Recognising True Leadership

True leadership is not simply about managing a country’s (business’s, community’s, college’s) resources – economic, environmental and human – and selling them in the global marketplace to the highest bidder. It is about sounding a clear, pure note which inspires every person in that country to greatness of heart, mind and soul. A note which calls them to unashamedly declare themselves tall poppies, committed to visioning a greater purpose for their land and its peoples as a member of the global neighbourhood. Above all, a note which supports the living out of that greater purpose by every citizen, family and community.

Most of us have been conditioned, when we hear the word government or ‘governance’, to think of adversarial politics – a governmental system based on difference, opposition, fault-finding, ‘put-down’, personal insult, exclusion, and notions of ‘in’ and ‘out’. While this governance style has been common to most democracies, and has contributed in no small way to the capacity of nations to develop sound economic bases and the capacity to trade on a fiercely competitive international market, it is apparent that its negative aspects are beginning to take their global toll – in overfished and polluted international waters, rising crime rates, and in the alienation of the ordinary citizen from governance, with all the accompanying feelings of impotence, frustration and apathy.

We have also become used to short-term governmental solutions, ‘fire fighting’, ‘patch-up politics’ and vote-catching policies, coupled with inadequately considered, and sometimes blatantly irresponsible, spending of public monies. We are used to thinking of politicians as evasive ‘yes’ people toeing the party line, often unwilling to be held accountable for decisions taken. In this regard, Californian politician John Vasconcellos once commented:

“Government is us – and it is as we choose it to be. We elect leaders who are close to where we are in terms of vision. We need to see to it that our institutions, including government, become peopled by those who share our struggle, our vision about this human transformation.” If we are to do that we have, firstly, to ourselves be people of vision.