all what is about trust. I am the one who right people can lean on, for a common purpose or for a goal achievement. However I have sometimes excessive confidence into people.
• I use to give up projects when I don’t see any willing to work in my teammates eyes.
• I get often nervous when thing are running bad.
➢ To recall what I believe in
Let me just picture my idea first of all by stating that an army of many thousands of soldiers without the one who will set up the strategy of the battle, think already at the End before starting the fight and what are the steps to win, but just under the management of an officer as great as possible do not worth a unit of soldiers guided by a trustworthy and smart leader. Someone who are not simply managing his boys to apply a repetitive fight styles or systems, but in addition, knows how to deal with uncertainties, to think outside the box, inspire and push people under his leadership to give all their effort, find out together with his team members how to get out of the battle with success, despite their small. The leader to me must innovates, inspires, has a particular art to addressing people, empower them to express their hidden talent. John wooden (2005, P.XV) once pointed out that “Ultimately, I believe that’s what leaders is all about: helping others to achieve their own greatness by helping the organization to succeed”. However among people showing those leadership abilities, you find different style through which you can more or less reach out your objective, or in more and less amount of time: he could be authoritarian leader, participative or laisser-faire leader.
➢ To tell what I have learned
The first couple of things I quickly implemented, even if I already had an idea on it, is that to succeed through a deserved path, you may know as leader
Where you’re heading to: your must have a clear vision of what you’re seeking, your goal must be early settled, so you know what you are “taking” in your boat for the trip to there.
Why are you willing to achieve it: the thing that you have targeted must deliver a lasting great impact to you, your followers life forever and why not beyond.
How to get there: reflecting on the ideas, material and talents to assemble, in order to overcome easily obstacles and pass by all the steps.
Another thing I have learned is to encourage your followers to tell their concern and point of views. To being concerned by the fact that nobody sincerely can succeed only by himself, independently. We need at a moment or another some help, or people with special abilities we are lacking. Therefore working on team disclosed to be a great way to help people dig into their self-awareness and hidden strengths to pull out their abilities. The more he could get enough fellows mind raised up at his level, the more chance he could get to win the trust of all of them, thanks to the ideas sharing worked out in a assembly-line manner.
➢ To highlight my idea on leadership
My leadership style could be more close, otherwise is predominately adaptive but I would like to call it transformational leadership, and here are my explanations: from my knowledge and what I have implemented in my brain since the first semester in ASU, IS THAT there is no doubt that leading a group do require some abilities to get the commitment of the group members, to guide them in finding venues, solutions, ways and ideas to reach a supreme common goal.
That implies to the leader to being concerned constantly by the feelings, problems of the followers, sensitive to them, having flexibility, and tolerate conflict of ideas, keep away your ego, your pride, but also and that is not the least, the leader as to be energetic and resistant, be careful and have perspective. Still on the to way to highlight my point of view, being a leader who listen a lot, accept input from one or more group members when it comes to decisions-making and problems solving, is a great way to be effective. However to me, a leader behave regarding his environment, his culture, the region and the kind of people who surround him. In my case, it seems very important to keep that self-decision power to finally decide; otherwise it might be often ineffective. To keep on listening, in very relentless hard time, too much followers, whose education is most of the time insufficient to understand ideas, so that you should make decision in their benefit even the can’t see it at the moment, you are making them. A way of leading I believe, defended by Jen Grems Snow when about getting people together to reach success, indicated that to her “it is very important for me for myself as a leader to not be afraid to do the right thing even if that goes against the grain even if that is not the most popular thing, even if you have been pressured to do something else “. In my culture for example back home in Burkina Faso, the main ethnic group that is the Mosse , It is culturally fixed in people mind that the chief (and they make it same as the king or the president) has to be respected and must have his instructions or orders just being executed, and that lasts since immemorial time! So a manner to deal with that state, when a group is confronted to threats, or is facing a very huge problem, a leader must show strength in how he handles discussions, how much he can be concern by each one feelings and ideas, but beyond theses, the fact that he has to decide according to what he sees forward. Transformational leadership is, to me, what other people call adaptive leadership, as once disclosed by the National Public Radio (NPR Nov, 11 2013) based on the thesis of Adaptive leadership demonstrated by Ronald Heifetz on his training as a psychiatrist to coach aspiring leaders at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He suggested that there is a way to bring people to break barriers, follow you and implement your vision, that is by working on your circle of influence and give to the people the inspiration which can help them to get out of what they had stood up on, work deeply in a very complex and challenging environment.
