Leadership

Leadership is not a quality. It is an experience that an individual who has undergone personal growth and transformation radiates. This is the simple truth. There are so many books these days about leadership and how it is an important part of making an organization successful. There are so many leadership gurus who teach and train people in organizations to ‘develop’ leadership. Yet when we look at all organizations, be it business, government services, or in the area of social services, true leaders are rare. A true leader is a person who is ready to take responsibility consciously and is able to respond spontaneously to situations. He is fresh in his ideas and continuously keeps himself alive.

Which is a better way to prepare young people for leadership: developing in them a spirit of competitiveness or one of cooperation? The chief reason why we should stress cooperation in nurturing young people today is that as tomorrow’s leaders they will face pressing societal problems that simply cannot be solved apart from cooperative international efforts. For example, all nations will need to cooperate in an effort to disarm themselves of weapons of mass destruction; to reduce consumption of the Earth’s finite natural resources; and to cure and prevent diseases before they become global epidemics. Otherwise, we all risk self-destruction. In short, global peace, economic stability, and survival of the species provide powerful reasons for stressing cooperation over competition.

A second compelling reason for instilling in young people a sense of cooperation over competition is that effective leadership depends less on the latter than the former. A leader should show that he or she values the input of subordinates-for example, by involving them in decisions about matters in which they have a direct stake, otherwise, subordinates might grow to resent their leader and this can completely destroy the spirit of effective leadership. In extreme cases they might even sabotage that mission, or might even take their useful ideas to competitors. And after all, without other people worth leading a person cannot be a leader-let alone an effective one.

A third reason why instilling a sense of cooperation is to be preferred over instilling a sense of competition is that the latter serves to narrow a leader’s focus on thwarting the efforts of competitors. With such tunnel vision it is difficult to develop other, more creative means of attaining organizational objectives. While competitive spirit is necessary especially in a business environment, it should not undermine cooperation.

Most of us achieve the status of a leader, but not the state. State is totally different from status. Status comes from society and ‘state’ means our inner space. Our inner space should be mature enough to handle the responsibility, which we assume.

Each of us is a potential leader. The quality of leadership arises from one’s ability to take responsibility for a particular organization, a situation or a particular group with tremendous awareness and maturity. Leadership is simply a conscious choice made by an individual to act out of deep sensitivity and awareness to one’s situation and surrounding. Then automatically, the inner space will start transforming and send out the right the right words and actions.