What Makes a Leader?
What really makes a leader? Is there really a basis that would make a leader great? If that so, what are these considerations? There is even an argument if leaders were born or made. But today’s trend refocus from cognitive to emotional intelligence that have five major components that every leader should possess to become a successful leader. These are divided into two components: the self-management skills and the ability to relate to others. The self-management skills are self-awareness, self-regulation and motivation while the ability to relate to others were empathy and social skills.
The self-management skills is an innate characteristics of the person the way he perceived his self that would reflect how he deal with his teammates. Self-awareness is the ability of the leader recognize and understand his moods and emotions and how it would affect to his teammates that he himself can assess himself truthfully. While self-regulation is his ability to control and judge his actions but he is open to changes to correct his actions and mistakes. But a person with motivation to commit himself with optimism to achieve team goal. On the other hand, a leader’s ability to relate with his teammates is an external characteristics of a leader through an empathy and social skills he should also possess. Empathizing with the his teammates is also an important factor to consider for a leader to feel what his teammates is going through and by knowing the person a leader can persuade and win the person’s heart while building a connection and rapport that which we call leader’s social skills.
In our organization, it’s a must for us to have these all of the components of emotional intelligence as through these we can relate to the community we are serving. We are always self-aware as what we are saying, acting and thinking will not create a conflict against their beliefs or practices. We have to evaluate and scan the holistic way of their life for us to empathize with them and can enter into their life and community. We walk the talk we are giving them for us to be trusted and respected as our foundation is being known to transparency, integrity and excellence despite of the changing times we are to be resilient and also the community we are dealing with as we are always encourage for innovation, sustainability and continuous improvement.
In my opinion, I really agree with the trend that emotional intelligence is a must for a leader as cognitive abilities and skills can be learned and acquired by whoever would want to be a leader but a leader who knows himself well to be regulated and motivated despite failures and who will be a source of strength of his teammates is an exceptional and highly-praised leader. With this leader, his teammates can approach him anytime because they do not fear him as this leader would understand and respect them. This will correct and guide them on their way to success as he will motivate them to bring out the best of what they’ve got. This leader is one of them and would rate them fairly and objectively.
On a personal level, I have experienced in which the president and owner of the company I have worked for more than a year that is an autocratic, bad-mouthing and inconsiderate of our flaws and mistakes that he even threatened us by showing his gun during our meeting. He himself has no friend to made him aware that his actions were already inhumane and selfish as he only sees money but not our talents and efforts. No one can control him even his family members because he will not listen as he sees himself to be above everyone else maybe because he was born rich and never experience to fall down. Thus, we employees will not be motivated to work and would rather resign even we don’t have an employer waiting for us than to always felt the fear and nervousness when having an interaction with him in person or through call.