That kind of leadership is encouraged by Jen Grems Snow (Nov 17; 2013) “ when she pointed out once to be leading by doing; set a good example and hold yourself accountable just as you would expect from others. Do what you say you will do, and do the same as you ask from others” That is what did former Prime Minister George Papandreou who started by changing, transforming or adapting the way he and his fellows citizens see Turkish people, by a time they were hating each people another. He saw them as allies far from people to hate continually, he offer them blood bags when Turkish people knew a terrible disaster with an earthquake and plenty of injured people. That led to an increasing to the sympathy of Turkish toward Greece people and drove to a change in their mind. Stepping hardly on your acts, your talk and your behaviors is a king of transformational leadership that suits this issue more than conventional or technical leadership where people just tell you why and what to do. And it may force you to go through some resistance in your own camp, like the disagreement of Greece people, treating Former minister Papandreou as traitor to Turkish government, or for a psychoanalyst who can face resistance from a disturbed man he must cure. But both must face all of that issue to reach out the supreme goal they saw ahead and must be advantageous and better in bringing happiness and success.
Sometimes for the proper safety or a leader’s group he must go against many inputs and make decisions that will disclosure to be the great decision that have been made. It happens like that, you’re are obligated to make the happiness of someone in spite of his miscomprehension and illiteracy about a burning subject going on; while you see people rushing towards the abyss, you should be able to have the words to Convince some of followers and often force others hand to make it work.
This style of leadership often leads to more effective and accurate decisions, since no leader can be an expert in all areas. But it also leads for the clearing of the right road, which must drive everyone to the “case” goal, settled up before. No doubt that input from group members with specialized knowledge and expertise creates a more complete basis for decision-making to the leader who can either delegate his power or choose regarding the situation to go quick, but he has to balance when to calm down and when to play it strongly for the benefit of the whole group.
So as tough that a decision is, to be made, my way of seeing the leader is to make sure that beyond his own desire, the interest of the whole group has to be prioritized, even if a few people seem to be given different analysis of the problem. His role is to get the goal achieved in every instance. In that way how other name can we give to the leadership style displayed by Ernest Shackleton. This Anglo-Irish explorer who were on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition had the goal to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent. While sailing towards the South Pole, their ship became trapped in ice, driving him out of his initial goal and setting a series of events that disclosed his leadership skills and turned him to a hero when he brought his cabin crew safe back at home, where many other people would have perished. Pulling boats across ice floes until reaching open water, camping and starving on ice for 6 months, sailing in a small boats in stormy seas, spending their winter on an island, struggling in a constant freezing of the ocean, with the risk in case of mistake to be dropped in the Ocean, far from the closest land. He did not let the challenging environment step in his circle of influence, the resiliency and service he revealed by displaying hope and trust to his men, never letting any disappointment or difficulties influence them. That is what is called proactive person. The one who do not blame circumstances or conditions, the one who uses his self-awareness, his imagination, to take the responsibility according to Stephen R. Covey (The 7 habits of highly effective people-p.71-2004) “the ability to choose their response “at the contrary of reactive people who let themselves driven by their environment and are largely influenced by that. To Azubuike Ishiekwene (Interview,Nov.17-2013) for whom leading could be summarized in one word let hear on an interview given that what makes a great leader is impact “Leadership is the ability to make positive impact in people’s lives and reproduce value, regardless of the tough choices that have to be made. It requires hard work, sacrifice and courage. That is exactly about what we must value the most; never been afraid to rush through difficulties and keep hope and enthusiasm in getting things done but also transforming people by working on their character and understanding their concerns. <
The conclusion part is really great.