If you do not lead then you are led. Being led means being manipulated. It means your thoughts are not your own. They are engineered. There are two kinds of leaders. One who empowers their follower. Other is who disempower their subordinates and followers. Every one of us is a leader in some or other role. A father is a leader to his children. A manager is a leader to his team. A politician is a leader to his people. As a teacher, you are a leader to your students.
Nowadays, the first kind of breed has become rare. The first kind of leadership requires generous heart, high sense of competence and security. It requires unique qualities of true mentorship. They lead by example. They lead from the front. Some fine example of such leaders is Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai and people like Bill Gates.
The second breed is more ubiquitous. They are found in every nook and corner of our daily lives. Such people believe in manipulation and hegemonic domination. The moment they understand that the subordinate is a strong contender for the position he is holding, they would try every possible means to decimate him. Generally, such decimation occurs in a vicarious fashion by way of shaking his confidence. For example, teacher rebuking his students instead of answering their curious questions. Parents shouting at their children when a child tries to take independent decision. Politician creating hurdles for anyone who poses a threat his position. And a manager attempts to subvert his employee by putting extra workload or giving him lower rating or making him believe that he can't do it.
Such people act as a glass ceiling for our ambitions. They tend to put a lid onto our imaginations and inflict injuries on our can-do attitude. To overcome this transparent yet stifling veneer of subordination, it is necessary to believe in yourself and be your own leader.
Today every successful person we see around ourselves is a leader. Followers are never the achievers. They only remain followers. Only one who has the ability to lead becomes successful. What is the prerequisite to becoming an empowering leader?
First, one should have self-believe to the degree of madness. He must be stubborn and obstinate to a very high degree. Second, one should be fearless. Be it fear of failure or fear of being wrong or fear of being different. Third, one should pursue an idea and should just pursue one idea at a time. Fourth, one should be ignorant of criticism. When a mediocre person aims to become a leader, other mediocre people try their best to stop this attrition from their lot. They try their best to pull him down. In the process, they criticize him or ridicule him or laugh at him or try many other things which can shake the person's confidence. A true leader remains unmoved from any of this. Fifth, leaders are master of the art of living happily in the moment of uncertainty, anxiety, tension and stress. Sixth, leaders should be good in emotional profiling of their followers. Sixth, a leader needs to have a history of failure in some or other walk of life. The taste of failure helps him in becoming more resolute in his goals, enables him to deal with his frustrations and help him in becoming humane.
The absence of any of the above six traits will make him deficient in some or other way. For example, the absence of sixth quality will make him an insecure or mean leader. The absence of fifth quality may turn him aggressive, and angry. This way either he becomes unethical or reclusive in his nature. The absence of fourth may turn him into a joke. He will constantly be in a self-correcting mode.
A big question which arises is whether leadership is an inborn talent or is it a learned behavioral trait? The answer to this is both. Just like every other thing in life, leadership is also a combination of heredity as well as environmental factors. Generally, A true leader is more a product of environment than the inborn skills. After a stage, Leadership is also about human relationships and emotional intelligence. Both of these are learned skills.
Coming to the main topic, why is it necessary to lead? The short answer is if you are not fulfilling your own dream then you are fulfilling someone else's dream. So it is important to pursue your own dream and for this it is important to lead.
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