Leadership

Well another thought provoking comment in church has prompted me to make this little post. In Fast and Testimony meeting today one of the members of my ward made an interesting comment about their son that was returning from serving in Iraq. He returned early in the morning and one would think that he would immediately go with his family back to his house and rest up. On the other hand this man stayed and greeted each one of his soldiers as they got off of their plane and wished them well, and then waited for a second plane of his soldiers to come so that he could also see them off. This started me thinking a little bit about leadership. It's actually something I've thought about before, but never in too much detail. Prompts in seminary, Andrew :), have made me think a little bit more about it, but this is the first time I sat down and really though it all out and wrote it all down. So leadership, what makes a good leader? I came up with a little list of what I thought were the most important qualities of a leader.

• empathy
• humility
• ambition
• resolution
• dedication
• loyalty
• respect
• kind
• positive but realistic
• trustworthy
• Recognition that by leading you are serving

I think probably the most important quality up there is empathy. I think empathy gives rise to a lot of the other qualities. By being able to understand and empathize with the people you are leading and serving I think you gain a sense of humility and you are more willing to follow when someone else has a better idea than you have. You become loyal to those you are leading and you respect them and in turn gain their respect. You learn to trust them and their abilities and again by so doing gain their trust. You'll act in more kindness and be a more able, caring, and capable leader. Furthermore if the people you are leading know that you know them, that you care about them, and that you always have their best interest in mind than they will be more willing to follow you, and thus make you a better leader through their trust and obedience.

The other qualities are also kind of parts of one another, as for example resolution brings dedication, ambition, and loyalty. The positive realistic part is kind of off on its own from the others but it's also extremely important. Like if you're in a basketball game and your down twelve points, the realism is your down 12 points, you're losing. However, it's the way you shape the situation you're in that will define in part whether or not you will be a good leader. If you're down twelve and you just give up, you stop fighting, I wouldn't say you're the best leader, you're letting your team down. You have to maintain the positive attitude that yeah, we're down twelve points, but that in no way means that we are going to lose the game. This positive attitude is necessary to keep a team in the game, or to keep a project going, etc. Thus, by keeping a positive attitude you can help lead your team to a victory they might not have had otherwise, but again, you can't win a game by yourself, nor will someone who takes the lead in everything necessarily make a good leader. You have to recognize the fact that others can and will lead, and then be willing to follow. So those are my thoughts and I'll end there since the post is already a lot longer than I would really like :)