LEADERSHIP
Healthy Leadership Produces Healthy Followers
By Dr . Kellen Kiambati
A leader ’ s reliability starts with his or her personal success and ends with helping his or her followers achieve personal success . They are expected to conduct themselves like tour guides who have been through the territory terrain earlier and therefore can guide their followers appropriately . They remain connected with their followers so as to reach down and pull them up when there is need to do so .
Poor leaders set themselves above followers largely because of insecurity , pettiness or jealousy . All these issues have made leading organizations effectively a real challenge to many .
Leaders must constantly seek to see they are going somewhere and are able to persuade followers to go with them . Failure to persuade people to go with them , is simply being in a position and not leading . Most important a healthy trust is established when the team knows and is convinced that their leader is fully aware of where he is taking them . To achieve loyalty , leaders should work on building and continuously strengthening trust . Loyalty is earned in form of a reward from followers and not merely sitting down to yearn for it .
Leaders do not progress without making changes . Followers must be willing to change so as to progress towards the predetermined objectives . There is need to have the courage and skills to seize the moment and make necessary changes . What this means is that leaders should cultivate in their followers a willingness to follow them to the unknown based on the promise of great things and banking on their past experience with them . A conducive environment to enable followers make informed decisions to change is very critical and this is possible through inspiring confidence in themselves as opposed to confidence in leaders .
When changes are taking place , managing expectations is also important therefore there is need to bring on board people who are committed to being the very best while eliminating the uncommitted . Those committed to being their very best are empowered and strengthened through delegation and the leader ’ s positive presence to help facilitate the process .
“ A leader ’ s reliability starts with his or her personal success and ends with helping his or her followers achieve personal success . They are expected to conduct themselves like tour guides who have been through the territory terrain earlier and therefore can guide their followers appropriately . ”
Growth and development of followers is the modern day highest calling of any leader . Recruiting good people into the organization is excellent , however , if those people are not intentionally developed , it is a waste of time . Before long , competitors will recruit them and make good use of them . Good leaders enlarge followers , help them in their lives , support them to acquire new relevant skills and not just focusing on making them better transactional workers .
The indices for checking a leader ’ s level of developing people is dependent on their ability to strengthen their commitment , integrity , influence and goal setting standard . Leaders should believe in their people so that in turn they believe in themselves .
The bottom line in leadership is results achieved . They , as leaders and their followers producing compelling results . Some leaders are achievement oriented , self-motivated and are used to delivering work with excellence and when the people they led do not behave and perform as they do , they become very frustrated . At this point , they should introspect and find out what is not working and why it is not working so as to come up with a formula that will help them as leaders as well as their followers .
In conclusion , to measure how a leader is doing , look at their followers . They should compare what their followers say and believe to what they are observing . If there is deviation , clearly it is time for coaching so that everybody succeeds . ■
Kellen Kiambati holds an MBA in Strategic Management from the Kenya Methodist University and a PhD in Business Administration . She is a member of the IHRM Kenya . She can be reached via :
Kellenkiambati @ gmail . com .
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MAL 46 / 22 ISSUE