Leadership : An opinion

There are hundreds of theories and thousands of way to define and redefine concepts associated with leadership. I would approach the topic in a slightly different way. I would say for mankind the concepts associated with leadership is just not necessary but something that we cannot do away with it. It is part of our psyche, embedded in our consciousness, it is what we are. Why is that? It is because human beings realization of time is linear and unidirectional. Only way we can conceive time is that there is a start and an end to time.  While the start we all know is with our birth and the general ending we all know is with our death.  The questions is what happens to the multiple slices of narratives that we live within our life, they all have a ‘start’ as a causal effect of events that we sometimes control and sometimes we don’t. However the ‘end’ of these narratives is what are absolutely out of our control as we do not foresee the future and thus we do not for sure in which direction the things will go. All we can do is chug along with faith in our heart and this is where the idea of leadership comes in. The perception of leadership embodied in a person (whom we call a leader) is the concept of someone who intuitively knows the way in the future and shows the way to a predefined desirable outcome that we can define or understand in the present or past. So a good leader must have futuristic vision and knows how to tie his ideas into real-world success stories that has been conceived in the present.

So the questions how do we know who has that futuristic vision? Is that possible at all?  If one man can predict the future, then why not everybody ? Turns out that nobody knows what will happen in the future. So, then, who is a leader?

Some postulate that leadership depends on one's "blue blood" or genes. Monarchy takes an extreme view of the same idea, and may prop up its assertions against the claims of mere aristocrats by invoking divine sanction. In family owned business, the leader of next generation is the son or daughter of previous generation. In all these cases there is no prediction or special intuition of the future rather an assertion of “defining the future” as one sees it. Like a monarch who claims to have the divine right to define the future of the country in the way he wants it to be and everybody (all the citizens of the country he rules) has to accept (because of divinity claim) and align towards it. This is a claim of the future of the country or the company (inherited from parents), the end state.

Another belief has been that leadership could be nurtured by identifying young people with moral force of character and instincts to lead, and educating them in such a way that those characteristics are further developed. There is that understanding that certain traits need to exist within individuals who can then be identified as leaders. Once again these do not imply that these leaders will have futuristic vision. On the contrary, based on whatever characteristic, they might be able to convince others of what they think should be the future and intellectually compel them to accept that vision. So what they think should be the future or would be the future may not even get realized at all. There is no guarantee.

While we, human beings need leaders but I would argue that leaders are not someone who knows the future in any form. That is simply not possible. Leaders know the present holistically and are someone who can tell us what we should do as a group to achieve the end that we all want, giving us the best possible chance. This do not meant that “the best possible chance” is absolute; it is the leader’s belief in it and requesting the followers to have faith in him. There is no single psychological profile that exists for a leader because the action an individual takes as a leader is entirely dependent on the environment that he is working in. Like for in the business world we know that for a startup firm we need leaders who have large appetite for risk whereas once a firm reaches a stable state (is in the cruise mode) we need level headed personality with a very little tolerance for risk. All the time, essentially what the leaders will be doing is manage the present so that the firm gets “the best possible chance” to reach profitability (as they see it).

Managing the present is, digging deep in the underlying concerns of the group affected by the leadership and in the process discovering what emerges as the most dominant conception. So a leader shares the inherent concerns of the group with greater commitment to the future and the transpiring path towards it. Who is this person? Is somebody who can change their behavior to meet differing circumstances or widen their behavioral range at will, has strong integrity and is completely self-aware, self-regulated, motivated, having enormous empathy towards others. Although a certain degree of analytical and technical skill is a minimum requirement for success, emotional intelligence will be the key attribute as that will act as an enabler for understanding the interests of the group being led, the ability to understand and manage moods and emotions in the self and others. That is why groups generally prefer leaders that do not exceed intelligence prowess of average member by a wide margin, as they fear that high intelligence may be translated to differences in communication, trust, interests and values. Leadership emergence is curvilinear; individuals who are more aware of their personality qualities, including their values and beliefs, and are less biased when processing self-relevant information, are more likely to be accepted as leaders. This is the reason for every group, every situation or group-situation combination there are different type of leaders.  There are no universal traits. Leaders are not born nor are they made but they emerge because of an inherent need of human being (be it an individual or in summarized form of a - group).

Then there are leadership styles, a leader's style of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. It is the result of the beliefs, personality, and experience of the leader. That is a different matter and hovers around autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire, task-oriented, and relationship-oriented. It is the execution of leadership responsibilities.