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Hey y'all,
I read an article from Harvard Business Review published in January 2004 and it talked about qualities of an effective leader, and these were self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. These qualities are known as components of Emotional Intelligence (read more here) I am one among the many people used to look at qualities such as being very confident or being skilled in a certain field as the core reasons for someone being in leadership position. While reading the explanations as well as the hallmarks of each quality, I was able to gauge myself on areas that I am weak or strong, and it kind of gave me an understanding of what I need to work on.
I think leadership is something that we all need to learn about in school. There should be a class on leadership that will help students know what it takes to be effective in leadership. The funny thing about leadership is that, we have seen so many examples of people in leadership positions yet they were not as effective as others who were perhaps not in a leadership positions. There have also been times when people approach a colleague more than they would approach their supervisor, only because that colleague has leadership qualities that make people drawn to him / her. The good news though, is that leadership skills can be learned, so if you are not one of those people that was born with certain qualities like empathy, or life experiences made you lose some of those qualities, you can always learn them and become more aware of your environment.
And when it comes to leadership, don't limit yourself to being a boss or supervisor in a firm or company. You might be an entrepreneur with one or two people working under or with you and you need to be the kind of person that people can approach as well as rely on, and know they are doing the right thing being involved in your business. Imagine this, you've just taken a loan for your business thanks to mkopo kwa wajasiriamali, then few months down the line, your business starts failing because you are losing your best employees, or suppliers. You ask around and people that are actually nice enough tell you that you are a horrible person to deal with. Now, do you see how leadership qualities apply even in your small business?
It costs nothing to learn something new, to learn how to better yourself and do things differently and effective. The one thing I can say is that, anything that is going to make us better versions of ourselves requires change and change is not easy. You may have to come in terms with change being inevitable and make friendship with change so that when time comes to transform your life for the better, you won't go about it being bitter and spiteful.
Mamatembo.
