The Imperatives of Leadership (Part 2)
Nelson Mandela once opined that it is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line, when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership. On this note we continue and conclude our discourse on the above issue, having started with transactional leadership last week.
Transactional Leadership (Continues)
Transactional leaders are concerned with processes, rather than forward-thinking ideas. These types of leaders focus on contingent reward (also known as contingent positive reinforcement), or contingent penalisation (also known as contingent negative reinforcement). Contingent rewards (such as praise) are given when the set goals are accomplished on-time, ahead of time, or to keep subordinates working at a good pace at different times throughout completion. Contingent punishments (such as suspensions) are given when performance quality or quantity falls below production standards or goals, and tasks are not met at all. Often, contingent punishments are handed down on a management-by-exception basis, in which the exception is something going wrong. Within management-by-exception, there are active and passive routes. Active management-by-exception means that the leader continually looks at each subordinate's performance, and makes changes to the subordinate's work to make corrections throughout the process. Passive management-by-exception leaders wait for issues to come up, before fixing the problems. With transactional leadership being applied to the lower-level needs and being more managerial in style, it is a foundation for transformational leadership which applies to higher-level needs.
Traits of Good Leadership
Leadership, whether transformational or transactional, is the most important ingredient to building a strong prosperous society. We have witnessed countries that have all the cards stacked against them, find ways to buck the odds and overcome the challenges of their situation to become great, thriving and prosperous places because they had great leaders. Veritable examples of countries with excellent leadership are Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and the other Asian Tigers. We have also witnessed countries with endless opportunities squander their assets and potential, because they lacked effective leadership. A perfect example, is Nigeria and Haiti. Nigeria was in the same position with Countries like Taiwan, Singapore, and even the UAE in the sixties. While those counties were able to navigate their way into prosperity as a result of good leadership, Nigeria has regressed as a result of the egocentric and narcissist nature of those who had called themselves our leaders.
The excellent thing with good leadership is that, the places with great leaders tend to create more of them, because leadership is contagious and vice-versa. Great leaders raise the bar of their societies. They bring others into the fold, and create a culture of leadership. This is a good thing, because leadership is to societies as chocolate chips are to cookies: the more the better. Places with strong and widely shared leadership know how to work together and get things done, while places with only a few dedicated leaders see slower progress, and people often burn out.
Leadership itself, goes beyond the rulership of a country. Leadership permeates the precinct of even micro-societies, communities and organisations. For instance, in an organisation, the importance of leadership in the management of an organisation, cannot be overemphasised. To get things done by people, management must supply leadership in the organisation. Managers must influence the team, for work accomplishment through leadership. The ability of the leadership to set a clear vision, means influencing employees to understand and accept the future state of the organisation. A unit of young soldiers, may not believe in a particular mission ordered by their commanding officer. A good leader will influence the soldiers to perform their duties,
by explaining the vision and the importance of their role in the outcome. The soldiers will be more apt to follow.
Motivating subordinates means to find out enough about their needs and wants, giving them what they need, and providing praise for a job well done. Being far from home, is lonely for a young soldier. A good leader knows this, and will communicate with his unit to learn more about their needs and wants. It may be as simple as giving the soldiers a sweet treat for their efforts. When guiding employees, a good organisational leadership defines their role in the work process, and provides them with tools needed to perform, participates in and rewards their efforts (beyond the contractual wages) along the way. A leader does not only supervise, but also plays a guiding role for the subordinates. Guidance here means instructing the subordinates the way they have to perform their work, effectively and efficiently. Leadership creates confidence through expressing the work efforts to the subordinates, explaining to them clearly, their role(s) and giving them guidelines to achieve the goals effectively. It is also important for a good leader to hear the employees, with regard to their complaints and problems.
Good leadership knows that it cannot know everything that needs to be known, and will thus, find ways of expanding knowledge as needed; seeking diverse opinions to inform decision-making. Good leadership always displays good communication and listening skills; puts the society's interest over personal agenda; makes difficult decisions, and makes long-term plans for the benefit of the generality of the society as a whole. Poor leadership, on the other hand, focuses on individual agendas; is single-minded in decision-making; does not consider different ideas or perspectives; cannot take criticism; is not well informed; and does not plan beyond its tenure.
Wither Leadership in Nigeria?
The nature of governance in any given political system, is determined by the quality of leadership in power. Nigeria, a nation endowed with natural and human resources, still battles with crisis of leadership and governance after many years of independence. The socio-economic and political development of any country depends largely on the ability of its leadership to facilitate, entrench and sustain good governance. Importantly, good governance is a manifestation of committed, patriotic and disciplined leadership. Significantly, Nigeria is among the countries of the world endowed with natural and valuable resources, that are capable of improving socio-economic status and living standards of the citizenry. But, the reverse has always been the case. The crop of leaders that have attained leadership position since independence, have in one way or the other, lacked vision; most of them have been engrossed with corruption and political bickering, leading to the enthronement of maladministration and mismanagement of public resources, and consequently, economic setback and abject poverty as the nation’s heritage.
