We are living in the age of charismatic leaders these days. Leaders who are larger than life, leaders who have a stature that’s much bigger than their people, whether corporate or social, the scenario is the same. Leaders motivate, leaders make you believe, leaders create followership, and leaders move the masses towards achieving certain goals.
What kind of leadership is required for countries, corporations, society, and institutions is the quintessential question that will never have a single answer. Views will differ, from case to case, country to country, institution to institution, and corporate to corporate. While a leader needs to have clarity of thoughts, focus on goals, firm decision-maker, and should be able to engage diversity driving towards a common goal, does it also lead to the making of an egoist leader?
Ego, while on one hand might help the individual leader to fortify his position, and allow him to take decisive actions, can also on another hand make him take many wrong decisions, which can be simply detrimental to the entity he is leading. Can a leader not be vulnerable to his ego? Is it not possible that the extreme love and respect he gets from his subordinates might just overpower his thinking ability and he ends up making a wrong decision? Haven’t we seen excessive workaholism in many leaders known for working 16-18 hours a day? Does it mean they are setting similar standards for their followers? Or they are creating certain narratives that are probably aimed to create further larger-than-life imagery for themselves?
Often when CEOs and senior management move up in the hierarchy, they tend to lose ground connect, they live more in senior management circles, lesser connected to the lower-level staff, and are possibly unaware of what happening down under. Something that they’d never wish for, but something that can happen without them being aware of too. Any gap and distance from the followers cannot provide appropriate inputs to the leadership, which may then impair their decision-making ability leading to the creation of an unfavourable environment for their followers.
Most leaders are seen as a passionate bunch of people who are strongly driven by their mission and are highly focused on achieving their goals. They are highly self-motivated and extremely attached to the cause that they are associated with, which also brings in some kind of ego, arrogance, and stiffness in their nature, style of working, and ways of approaching things. Most of this works very well in the short-term to push things, get deliverables from team or followers, and other things which are even micro-managed by them. However, in the longer term, it works against the interest of the leaders themselves and they might face failures and setbacks.
Sometimes the followers end up making their leaders celebrities. It’s like worshipping them and accepting whatever they say or do without questioning them, and completely ignoring the objectivity of any situation. While this may please the leader momentarily, in due course might just do more harm. While leaders enjoy a celebrity status of being above all, it might hamper their clarity of thought, vision, commitment, and passion towards the goal they have set in for.
Leaders need to be aware of their responsibilities. Knowing and being aware of the responsibilities has nothing to do with them being achievers or super achievers. CEOS and heads of organisations, institutions, governments, and such entities are far more responsible for the entire entity and not just themselves or their performance.
The impact of the leadership’s communications goes far deeper on their followers or the audience and therefore it needs to be always aligned with the goals of the entity they are heading. Besides, it needs to have a highly responsible being able to take along every stakeholder towards common goals.
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
Praveen has been closely associated with many national and international events related to cinema for children, art and culture. He has a well-rounded experience that cuts across all key sectors of PR & Corporate Communications.
He started his career with URJA Communications, an advertising agency specialising in technology brands, where he was instrumental in developing the PR division. Post this, he had a stint with Horizons Porter Novelli, a global public relations consultancy. Thereafter, he was heading the IT & Telecom division at Clea PR, a leading Indian public relations and communications company followed by a fairly long stint with Omnicom Group agencies viz. TBWA\India and Brodeur India.
Be the first to comment on "Leadership Traits and Communications"