Leadership

‘Trust’ is the basic requirement for influencing people to follow you. Trust is never built on what you say but on what you do and what you are. Thus a noticeable personality is definitely an attraction for followers, but a character based on ethical and moral standing is what inspires people to follow you and develop deep-rooted devotion and passion for the vision of the leader.

Whether it is the American president or president of a top multinational, leadership is not a borrowed, snatched and manipulated position. It is an earned virtue not dependent on legal power. All top leaders, who have survived the test of time, have proven themselves to be men of character and principles, they led the people from the front; they have been the first ones to face the impact in times of crisis, and most of them have displayed humility of action and deed. The last quality is perhaps the rarest to find in today’s leaders. Most leaders in today’s world are full of themselves displaying arrogance and suffering from a myopic vision.

Leadership plays a crucial role in the development of organizations and countries; they create vision, passion and integrity that become example for many others to follow. If leadership is not based on merit, character and competence, leaders are always going to be insecure, always hiding behind fancy words and forever seeking safe place in position and rank. Their insecurities make them seek and select people who are a inferior in their intellect. These chosen people in turn select people who are two notches below them and thus a culture of incompetence and insecurity is built up. Such leaders are responsible for creating classic corporate fools. The desire to accumulate power comes from their own insecurity and inward fears that without power they may not have a chance of surviving in the long run. The men around them sensing their insecurity constantly feed their egos till it makes them insensitive to their surroundings.

Pakistani politics has become a case study of this category. Aside from the Quaid-i-Azam, there has not been a single leader in the country who could inspire trust, love and respect in the masses; they all come with big claims of creating a historic revolution and leave with identical bitter end to their tenures.

The difference between the progress of India and Pakistan is also the difference between leadership styles. While on merit Dr Manmohan Singh is perhaps the most educated, well-read and experienced leader of modern times with proven competence in initiating the turnaround in Indian economy when he was finance minister, his humility is apparent from the simple dress, but when it comes to the national interests no super power can make him budge from his position.

But change does not necessarily have to be initiated from the top. It is always a few committed people at the bottom whose vision, passion and integrity become an example for many others to follow, and soon these few people turn their drive into a movement, which creates enough pressure to bring a change at the top. What we need is a bottom-up approach where it is the moral duty of all people who have intellectual and moral integrity to take the responsibility and set examples of personal sacrifice, which restore moral and ethical balance of society.