Chicago - Relevant to different historical writings on the concept of leadership, the Republic of the great Greek philosopher Plato has defined its basic qualities and has linked the term fundamentally to the power of personality and its distinctive characteristics.
The power we choose to call charisma. In different contexts, this non-structured component makes of leaders those who can inspire others and have significant influence on the amount and the quality of their work and their contributions. Here, leadership can be identified as a “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task."
In the world of today, leadership and management are introduced in professional arenas with similar references. Practically, this may be justified as both concepts refer to practices of administrating and governing. Conceptually, management refers primarily to the processes of planning, realization and assessment while leadership refers initially to the qualities of inspiration. The latter is our magic word that brings our understanding of leadership to endless limits.
Who is a leader? How do we perceive leadership? To what extent do our perceptions reflect a comprehensive and applicable understanding of its qualities? In our answers, we may limit our thinking of leadership to technicalities and practicalities and think of it from an isolated academic perspective. In our answers, our choices and responses may vary. Yet, our thinking may not reach beyond the word administration. This is false!
Effective leadership can not be realized depending merely on well-designed catalogues of management. Efficacy in the professional world demands strong personalities, ethical values, high sensitivity to responsibility and a great sense of devotion. Effective leaders can be well described as figures with strong abilities to align people at their domains. Effective leaders are those who bring their people together under one vision and one mission. Their success in unifying their people rely on their personal qualities, behavioral values and emotional reserves. Effective leaders are those who walk the dark paths to shine your way into success and growth.
I may personally think of this statement of Theodore Roosevelt, one of the great republicans in the history of the United States of America, on leadership to give its best possible description. "It's not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with the sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause and who, at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at 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.” I still think of these words as the magical keys to the world of imagination and inspiration and I hope of a “leader who deals in hope” as once Napoleon Bonaparte quoted.
In one of my hallways' discussions with Mr. Sami Hijazi, the Ex-Principal of the Houston, Texas based Al-Hadi School Of Accelerative Learning on leadership, this man I still admires most insisted on one word, trust. For him, trust is the core value, the core stone and the character. He said: “ Trust make you motivate and move your group forward and not necessarily your measurements of control. Your heart makes you motivate and inspire not the authority.” Today, I smile and quote: “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”