Monday, May 22, 2017
LEADERSHIP EXTRAORDINAIRE: CHALLENGING ONESELF
The success equation is undergoing a robust
transition, challenging leaders to embrace a new mode of driving entities they
run. Regardless of the sector one is in, the bottom line remains that people
can no longer be managed like sheep just to follow their leader blindly. The
new generation of followers has a different mode of achieving success; it
craves to be heard, to be appreciated and to have the power to challenge
authorities whenever necessary without fear of retribution.
Circumstances are clear that the 21st
century requires a leadership that challenges itself, that surrounds itself
with minds that are ready to challenge it, that articulates its vision with an
open mind that it could be challenged within. This is the leadership that
strives to look forward and achieve no matter the surrounding circumstances.
This is the leadership that could best be termed the Abraham Lincoln success
leadership code.
In the article Leadership lessons from Abraham
Lincoln, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin emphasizes that you have to surround
yourself with people who can argue with you and question your assumptions and
this particularly helps if you can bring in people whose temperaments differ
from your own.
This leadership style does not entail that you bring
every jim and jack into your leadership circle. It challenges that every leader
looks at his or her rivals and chose the best and most able people among them
to help in shaping a corporate or political ideology forward.
Pointing out to the philosophy, Abraham Lincoln
brought Salmon Chase into his cabinet as treasury secretary knowing full well
that Chase craved the presidency. The rivalry was even more manifested through
Chase’s undermining of Lincoln all the time with cabinet members, so too
congress. To Lincoln what mattered was that Chase was doing his job. The more
Chase considered himself a better leader deep in his mind the more he wanted to
prove it through his position. In the very end all the credit went to Lincoln
Theodore Roosevelt long saw it as he explains, ‘it
is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs
to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat
and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who
knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy
cause, who at best knows in the end triumphs of high achievement and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall
never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.’
Over a century years later Barack Obama saw the
merit of using the Abraham Lincoln success code. He brought into his cabinet
heavyweight politicians who were themselves past and future contenders into his
cabinet. Obama was well convinced that the strategy would challenge his
thinking all the times and there would be no time for complacency or hero
worshipping. He had surrounded himself with lions that were not afraid to maul
his ideologies thus at the very same time keeping him vigilant with his
policies and strategies. Obama chose his chief rival, Hillary Clinton, to be
the Secretary of State. He went on to pick Joe Biden to be his vice president.
In his cabinet he included powerful republicans like Robert Gates and Ray
LaHood.
It needs no mention to emphasize that corporate
bodies that are struggling to compete on the market and become profitable are
in such a dire situation as a result of well entrenched culture that is awash
with the followership that could not challenge the leader, the followership
that takes comfort sitting in the backseat taking to initiative to steer their
corporate bus towards the path of success. The end result is mediocrity and
loss of corporate identity.
The political sector is no exception. Political
parties have been crumbling as a result of entrenching a leadership that never
challenges itself. People with dissenting views have great value as they offer
the alternative that a leader may never have comprehended. In general sense, dissenting
views are a reality check. It is not surprising therefore that when we fail, be
it in any sector, there will be those who say, ‘but we said it and we knew it
would end like this.’
This is now the time for a leadership analysis and
for leaders to embrace the Abraham Lincoln success code be it in a family, work
place, political circles and corporate leadership positions. Leadership is
changing and the 21st century demands a dissenting-views responsive
leadership.
