What is leadership or who is a leader? The common knowledge about leadership definition is to influence the thoughts and behaviors of other people by motivating and inspiring with the purpose to utilize resources (human & material) so as to build organizations, communities, nations and the globe. The bottom-line is to put people into a service willingly and happily through a leadership talent. Now, it is not difficult to define who is a leader or what is a leader all about. A leader is someone who inspires, motivates and utilizes both human and materials resources wisely or effectively. This very definition carries a wisdom that supersedes the literal definition of leadership. If we think critically and analyze the essence of leadership, it is all about human service-the universal service.
At the surface, the definition of leadership seems a piece of cake to understand and far from complexity. However, it is not easy to serve organization, communities, nations and the world without the wisdom of leadership. The very essence of leadership is service. By service it means that to devote one's life wholeheartedly to the entire humanity without segregation. Leadership is a choice to serve. It has nothing to do with a position, good office or title. Hence, good leaders deliberately choose to serve, not to be served.
Leadership is wide in scope, complex in nature and abundant in service. It is also a universal truth that humanity needs to survive and flourish. Humanity merely flourishes, if it starts to serve itself; otherwise, without service the devil is too big to overcome. Without visionary leaders, tomorrow is too obscure and more uncertain. Humanity needs not managers or administers, but leaders who can reconnect yesterday to today, and today to tomorrow, for service is not one time event. This is meant to say that genuine leaders have the enormous power to connect cultures and histories to the promising future.
Indeed, life is a service. The foundation or th! e root o f life is service. Jesus Christ, the leader of leaders, served humanity to death. He is still the iconic model of leadership for those who want to serve life entirely. He sweated blood and served humanity to death. He served, but He was not served in return. During His time, on the planet, He taught humanity to love and serve itself. Even in His last time, before He departed, He deeply interceded the disciples to go to the world and serve humanity to death. This is the moral and wisdom of leadership that we learn from Jesus. In accordance with this, we had also a number of leaders who sacrificed their lives for service, such as Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln and mother Teresa. These three people had a lot in common. Three of them consumed their lives in serving humanity. Even Nelson Mandela, the living leader, is also one of the best leaders ever Africa produced. If we look back to their histories, we find freedom, love, liberation, prosperity, truth, but to the extreme their histories carry an absolute service to humanity. Truly, humanity is blessed and flourished to freedom through their leadership services. The service is diverse in kind, but universal toward the path of prosperity. Their echoes and traces are still behind them and helping us to enjoy the beauty of life. Hence, their histories are the assets of leadership and by far the figures or model of service.
If leadership is about service, who wants to serve? Apparently, we all want to be served, and don't want to serve humanity. We are ego-centric or selfish spirit. Selfish spirit wants this and that, never gratifies. For someone to be a good leader, the self-concept must be overlooked and become the true him in order to be an instrument of service. Service is an innate, but selfishness is an induced spirit from the outside world.
True leaders are original, unshakable, unified, lived spirit and flow like a river to serve and reconstruct the planet, and also understand the very nature of life as a service rendering to t! he whole humanity irrespective of race, religion, ideology or nationality. Such deeper understanding happens to be because of leadership discovery. Leadership is special, but subtle and complex, because leaders should discover the talents, gifts, abilities and skills within the 'being'. It is true that for someone who has not discovered the inner treasures, has nothing to offer, but a lot to take from others through selfish spirit. If by chance he or she comes to a position to lead a nation, the whole country's treasure will be put into his/her personal account. We can take dictators as an example in this situation. Dictators draw the whole countries' assets into their personal interest and assume little responsibility. Under dictatorship leadership a considerable human resources can easily be exploited, wasted or misused. Dictators are unrealized leaders and threat to human civilization. The failure to discover their inner leadership talents and gifts resulted to a nations' definite backwardness, diseases, illiteracy, tribal conflict, tyranny, sordid poverty and many other problems that are pertaining to human issues. Such dilemma is more visible in countries under dictatorship leadership, particularly in the developing countries.
Dictators and leaders are diametrically opposite. There is no a commonplace between them. It is like the difference between the sky and earth. When one goes up, the other goes down, or vice versa. Leaders are realized talents, whereas dictators are unrealized talents. Leaders produce whereas dictators waste or abuse. Leaders render service whereas dictators take away. Leaders are visionary whereas dictators are shortsighted mind. Leaders aim high whereas dictators aim personal. Leaders are change agents whereas dictators are deteriorate agents. Leaders build whereas dictators destroy. Leaders die for service, whereas dictators die for the self.
It is the same talent that works in both. The same energy builds or destroys, or the same energy makes a leader or a dictator. It ! depends on how it is wisely or foolishly used. The same water can cultivate or destroy vegetations at the same time. Hence, the usage matters a lot more. Leaders discover the talents from within and use them wisely for human service and future generation.
Leaders are not made or born from the outside world. Leaders are born from within. Some leadership authors adhere to the idea that leadership is a learned or acquired. However, if we look back to human history, we find a lot of learned leaders who have committed a colossal errors and tortured humanity to death. Education has nothing to do with genuine leaders, though it is important as a stimulus to cause the leader within everyone to be born. Even intelligence is not an indispensable unless it is tuned up by the spirit of leadership. For instance let's take Adolf Hitler, the butcher of humanity. Hitler's IQ was around 140, but he ended up against human gene. He had the wrong spirit though he was genius and courageous.
True leaders are holy spirited, visionary, born from within, shone from in-out and dedicated to the purpose of human service. The service is universal for common purpose in reference to human prosperity and rebuilding of the planet. Leaders have an infinite potential to serve, create, change, innovate and develop nations to the heights of civilization.
In the 21st century, we don't need administrators or managers, but deadly we need leaders. Nations are over administered or managed, but little change, innovation and development. The absence of leadership resulted to nations' stagnation, tribal conflict, genocide, tyranny and problem of implementations. All the global issues, such as nuclear weapon, economic crisis, epidemic diseases, global warming, ideological conflicts, severe corruption and many others, are also byproduct of poor leadership capacity. The new brand of leadership that points towards service is the solution to all these global issues. The new brand of leadership makes the clear-cut between leadership by consent ! and forc e, and calls for the deeper relationship between leaders and followers, employers and employees. This kind of leadership will help the world to enter into new era of potential realization, and the downfall and disappearance of dictators and kings.
Leadership as a service emanates from within, assumes a considerable responsibility, and characterizes by loyalty, trustworthiness, unwavering courage, definiteness of decisions and plans, cooperation, change, innovation, solid personality, sympathy, sense of justice and the like. It dismisses also the threats of human survival, and is more powerful than any form of leadership, for it helps humanity to prosper, cooperate, function, realize and reach the heights of civilizations.
