When we were younger, most of us wanted to be leaders.
Our tiny heads contained very little wisdom then so we thought leading is way better than following.
We thought that the leader is the only one who has a say so whatever he/she says, everyone must follow. And it’s always good to be followed, right?
By the time we reached High School we were taught that to lead is to serve, so our notion of leading changed somehow. Add to that what Uncle Ben in that Spiderman movie also taught us, “with great power comes great responsibility”.
Various team buildings for the many clubs and organizations we may have joined while we were growing up also taught us almost the same things. Just how many times have we heard someone say “To be a great leader, one must first become a good follower”? But despite all those team buildings and highly romanticized sayings about leadership, people still fail at leading, just as they often fail in following.
From the government to our respective workplaces, and even perhaps down to our churches and households, we don’t get a lot of good leaders and I don’t think Marvel Enterprises or Hollywood should be blamed for the lack of new inspiring movie quotes which resulted to a shortage in good leaders.
In the government, it is a safe assumption that we lack good leaders because those who have the potential to become great and moral leaders often don’t have the budget for a strong campaign.
Elsewhere, we lack good leaders simply because we have not put enough emphasis on the one quality every leader must possess: Accountability.
We have glamorized leading too much. Quite a number of films have even painted leaders us yelling, dominating, sarcastic, caffeinating bozos whose sole purpose in life is to get things done and be number one.
But Accountability, that’s a less talked about quality that’s already reduced to a certain insignificance nowadays.
You see, a good leader is accountable for every follower or member of the group.
A good leader criticizes but his/her criticisms are constructive not destructive. His goal is to teach and not to break, to correct in private and not to publicly deflect blame from himself. A good leader takes blame, and shares credit, or not care about the credits at all.
These days I am more of a follower than a leader. I choose to be because leading requires so much, but there are instances (and rare those are!) when I am pushed to take a lead in certain situations. And when things go wrong, when organizations or projects start to fall apart, I always remind myself what Master Chief John Urgayle from G.I. Jane said, “Remember, there are no bad crews, only bad leaders.”/WDJ