As a matter of fact, going by all the developmental parameters and performance indices, Nigerian leaders have failed; economically, macroeconomic stability, fiscal discipline, economic reforms, due process and relatively low inflation rates that the State could claim to have achieved, sit alongside weak business confidence, low growth, massive unemployment, and rising inequality between the rich and the poor. Nigeria may have the highest GDP in Africa, but ranks low on Human Development indices (HDI), while corruption, which every Government has always promised to eradicate at its inauguration, continues unabated.
Nigeria and the Imperatives of Transformational Leadership
Leadership in Nigeria can be improved, if the leadership of the country embraces transformational leadership values. Transformational leadership has core values of goals, visions, and the means to unite with followers to ensuring that such goals are achieved. It also takes the responsibility of ensuring that people are mobilised to participate in the process of change, and encourages a sense of collective action.
Essentially, transformational leadership strives to make leaders out of the available followers. Such generated leaders are dispersed across sectors of economy, to ensure that the mission and visions of progress created at different centres of power are executed based on the needs of citizens, and that the latter are actively involved in goal implementation. With this, the transformational leader takes people beyond pre-occupation with basic needs and scraping by, as it is today in most parts of the country, and sets the pace for individual and national self-actualisation. As a matter of fact, transformational leaders work independently and courageously to make choices that are best for the country within the international system of economic, political and cultural interaction; lead the citizen to bring back quality and excellence to education, revitalise infrastructural facilities and modernise productive activity in agriculture and industry; insert skilled indigenous professionals and labour centre stage of building national development infrastructure.
Transformational leadership is inward looking, and conscious of the benefits that its society can derive from the international environment. It takes the responsibility of the national or local problem, depending on the layer of leadership; deploys skill, knowledge imagination and energy to solutions to most problems, and assists followers to realise their hidden and untapped capabilities. The transformational leader is always physically present, to monitor projects at sites. He also receives report from subordinates, to ensure that policies and projects are implemented according to designs and specification. This style of leadership relegates corruption to the background, and brings sanity, transparency and accountability to the fore. This is the legacy of transformation, left by transformational leaders in many countries of the World.
Available evidence in the development literature on transformational leaders who have significantly reduced poverty in their respective countries during the past quarter century, does not generate any consistent conclusion regarding the factors that contributed to the successes. The leaders of the success stories in Chile, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, all demonstrated strong commitment to development, with clarity of vision and of goals. Nigeria can, through grooming its present and future leadership on the model of transformational leadership tenets, attain the height attained by these nations.
Conclusion
The challenge of leadership in Nigeria, particularly in the 21st century, has been generating concern among well-meaning citizens of this country. That Nigeria is yet to harness abundant human and material resources in her domain for development for the past 61 years of nationhood, has left much to be desired. As this issue has shown, inept and corrupt leadership affects not only service delivery to the Nigerian people. In view of this, the citizens of this country now need to strike a balance between the personality/qualifications of those who struggle to pilot the affairs of the country, the culture and democratic values of Nigeria as a nation. This is particularly important because, leadership must be able to assist and guide the society to embark on national self-discovery through inspiring and transformational leadership. The citizenry must insist on leaders that understand what it is to be in leadership, and not some opportunistic narcissistic individual or group of individuals who lack altruistic drives.
To this end, leadership becomes of utmost imperative. Where counties without natural resources, but with good leadership have achieved much progress, Nigeria, with enormous natural resources can achieve even much more, where we have excellent leadership. Leadership, whether transformational or transactional, will be highly welcome in Nigeria; it is submitted that transformational leadership, with all its more altruistic characteristics, is the most appropriate for a country like Nigeria and for organisations within the Nigerian context. This is because; a leader who is worth his salt in a clime like Nigeria must be transformational in attitude, in policies and in delivery.
Serious and Trivial “Things are happening in this profession o. I overheard a Lawyer today telling his client that the client is not a juristic person, because the client has no money to pay for his professional services. What does juristic person have to do with appearance fee?
SOMEONE: A client that lacks capacity to pay professional fees, lacks capacity to sue and consequently, not a juristic person biko.” – Anonymous.
“Veritable examples of countries with excellent leadership are Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and the other Asian Tigers. We have also witnessed countries with endless opportunities squander their assets and potential, because they lacked effective leadership. A perfect example, is Nigeria and Haiti”
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality”. (Warren Bennis)