“Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I'll show you a poorly uniformed leader.” Robert Baden-Powell I think that says it all.
I have no idea who viral-marketed the concept that, in order to rule people, they must be kept ignorant and superstitious. That may have been true at the times of the Roman Empire, because of the vastness of the territories and the subsequent difficulties to keep the status quo.
Nowadays it’s a suicidal policy, with information and knowledge traveling almost at the speed of light, constantly growing and with increasing access to information. Think how easily gossip or false news spread the world, forcing the victims to engage themselves in titanic efforts simply to prove that piece of information to be false, wrong and misleading.
Then, who said leadership has anything to do with ruling and fooling people? We know its etymology implies leading, going first. You really think people have such an innate masochism to be the first to go where they be fooled? If a thing as fooling people exists, it’s not leadership, it’s actually another word ending in –ship: dictatorship. You could fool people a couple of times. After that, it becomes a very dangerous and extreme sport. Abraham Lincoln put it simply: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
I firmly believe leadership, development and information should always walk side by side. Leadership has nothing to do with power; it may involve a certain kind of power, but it comes as a consequence. If people feel you represent them, they would be more than glad to choose you. When a common vision is shared, everyone helps towards success, each one bringing his/her brick. Turning leadership into action is a collective action as much as the leader’s one. In order to make an action succeed, people must be motivated and prepared. Knowledge is a key factor. Not only everyone has to know where in the process lies his/her contributions; making people informed, get them to increase their knowledge and awareness of their skills is one of the most fundamental task a genuine leader has to fulfill. Improve people’s life when sharing a vision is probably the most manifest sign of a genuine leadership headed towards improvement.
Being, as we said, “always directed towards a final point, constantly concentrated and targeted on it”, development is a natural evolution of leadership.
That’s why, as Baden-Powell stated, followers clearly mirror and reflect a leader’s strength, credibility and the substance and foundation of a leadership project. Last but not least, a leader could be great in “having the dream”, but could be less efficient in getting people to follow. That’s why leadership is also a team’s work, and wherever there’s a team there has to be knowledge and information.
Sharing is another key.
