Great Leaders

Article Submitted By Aaminah Iqbal | 18-Jul-2012 | Views: 1237

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The word leadership can refer to:

  1. Those entities that perform one or more acts of leading.
  2. The ability to affect human behavior so as to accomplish a mission.
  3. Influencing a group of people to move towards its goal setting or goal achievement.

A Leader is a person others opt to follow to a place they would not have gone by themselves.

Leaders can be of various types. For example Leader by the position achieved Leader by personality, Leader by moral example, Leader by power held, Intellectual leader, Leader because of ability to accomplish things.

Leaders are people, who are able to express themselves fully, says Warren Bennis. 'They also know what they want', he continues, 'why they want it, and how to communicate what they want to others, in order to gain their co-operation and support.’ Lastly, ‘they know how to achieve their goals' (Bennis 1998: 3). But what is it that makes someone exceptional in this respect? As soon as we study the lives of people who have been labeled as great or effective leaders, it becomes clear that they have very different qualities. We only have to think of political figures like Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher and Mao Zedong to confirm this.

Leaders are obviously different from followers. Some appear to have the gift of leadership, but are found to lack it when tested. Others are recognized as "born leaders" and exercise effective leadership up to a certain level, but prove disastrous failures beyond that level. It is very hard to judge the point beyond which a person will be over promoted. Like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon are the examples of example of the utterly self-made leaders. But luck is a precondition of most human achievements. Natural leaders know how to exploit their luck.

Most of those who achieve anything in the world are ambitious, and some have very exalted ambitions which they have never the chance to realize. A few rise higher than they or anyone else could have imagined, and then prove equal to the challenge. Like those born to great offices who prove, against the odds, worthy to hold them, such people have "greatness thrust upon them".

Churchill and de Gaulle, two of the greatest leaders of modern times, also depended upon chance for the fulfillment of their potential. But they had formidable talent and limitless self-belief. Destiny seemed to wait on them. They were manifestly above the ordinary run of humanity, and made no attempt to conceal the fact.

Leadership is partly a confidence trick, and those who practice it cannot afford to be too predictable. Some have alternated ruthlessness with generosity.

Democratic leaders have the difficult task of both guiding the people and seeming to respond to the popular will. Autocrats are obviously freer to exercise leadership, but among them the most successful have been aware of the need to be loved and admired as well as feared, just as many of the best democratic leaders have been natural autocrats, restrained only by conscience and realism. The essential qualities of a good leader are much the same, whatever the environment. 

Of all the qualities needed for leadership, only one is indispensable – courage. Without it, all the others are more or less useless. Courage has been shown by all who we recognize as true leaders, from Alexander to Thatcher. A leader must have the ability to take hard decisions and calculated risks. This rule applies at all levels and in all situations – in school, factory, boardroom or sporting arena, no less than on the battlefield or in the council chamber. 

Leaders have to give courage to others, while creating the illusion that they know exactly what they are doing. In Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, when one of Caesar’s officers says something intended to lift his spirits, he replies witheringly: "Do you presume to encourage me?" Shaw, like Shakespeare, knew what leadership was about.

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