[Vnbiz] Leadership -- What are you looking for in your leader?

Sat Jul 21 02:59:19 PDT 2007

Dear anh Hoanh,

People can workship death body of leader. They may tell his successful stories as the prayers for their future. But they cannot ask the death body to serve them again.

Talking about leadership is to talk about how to be leader and how to choose leader. Perhaps there are some more various goals but please focus on the 2 issues. 

I suppose that we should remove the label that being leader is respectful social position. Now we can ask him who serves who, who leads who and who obeys who. 

Leading is a process. The process can help people to solve current problems then generate future problems. First we should aware what's wrong. There are thousands of social problems and thousands of solutions. Thus, there are thousands of leaders for thousands of groups of people. The number of group is the number of styles of leading. 

In the world today, people love to do bargaining. They give what they need to their leader candidates. Who serves who? Who leads who? and Who follows who? Then leader candidates and his disciplines find out the answers of those questions before they start the projects. Leaders should serve the will of disciplines. Disciplines must pay for his services. The 2 parts set up collaboration agreements. They need third persons to monitor the agreements. 

>From the above scenery, we can categorize leadership styles as:

-Natural leadership: in our traditional family, our parents are natural leaders. We have no choice for this type of leader at least when we are young.

Imposed leadership: prisoners have no right to select their director of prison. The same case is Vietnamese elections.

voting leaders: people can select and can vote to whom they like

Employing leaders: 

Indeed, I don't care much about the personality and characteristic of my leader. In joking way, people love to say that if they could they should employ their national president instead of voting. I love to employ my politic president, hire my political party and etc. It can be the best realistic way to choose national political system. There is no ruling class and no ruled class. People interact each other by commercial relationship. 

In my imagination, I can see that leading skills is one of living skills. Everybody can be leader in specific relationship of their life. You may be natural leader of your group or imposed leader of your class and so on. Children will study leadership training in teen age or younger.  Then no one need to repeat my mistakes of participant in 4 leadership training workshop.

best regards,
Tran Ba Thien
tranbathien at gmail.com
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tran Dinh Hoanh 
  To: vnbiz at vietlinks.net 
  Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 12:49 AM
  Subject: Re: [Vnbiz] Leadership -- What are you looking for in your leader?

  [ Vietnam Business Forum ]

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  Dear CACC,

  Looks like we have got all the volunteers for short list.  So let me try to go over everything from everyone so far to construct a short list.

  A.  First, let start with the most simple common-sense definition of "leader."  Leader is (1) the person who leads (2) a group of people (3) to a destination.

  So leadership involves you, your people and the goal.  

  1.  The goal is what we call "vision," some destination in the future to arrive, some purpose to achieve.   "Vision" always implies with it "the method to achieve the vision" (because without a method get to the vision, the vision is only a daydream).   So the first obvious element of leadership is the "vision and the way to achieve the vision."  Brother Thien mentioned this point abut goal (vision) in his message.   

  Because "vision" always implies "the way to achieve vision," most people just use one word "vision" to indicate both. 

  Please note: "The way to achieve vision" is usually very general. Say, Ho Chi Minh's vision is "Freedom, Independence and Happiness," which during his life time meant "independence from the French."  His "way" is that the entire people would fight the French, never stopping, never quitting, until we win.   This "way" is very general. It is not as detailed and concrete as the strategies and tactics used daily during the war, which are of a technical nature and are done by his lieutenants. 

  2.   Now you and your people.  As a matter of common sense, people follow you because they believe in you and your vision.  

  They believe in your vision because, after listening to what you say and your vision, they agree with your vision and like your vision.  

  They believe in you because (1) they believe that you are capable of leading them to your vision.  This is "competence" (or a more general term "wisdom", or a some more narrow terms-- "Intelligence," "knowledge").  In other words, They believe that "you know what you are doing." 

  People also believe in you because they believe that you are honest, that what you say about your vision and your way is your honest words, that what you say about you is your honest words, and that they can trust your words. So, "honesty" is another core element.  Honesty can also be replaced by other terms, such as integrity, trustworthiness, reliable, dependable, etc. 

