Leadership 8

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away... er... at least a long time ago, not so far away, in this blog actually, we were writing about Leadership.

The closing entry, before we launched into a discussion on Management, asked you to submit your stories on Leadership.

I asked you to let me know by Comment on this blog the answer to “Who do you perceive as a leader and why?”.

Luke Schubert of Adelaide, Southern Australia commented with his examples of great leadership. I have chosen his entry to post now, after a summer hiatus from this blog, to get back to the Leadership question, and start with some popular examples of what people consider Leadership.

Luke's reply was also the most significant one received. I can say that with total assurance because it was the ONLY one. :) That is an indication that:

• Leadership is an uncertain, undefinable thing, or
• good, lasting, examples are hard to find, or
• many are not brave enough to voice an opinion, or
• there are very few who follow this blog!

Here are Luke's comments from last February:

“One of my favourite leaders is Vaclav Havel, poet, dissident and then president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. Some quotes:

"We introduced a new model of behavior: don't get involved in diffuse general ideological polemics with the center, to whom numerous concrete causes are always being sacrificed; fight "only" for those concrete causes, and be prepared to fight for them unswervingly, to the end. In other words, don't get mixed up in backroom wheeling and dealing, but play an open game." - from Disturbing the Peace

"Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." - Letter to the downthrown Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek (August 1969)

(both sourced from Wikiquote http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel)”

Luke continued with thoughts on charities, probably in reaction to my appeal to help support the leadership actions taken by the Deep Griha Society in India. (www.deepgriha.org)

“Two of my favourite charities are Kiva (one of the founders, Matt Flannery, is a software developer who's created a P2P lending charity with explosive growth) and AcumenFund (led by Jacqueline Novogratz) which has been investing in building developments in Pakistan, amongst other things. And then there's Forge (www.forgenow.org) which was much discussed on blogs recently after its founder went public with just how much financial trouble it was in ...”

Thank you, Luke for your response!

The great thing about blogs is that it is never too late to

• find new and interesting ones,
• backtrack through old entries,
• add comments and thoughts.

Accordingly, if you have some examples of Leadership, some thoughts, or questions about previous blogs posted here, please submit them - night or day.

Thanks!