Valuable traits to multiply leadership across Fiji

TRUST, empathy and mentorship are three valuable leadership traits that positively helps inspire leadership in the multitude of future trailblazers leading corporate organisations and communities across Fiji today.

Maxumise managing director and owner Salote Uluinaceva shared these words when launching the 22nd year of Leadership Fiji’s (LF) training and mentoring program at the Holiday Inn in Suva last Thursday.

The former Telecom Fiji GM national sales, product development and marketing communications paid tribute to those values and her learnings from LF that she said put her in good stead to strategically deal with changing technologies during the full deregulation of the telco industry in July 2009.

Trust, she said beckoned leaders to ask if their proteges trusted them and accepted that leaders would undoubtedly stand up for them when faced with insurmountable challenges.

“Only that kind of trust makes people feel empowered, gives them the courage to innovate, take risks, and to push themselves beyond their comfort zones to find success,” Mrs Uluinaceva said.

Empathy challenged leaders’ awareness of their subordinates’ emotions and to treat team members as human beings and not just as workers, she said.

She noted emotional intelligence was widely recognised as a leadership quality, and while “being transparent about your emotions isn’t”, rather she said leaders must “laugh and cry with highs and lows” of their colleagues and subordinates.

Mentorship, she noted was craved even by the best in their fields.

“Would we be where we are today if our first manager didn’t nudge us in the right direction?”

She said mentoring was critical when leaders were confounded about their future and that of their organisation.

She adds preparing and equipping others for leadership through mentoring, exposure and driving organisational change, values and good governance will only multiply leadership across the nation.