People might be tempted to draw a correlation between altruism and leadership. While there might be some analogies between the two during the initial stages, effective leadership calls for a reasonable amount of balance between the two. A leader has to put his/her efforts to ensure the welfare of his/her followers within the ambit of his/her goals. Unconditional altruism is disastrous for any leader and so is a cold personality. The time period during a person’s leadership would not be devoid of situations where the followers turn out to be complacent, egoistic or casual. A leader should ensure to iron out such situations considering the goals that he/she seeks to achieve.
An effective leader would have to stand up to difficult situations. While some problems or situations could possibly be solved by the book, abstruse problems would demand utmost skills and talents on the part of the leader. An effective leader would have to adeptly tackle such situations despite the complexities involved such as disagreement between the followers, acrid relationships between the leaders and some followers and lastly pessimism amongst the followers regarding the future outcomes. A leader needs to exercise calmness and continue to work towards his/her goals.
To summarise, leadership is not about dominance. Compulsion would seldom lead to effective leadership. Such leaders are bound to encounter situations that would be unfavourable or even menacing. While slaves such as Spartacus went on to become effective leaders and were successful in raising an army of slaves to fight against the mighty Romans, many of the leaders of the modern generation fail to flourish despite all the comforts and luxuries.
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Written by Amit Sinha, PGPX Class of 2018, IIM Udaipur.
*Published on behalf of Media & Industry Interaction Cell, IIM Udaipur.
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