  So, from the point of view of your followers, your leadership has 3 core elements:

  1.  Your vision (and they way to the vision)
  2.  Your competence (you know what you doing--also known as intelligence, knowledge, wisdom)
  3.  Your honesty (also known as integrity, trustworthiness, reliable, dependable)

  B.  The above is a look at leadership from the follower's point of view.  Now let's look at leadership from the leader's point of view.

  1.  First, of course, you, as a leader, has to have a vision (and the way to achieve vision).

  But, how to have a vision that your people really love?  The answer, you have to understand your people's heart and mind so well that you can design a vision that satisfies their heart's yearning. 

  2.  But how do you understand your people's hearts and minds so well?   Having a PhD in psychology?  Having a crystal ball?  The only answer I know is that you have to truly love your people.  I don't know of any other way to understand someone other than you have to really loves them.  You may be a good communicator or good analyst, but if you don't really love someone, the most you can do is to understand a very small facet of her, not the whole of her.  You cannot understand someone so well and so deep without really loving him/her. 

  (Note:  Many parents may say that they love their children so much that they force all they children to be doctors and lawyers to be better in life.  Sorry, that is not loving your children.  That is "loving your future image of your children" or "loving your own self, loving to be a parent of a bunch of doctors and lawyers." That is not loving your children.  Same thing with government that runs after its own idea of how its people should be, instead of truly understanding and loving the real people who walk the streets, who have real feelings and real struggles). 

  Once you really love your people, you should be able to understand them well enough to come up with a vision that fits their yearning.

  So, from the leader's point of view, the second core element is "love your people"(also known as compassion, grace, caring, social responsibility, etc.)

  From a true love for your people, you will be able to love properly, like, as anh Shane said, loving everyone of your people equally, loving the entirety of "your people" and protecting it against the destruction by a bad portion of your people, only asking your people to do what you would do yourself, fair in reward and punishment, etc.  All these forms of loving measures flow naturally from true love. 

  3.  And if you really love your people, you will become competent in leading your people.  Say, if you really love your daughter and she is really sick, and although you are not a doctor, you would be able to do your own research to understand a lot about the disease and about available doctors and hospitals out there, to find the best, the most competent treatment for her.  Competetence is a matter of learning and if you really love someone you will know how to learn and to get the professional help to do the best job for them.  

  (If you know that you, even with professional technical help, are not competent to be the leader, and if you truly love your people, then you wouldn't take the leadership position anyway).

  Thus, from the leadership's point of view, competence is a necessity, but a necessity that would flow naturally from true love.  We don't really need to mention competence separately. 

  4.  About honesty, I would also that honesty is the most natural thing that flows from true love.  When you love someone, you would be honest with him/her.

  So, from the leadership's point of view, leadership has 2 core elements: 

  First, a vision (and the way to the vision)
  Second, Compassion for your people.

  If we put the two points of view together in a list and do not distinguish follower's view or leader's view, we have a list with 4 core elements of leadership: 

  1.  Vision 
  2.  Compassion (love, care, understanding, grace)
  3.  Comptence (wisdom, knowledge, intelligence, effectiveness)
  4.  Honesty (integrity, trustworthiness, reliability, dependability)

  Please feel free to chip in.  

  In the next message I will go over one important point in anh Shane's list:  Protecting the entirely of your people (by sacrificing a small portion of it, when necessary).  This is probably what brother Hien calls "toughness" and other folks call "Making the hard decision." 

  Have a great weekend, everyone!

  Hoanh

  On 7/19/07, Hien Nguyen <hnguyen97 at gmail.com> wrote:
    [ Vietnam Business Forum ]

    Dear CACE,

    It's entertaining to see how social theories can be condensed into one or two sentences. Thanks anh Hoanh.

    I'd like to volunteer three core elements; but before I list them out, I explain the way to build up the concepts. 

    From a mathematical perspective,  three "core" elements should be distinctive, and complement others to make other elements, namely three vectors. If we rotate all three vectors by few degrees, they will be another three "core" elements. 

    I select: 

    LOVE
    WISDOM
    and TOUGHNESS 

    as core elements.

    Have a great day,
    Hien
    -- 
    Tran Dinh Hoanh, LLB, JD
    Washington DC 

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