We all know the difference a Leader can make. We’ve seen it. Someone like Churchill or Kennedy can inspire a whole nation, can change the feel of a country, can alter the ethos of the place.
At lesser levels the change of leadership can radically alter the whole feel of an institution, a company, a team or a school. That’s why we sack managers and bring in new ones. A failing school can be turned around into a successful one (or vice versa), (even though the staff and students remain the same), simply by changing the leader.
Leadership alters lives. A leader can inspire people to develop their better sides or display their worst. A leader can set the tone for people to follow. A leader can fill people with energy, fervor and enthusiasm.
These can be good or they can be bad – they can be very bad.
The only quality a leader has to have is the ability to get people to follow him/her. That is what makes a leader. They have to have that charisma.
The charge of the Light Brigade would not have happened without leadership.
If we look at some of the world’s greatest leaders from the 20th century we can see the immense impact they had:
Ghandi, Hitler, Martin Luther King, Pol Pot, Stalin, Nelson Mandela, Mussolini, Eva Peron, Franco, JF Kennedy, Mao Zse-tung, Osama Bin Laden, Churchill, Kim Jong-un, Indira Ghandi, Pinochet, Thatcher, Blair, Aung San Suu Kyi, Ali Khamenei, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
Even a cursory glance will tell you that many charismatic leaders create the biggest disasters for the people that follow them. For every good one there are two that were complete monsters – people whose racist policies or ideology, whose arrogance and lust for power, whose paranoia and ruthlessness, led to genocide, callous mass torture, war and destruction.
Most leaders are a complete and utter power-mad psychopaths. That’s how they got to the top.
Then we come to Trump.
Who is in a class by himself! He has the lowest approval rating in history for a President. At lease since they started monitoring it.
At least that speaks volumes for the American public. They recognise that they have made a huge mistake. The man is an uncouth narcissist. He stinks.
It’s not just a problem with the american public, it’s absolutely a problem in various public and private organisations in the UK too. I know from my experience that the autocratic management style of poor managers is in their own minds seen as leadership 🙂
I’m in a leadership and management role in my company, and reflecting on my own performance and behaviours I fall into the same category. Hopefully not as extreme as Trump, but certainly something I’ve noticed and am trying to change.
I have to complement on you on this article. Don’t know if you wrote this yourself, but it’s certainly thought provokling and that’s never a bad thing.
All the best.
Jay
Thank you Jay. Yes I did write it. As a Headteacher I was very aware of how leadership and management impacts on an establishment, how power can go to a leader’s head, and tried my hardest to unite the staff and students behind a shared vision.
It’s OK, you don’t have to admit to having watched the excellent BBC documentary that was on last week focusing on the Charge of the Light Brigade and the inspiration for this piece in the first place.
The charge of the Light Brigade isn’t actually a particularly good analogy in terms of people management as it was a military exercise which operates to a whole other set of rules not found in civilian life. It was also the last time such a military exercise was carried out in such a fashion as lessons were indeed learned from it.
There are several managerial styles and they exist for different reasons and for different circumstances. Not all suit all circumstances and some are best practiced for situations such as an emergency – where there is no time for debate or team deliberation and feedback.
I would dispute the statement about the only quality a leader has to have etc.
Unless it’s some kind of a sect such as Jonestown.
Charisma is the least of it.
A strong leader requires a multitude of skills.
The only thing a leader has to have is the ability to get people to follow him/her. That requires a number of qualities.
Your belief only works at low level, small scale one-to-one operations, where the leader is in constant direct and visible contact.
Large scale conglomerates operate on a far more complicated level, where charisma is not required nor measured.
Which again answers towards the reasons for the multitudes of management styles that exist.
Your school would have an entirely different focus of management skill sets to the fore than would be required by those running an international conglomerate, because a school fundamentally only does one thing and has very limited boundaries. For example, it is not a source of revenue – other than the canteen.
The complications are minimal.