Who is a Leader? Written by KEMKA S. IBEJI
Sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish between leader and leadership. Just like a certain school of jurisprudence could define justice as "what the lawyers do in the court", one could simply say that leadership is what leaders do. While I disagree with the definition of justice in that way and manner, I will agree with the same kind of definition for leadership. My ground for this rejection and acceptance is because whereas there cannot be good or bad justice but justice, there is good leadership and there is bad leadership. For this reason, we can without fault assert that leadership is what leaders do.
This simply implies that to gain the meaning of leadership, one should know what and who a leader is. But the leader has no other distinguishing personality than his act which is leadership. This is to say that there is and cannot be a leader without leadership. It therefore means that leadership also defines the leader. Put differently, when we see two men or women, we could called them humans. But when we want to classify them, we can say this is a farmer and this is a priest. This is done by the help of what they do. In this case, for proper knowledge or understanding of someone, what he or she does is very important. So for us to properly situate a leader, his act of leadership must be called in.
So for us to define what and who a leader is, our intellectual pendulum will always swing across lead, leader and leadership.
So who is a leader?
By the word, a leader is someone who leads and in this case he or she leads fellows (humans). This also means that that for there to be a leader, there must be, at least, a follower. But humans do not just wake up and start leading or following their fellows. That means the act of leadership has a process. This has engaged many social and political thinkers for many years. There have however been lots of definitions of leadership as there are theories and theorists leadership.
Among popular attempts at delineating the processes and origin of leadership are the social contract theories popularized by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. These theorists presented the intellectual community with somewhat allegories of how the society grew from lawlessness and disorganization to a state of organization and government. Through their theories, we could appreciate how leaders and leadership emerged. One will however be logical to argue that their deposits were on government and not leadership as leadership would have been in place before government. But here, we will have government and leadership as one and the same thing. This is so as there is or was organized and unorganized government as well as leadership.
So in theories, it was obvious that a people decided to give out their rights and privileges to someone or group of people to organize, run and administer. This is just like someone who has eyes to give out his eyes to someone else and agree to abide by what his beneficiary tells him. This is also like someone who has the power of speech to give away such endowment to someone else and submit to all that the receiver of his or her power of speech will speak for and about him or her. This amounts to a huge and unimaginable form of trust from the giver.
A leader therefore should have and enjoy the gift of mandate and trust from the people who submit themselves to his leadership and so follow his dictates as theirs. They must be at will, free not coerced to give out their inalienable rights and privileges to this leader. This freewill in their giving out and bestowing upon the leader with/of the properties of their primordial acquisitions and acquaintances is the cradle of legitimacy.
However, the people enjoy and retain their inviolability in such charitable, lawful, human and social act of gifting out their rights and privileges in the inherent guarantees of withdrawal at will. This stipulates that as freely as the people give their will to the leader, so are they to withdraw same in the case they think otherwise.
In the above scenario, a leader becomes and is the eye, mouth, image, position, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, decision, gait, strength, status, stature, poise, will, power, participation and action of the people. When the leader fails, the people or community have failed and when the leader succeeds, the community have also succeeded.
The noble implication is that there is no leader without a follower or followers. This is the scale upon which every leader and leadership should and must be weighed. As a leader, we're you freely given the mandate of the people, do they trust you, do you have their followership, are you their eye, mouth, image, and the likes?
If and when weighed on the above prescribed scale of leadership and you are found wanting, then do a self reassessment as the admonitions of the Greek Philosopher Socrates state; "Man know thyself" and "an unexamined life is not worth living".
I am,
KEMKA S. IBEJI
This simply implies that to gain the meaning of leadership, one should know what and who a leader is. But the leader has no other distinguishing personality than his act which is leadership. This is to say that there is and cannot be a leader without leadership. It therefore means that leadership also defines the leader. Put differently, when we see two men or women, we could called them humans. But when we want to classify them, we can say this is a farmer and this is a priest. This is done by the help of what they do. In this case, for proper knowledge or understanding of someone, what he or she does is very important. So for us to properly situate a leader, his act of leadership must be called in.
So for us to define what and who a leader is, our intellectual pendulum will always swing across lead, leader and leadership.
So who is a leader?
By the word, a leader is someone who leads and in this case he or she leads fellows (humans). This also means that that for there to be a leader, there must be, at least, a follower. But humans do not just wake up and start leading or following their fellows. That means the act of leadership has a process. This has engaged many social and political thinkers for many years. There have however been lots of definitions of leadership as there are theories and theorists leadership.
Among popular attempts at delineating the processes and origin of leadership are the social contract theories popularized by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. These theorists presented the intellectual community with somewhat allegories of how the society grew from lawlessness and disorganization to a state of organization and government. Through their theories, we could appreciate how leaders and leadership emerged. One will however be logical to argue that their deposits were on government and not leadership as leadership would have been in place before government. But here, we will have government and leadership as one and the same thing. This is so as there is or was organized and unorganized government as well as leadership.
So in theories, it was obvious that a people decided to give out their rights and privileges to someone or group of people to organize, run and administer. This is just like someone who has eyes to give out his eyes to someone else and agree to abide by what his beneficiary tells him. This is also like someone who has the power of speech to give away such endowment to someone else and submit to all that the receiver of his or her power of speech will speak for and about him or her. This amounts to a huge and unimaginable form of trust from the giver.
A leader therefore should have and enjoy the gift of mandate and trust from the people who submit themselves to his leadership and so follow his dictates as theirs. They must be at will, free not coerced to give out their inalienable rights and privileges to this leader. This freewill in their giving out and bestowing upon the leader with/of the properties of their primordial acquisitions and acquaintances is the cradle of legitimacy.
However, the people enjoy and retain their inviolability in such charitable, lawful, human and social act of gifting out their rights and privileges in the inherent guarantees of withdrawal at will. This stipulates that as freely as the people give their will to the leader, so are they to withdraw same in the case they think otherwise.
In the above scenario, a leader becomes and is the eye, mouth, image, position, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, decision, gait, strength, status, stature, poise, will, power, participation and action of the people. When the leader fails, the people or community have failed and when the leader succeeds, the community have also succeeded.
The noble implication is that there is no leader without a follower or followers. This is the scale upon which every leader and leadership should and must be weighed. As a leader, we're you freely given the mandate of the people, do they trust you, do you have their followership, are you their eye, mouth, image, and the likes?
If and when weighed on the above prescribed scale of leadership and you are found wanting, then do a self reassessment as the admonitions of the Greek Philosopher Socrates state; "Man know thyself" and "an unexamined life is not worth living".
I am,
KEMKA S. IBEJI
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