Leadership Part 2

As promised I’ve got back to you with new ideas about leadership.

In the last years I was involved in a student organization called V.I.P. (Volunteers for Ideas and Projects). Although it has many programs and projects each and every year the greatest of all is a summer school called “21st Century Romania” where the main focus is (in my opinion) building a vision and involving present leaders (politicians, business men, artists, media people etc.) together with future leaders (elite students).

The main problem we had in sharing the ideas developed there was pessimism and reticence. We were characterized as “having our heads in the clouds”, and being “foolishly young” and “we will see when we will face real life and reality”. Everybody we know can bring easily a few arguments about how the things are bad right now and they will get even worse, about how bad is in romania (or your native country) and how stupid or something else are the people that lead us or we work for …etc Although very few of them can say some concrete things that they do to improve this situation.

Anthony Robbins, a great motivational speaker that I sincerely admire says about leaders that they have to:
See the things as they are. Not worse because you will motivationally damage yourself and all the people you connect to. Not better because you have to maintain contact with reality and not get lost in vision.
See the things better than they are (as how can the things get better and how will they look like). It’s nothing more powerful than a vision of greater things. And in the same time you can truly be a great leader by touching other people’s life for the better.
Act. Or as a commercial says “Just DO it! Vision without action is just an empty dream.

I will add that it’s nothing more powerful for the others around you than Personal Example. There is not such a thing as stagnation be it on a economical (or social or …) level, or at a personal level. You either can go up or you can start to rot.

Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see around you!’. Besides being the only way to become a leader, acting upon your beliefs and more – following passionately a vision, gives one’s life a greater meaning.

So go out, leave pessimism in nearest trench, and work hard towards a better Romania, better Europe, better World … and in the end … to a greater SELF.

Leadership Part 1

Recently I went to a master course about organizational behavior. Over all the main focus of the course was surprisingly or not …Leadership.

We found out that a “leader” must be a European Christian (sharing European and Christian values, beliefs, attitudes etc.) and with a unique quality – putting others interests above his interests. But we found out later, that this is not really as much important as putting organization’s interests above all interests.

As a cartoon character would say: “So cute! …. But is WRONG!”. I really liked the se lecturers because they were pretty well intentioned and very convinced of their beliefs, but not necessarily in an aggressive or arrogant way.

In my opinion, Leadership is about VISION. Committing so strong to a vision and transmitting such a powerful image about it, that others get involved and put their efforts toward achieving it.

Although we can argue about good or bad leaders, without being necessarily right in our conclusions, we cannot talk about good or bad leadership. You cannot judge leadership as being true or not, and the only true measure of it stays in its followers (number and intensity of involvement) and in the change that it brings in the community or the world.

We can find leadership all over the world, and leaders from all the religions and beliefs …and in fact there is leadership inside every of us … but about that in a future article.

Simply Me.