A Leader’s Principal Job

Life is a maze, full of twists, turns, junctions, and destinations. Unfortunately, not all of the twists and turns will guarantee the leader’s arrival at the appropriate destination. His job, however, is to get himself and whatever he or she leads to the right destination. This means that most of the time, the leader will be presented with various alternative courses of action and such a leader’s top task is to make a judgment call. How right the judgment or decisions the leader makes will be reflected in the success of whatever the leader leads.

The leader’s number one job is decisional and directional in nature. Share on X

All leaders, therefore, must hone their sense of judgment. This may sound obvious but it needs to be reiterated. The leader’s number one job is decisional and directional in nature. That leader cannot fail, who consistently makes the right decisions. And no leader is likely to succeed in the long run, if they consistently make the wrong calls. Failure, therefore, is the stiff penalty a leader gets for making the wrong choices and success is the leader’s reward for making the right decisions. 

Failure, therefore, is the stiff penalty a leader gets for making the wrong choices and success is the leader's reward for making the right decisions.  Share on X

All judgments or decisions don’t make themselves; they are based upon premises. No decisions taken can exceed the quality of premises considered while they were being taken. The leader is thus supposed to accumulate robust premises upon which the right decisions can be made.

To have sound premises for decision making every leader must have a robust sense of history because life is made up of repetitive cycles and patterns. Share on X

To have sound premises for decision making every leader must have a robust sense of history because life is made up of repetitive cycles and patterns. The exact context the leader may be operating in may be unique, but upon intense scrutiny, the pattern of events or occurrences are hardly unique. This is why an effective leader must be a pattern recognizer. 

To make the right judgment, a leader must be able to fit present circumstances and scenarios into historical patterns of events. Share on X

To make the right judgment, a leader must be able to fit present circumstances and scenarios into historical patterns of events. Unfortunately, if the leader lacks a sense of history, he has no template for addressing present challenges. Laziness on the part of a leader to familiarize himself with the historical patterns of success and failure in his field will doom him to making the wrong calls which will in turn doom whatever they lead to failure. 

The leader's job is also predictive or should I say prophetic in nature. Share on X

The leader’s job is also predictive or should I say prophetic in nature. The more successful a leader’s prediction of the future is, the more successful their present decisions will be. Here is the challenge; how does one predict a future they haven’t lived in yet accurately? Not only must the leader hone their sense of intuition, but the leader must also have feelers that on multiple levels to inform him about imminent trends and changes in his present environment that will most likely shape the future in a certain direction and his decisions are to best align with the future direction he perceives to inevitable. 

To hone one’s predictive powers, all leaders must acknowledge that there is a spiritual, metaphysical cum supra empirical dimension of life to contend with and must intrinsically develop the spiritual side of themselves. One of the key advantages of developing our spiritual sides is that it hones our intuitive capacities for decision making. There are calls that the leader will have to make intuitively, even when this intuition contradicts all the facts on the ground and one has to have honed that side of themselves before the need to use it arises. The best way for our spiritual sides to be honed is to have a fully functional relationship with God. 

One of the key advantages of developing our spiritual sides is that it hones our intuitive capacities for decision making. Share on X

Someone may say all of these are too difficult. You may have noticed that a leader must be able to effectively live in three frames of reference at the same time – the past, present, and future. The answer is yes! Leadership is never an easy task; that’s why authentic leadership is rare. Leadership is hard friends, but it is not impossible.