My Principle of Leadership
What would you do if you can hold the world in your hand? Maybe you think this question is so exaggerated, but I think it is not. As a leader you hold a lot of worlds in your hand. Your world, your family’s world, the world of people that you lead and the world of the family of people that you lead and everything that surrounds you.
Without realizing, your decision and action as leader will somehow have a big impact to them.
Being a good leader is about realizing the burden of leadership. For me the burden is to carry the worlds that you lead upon your shoulder with two things, responsibility and care. Being responsible and care must be done in many ways, I will try and explain what I believe is part of being responsible and care as a leader.
As part of leader responsibility is to have a vision. Vision is something that is far reaching, not just here and now, but there and tomorrow, something to look forward too. I strongly believe without clear vision for what will come a leader will just be reactive and can not formulate a long term plan. A leader without vision can not carry their people forward. Without a vision a leader can be lost in his day to day action and reaction.
But having a vision is not enough, as a leader we need to share that vision. Make sure that people that we lead able to see that vision, believe in that vision. To be able to make people see our vision, sometimes we have to act like bacteria or virus. Spreading our vision through whatever ways we can. Through our action, talk, decision, and anything that we do or say.
I also believe that part of being responsible and care is to give clear target, objective and mission. Try to imagine an army commanding officer giving commands in time of war, it has to be clear, unambiguous so it won’t get his team mate kill. By giving a clear target and objective means I don’t waste anybody’s time and energy in trying to understand what I mean. This frees them to be able to immediately pursue the mission.
Another thing that I believe is also part of being responsible is by taking input and feedback from my team. To give an ear and really listen about what they think is wrong or lack from my leadership. And to really give it a thought on how I can improve. I will owe it to the people that I lead to hear and make myself better.
However it is not enough to make myself better. A team will be at their best when everybody at the team is at their best. Just like a saying, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. So part of being responsible and care also mean to care and make my team better. Help them to be the best version of their self.
But to help them be the best is not easy. Sometimes to be the best you have to go through so much hardness and pain. Like forging an iron to become a blade, but I think that is one of the burden of leadership. To facilitate training and making your team better by pushing them out of their comfort zone.
It is going to be a hard and difficult process but at the end they will be sharp, and become the best version of them self. Similar to katana that has gone through hard and difficult process of forging becomes the best it what it do. For me being responsible to my team also means to push them to be the best.
I believe being responsible as a leader also mean to do good. Doing good can mean a lot of thing, you can do good for the company making a lot of money or profit. Which is one of the main point of being a leader in a company. But money is not everything. I believe that doing good is not just about bottom line.
Doing good for me personally should also mean to build my community and economy around me. Especially since I am coming from a developing country, we still have a lot to build. Being a responsible leader I feel it will be part of my responsibility to also build the country.
Another part of carrying the burden of leadership also means to lead with care. And one of the most important part of caring is to build connection with your team. Connection also allows me to lead effectively. Connection is build by creating a feeling of openness, shared idea and a feeling that I am approachable. A feeling that we are in this together.
Building connection also mean to get to know the people that you lead. Don’t let them be just another faceless face in the crowd. Be genuine and sincerely try and get to know them. Try to understand what drives them, what they care about and by getting to know who you lead will make you care and be more responsible to them.
I also believe that by knowing people and building connection also built empathy into my leadership. Building empathy is important because at the top sometimes people just lost it mostly I think because of complacency, as Dilbert’s boss said here, “You just forgot what it’s like to be one of the little people”.
Leading without empathy for me would be like being a robot. Because robot would only care about objective. I don’t want to lead like a robot, that is why I believe that by building connection and building empathy will make me a better human and not only focus on the objective but also how to get there.
As a leader I also believe that as human I am not perfect and are full of imperfection. It is only natural that as human I am full of imperfection, but as a leader I need to care for my imperfection, to admit it and continuously try to learn to improve it. Not only for the sake of myself but also for the sake of my team.
Sometimes when I think about it, being a leader is a lonely responsibility, especially with all of those burden, all those worlds to carry. But by leading with responsibility and care I believe that I will be of most use to others. I believe that by taking lead with responsibility and care I can give the most to others.
This all come back to my core values of giving back to others. For me the best human being is the one that can give the most benefit to others. To be able to care and bring good to others is the ultimate satisfaction, it doesn’t come from money or stuff that you buy. This values is true for any position in life, whether you are as a leader or not.
But being a leader amplify all of this. Being a leader give a super power to care and bring good to others. By being a leader that recognizes the burden of leadership with responsibility and care I hope to care and bring good to as many as possible.
Realizing that being a leader is about responsibility and care. And the burden of carrying many worlds upon my shoulder, but I got the chance of bringing good to many. The only thing I have in mind is that I ask not for a lighter burden but for a broader shoulders to help me be able to lead with responsibility and care.
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