What is Leadership?

Leadership is generally viewed as the ability to exercise influence over group members to help the organisation achieve its goals. The power to exercise influence is derived from several sources. The leader may have command power and is able to reward and punish; or he may be a charismatic leader who is able to win respect and followers because of his knowledge or inspiring vision.

There are many traits that a leader must possess e.g. intelligence, knowledge, integrity and honesty. As someone who is more relationship oriented (according to Fiedler's Contingency Theory of Leadership), I would like to share some other attributes I believe a leader must possess.

A real leader must be one who will not forsake his followers in times of crisis or when something goes wrong. A leader must be one where those under him are able to trust that he will take care of their needs and interests at all times. Hence, a leader or a manager must be brave to speak up for a deserving subordinate even if doing so may be against the expectations of others.

A leader must also have faith in his subordinates that they will perform each task to the best of their abilities. Of course, this faith should be supported by actual performance outputs. This requires the leader to know each and every one of his subordinates well enough, not just as a worker but as a unique individual. Hence, the leader must show genuine and sincere interest in wanting to know his subordinates well and also enabling others to know him too. Leaders who believe that in maintaining a distance from their subordinates will only have influence as long as he or she continues to have power to punish or reward.

A leader must have empathy. He must be willing to listen patiently when his or her subordinates raise problems and concerns about work-related issues. He must not be quick to jump in with his own views or be quick to judge and dismiss the concerns raised as excuses to do less or to remain within their comfort zone. A leader should also show interest to know any personal problem that his subordinate is facing that could affect his/her work performance and to make temporary adjustments, where possible, to help the subordinate cope. This brings back the earlier point where a leader must know each and every one of his employee well enough to know when they are not giving excuses to loaf or when their outputs reflect that they are not their usual self.

Last but not least, a leader must be willing to admit mistakes and share the burden of failure with his subordinates. For example, if a proposal is not approved or had received some negative comments from senior management, a real leader would not blame his subordinates for being careless and sloppy in overlooking key issues. Instead, he would admit that he had also contributed to the failure by similarly overlooking these issues. Without fault-finding, he would sit down and analyse the matter with his subordinates to identify the mistakes and how to proceed. By doing so, a leader makes himself a part of the team to collectively shoulder responsibilities rather than distancing himself from the team when something goes wrong.

How can I improve?

I shall focus on the point about leaders needing to be empathetic and listen effectively.

Although one of my key strengths is Empathy (according to my Strengthsfinder assessment), I need to practise harder to be an effective listener. 

Even though I am always willing and ready to lend a listening ear, I need to learn to be more patient when listening and avoid jumping in too quickly with my own views of the problem shared or suggest how the problem can be solved thinking that this is what they hope to hear. But this may not be true as sometimes, people just want to be listened to and they are not asking for solutions. They want empathy to certain unhappy or sticky situations they are in. Or they may have solutions in mind which they will bring up if they are allowed to finish what they want to say. By jumping in with my point of view and suggestions, it may put them off that I am quick to judge or lacking trust that they are capable to come up with solutions to the problems they face.

Given the importance of listening (not just listening superficially but rather with insight and awareness) and showing empathy, this is one of the areas of leadership (amongst many others) that I must seek to improve. This will certainly benefit me in becoming a better listener, one where people will trust that I am sincere in hearing their problems and not being judgemental. It also avoids perceptions of hypocrisy, enabling me to build meaningful relationships with my subordinates whilst earning their respect as a leader whom they can trust to take care of their needs and interests at all times.

I shall end with the following quotes and a short video which captures what I have said above. 

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” ― Winston S. Churchill

Quotes from Confucius:

“The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others, and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does.”

“If you can practise these five things with all the people, you can be called jen (means humanity and a deep empathy for others):

• If you are courteous, you will not be disrespected;
• If you are generous, you will gain everything.
• If you are honest, people will rely on you.
• If you are persistent you will get results.
• If you are kind, you can employ people.”

"If there were one word that could act as a standard of conduct for one's entire life, perhaps it would be 'thoughtfulness.”

Video links:

Empathy Practice (do this)

Bad listener (don't do this)

What effective listening means:

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