Sunday, August 8, 2010

A skill set called leadership

Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King,  Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandi, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are a few of the world's greatest leaders of all time. Even though I have never been a fan of the Nazi  Leader, German Dictator and Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, he has gone down in history as one of the most powerful leaders. Even though his leadership caused the death of thousands of Jewish people, physically and mentally disabled and ill people, who in Hitler’s eyes were seen as being unworthy of life and a true burden to German nation.

A common skill which all of these individuals possessed was leadership. Leadership has been defined by wikipedia as the "process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task." Nelson Mandela's activities especially whilst he was president of South Africa depicts this definition so well. Before Nelson Mandela came into power the word democracy was not part of the South African dictionary as Apartheid was rife which encouraged discrimination, unfairness, inequality, rascism and SA lacked the real qualities which made the country a nation. Nelson Mandela had the unique ability to lead people, he had a special warmth about himself which made individuals trust him and most importantly he had a vision. When Mandela was in power, a democratic nation started to develop which saw the country thrive. Equality was a main aim which was enforced and too this day is still a main priority.

The truth is, not everyone is a leader, you either have the skill or you don't. Some are born to be natural leaders, others learn the qualities through their self discovering journey of life and impact the lives of others in either a positive or negative way. There are those individuals in life who prefer to lie low, follow the crowd, be told what to do and just enjoy being which is fine. I think we all have a little inner leadership quality, it just depends if you want to fuel it or let it die, its up to you.

A moment we will all remember no matter how young or old we were at the time of Nelson Mandela's Inaugural speech. The start of a democratic nation which today can be seen.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry A- you did exactly what I was bitching about in my post on this comment! Don't hate me!

    ReplyDelete