Leadership

I think I know what leadership is - an ability to influence or guide people, teams, organisations or even countries. It involves understanding people's motivations and using them to achieve a shared goal. Leaders have to recognise skills, talents & experience in others & enable them to use them. Leaders have to have a vision of what they want to achieve & set the direction to reach it. They need to be adaptable, because circumstances change & scupper any well laid plans. Importantly they need to inspire trust & commitment to the goals. That involves actions as well as words or position held.

If I'm correct, then I have to consider whether those criteria fit current & future leaders of countries & important corporations. The people who actually have power to improve or adversely affect our lives. I imagine you know where I'm heading. 

If we consider political leaders then I have to say the picture is bleak. I am completely baffled why anyone would think that Trump fits the description of good leadership, especially of a country as wealthy & influential as the USA. Oddly he does influence people & he understands the motives of the masses. He certainly knows what he wants to achieve, but I would argue it isn't in the best interests of anyone but himself. I certainly can't see how he inspires trust. 

I could go on. Assad, Putin, Kim Jong-il, Mohammed bin Salman, Xi Jinping...There are a lot of very powerful men who do not rule in the best interests of their populations. So we have to consider how they gained such power, because gaining power does involve making people believe that you have the qualities of leadership. They are able to persuade a substantial number of people that it is in their best interests to put them in charge as leaders. So they must have leadership qualities. 

It's simply that they are the wrong types of leadership qualities. They use unethical methods to gain & keep positions of wealth, power & influence. 

The same can be said for the leaders of big multinational corporations. The UK & USA are littered with inquiries into big organisations who have lied & used their positions for gain. The Post Office Horizon inquiry, the Sackler OxyContin fraud are 2 examples. 

So my conclusion is that leadership qualities can be used for good or ill. There must be a huge number of people who use their leadership skills to good effect, to move organisations forward & help people. Unfortunately they are not necessarily the ones we hear about or who get recognition. We hear about the bad ones. 

Even worse, there are obviously bad ones we don't hear about because they haven't been caught yet. The difficulty is that we really don't have effective monitoring & sanctions. The failures of the UN & COP convention on climate change organisations are testament to that.

We really do need to put things right.