Tag: bloganuary-2024-19

  • Good leadership

    What makes a good leader?

    Leadership has been defined mostly as the ability to influence an individual, group of people into certain behavior, action and thoughts in order to follow a certain direction towards achieving a certain goal. When we are considering leadership, we have the tendency to think about it in terms of heading organizations. But leadership can happen without an office or holding of popular positions. Leadership can involve influencing members of your family or even a group of friends or hangouts. Leadership can happen consciously or unconsciously.

    Elements of leadership

    Leadership has happened without even us noticing we are being lead or we are leading. If you have ever happened to influence anyone to take certain direction in life, regardless of your position in life, you are a leader in your own right.

    Leadership may involves the following terms

    • Mentorship
    • Motivating
    • Guiding
    • Educating
    • Encouraging
    • Supporting
    • Directing
    • Influencing
    • Showing how to do something etc

    We have both bad and good leaders but all of us desires good leaders.

    What should we use to describe somebody as a good leader.

    Qualities of a good leader

    Inspirational

    Good leaders usually stirs something inside us to want to do something worthwhile for others and for ourselves. They may do this because of their excellence that makes us want to be like them. Their character, way of doing things, their words and achievements makes us want to be like them.

    Communication

    Good leaders are able to communicate their thoughts and feelings effectively. Their speeches are usually convincing. Their words not only passes through ears but are conceived in our our hearts. Words of a good leader usually arouses the spirit within us to pursue something. For example, Barrack Obama when he was vying to be the president of the united states America moved the crowd because of his skills in speech and his inspiring words “yes we can”.

    Builds confidence

    A good leader makes people believe in themselves and that they can be able to overcome their challenges. Good leaders are like cheer leaders among the people who wants to give up. Good leaders remains optimistic when pessimism is hovering over everybody else. They see opportunities in hopeless situations. They acts as a beacon of hope when people are staring at hopelessness, for example Wilson Churchill.

    Firm

    Good leaders are not the type that is influenced by opinions. They make decisions based on strong facts and information and will not be prejudiced based on people’s opinion. If you have developed feelings based on what others has said without facts to support the feelings, you are far from being a good leader. Good leaders are not influenced in their decision.

    Sees the bigger picture

    Good leaders will see beyond current situations and see possibilities. They will not make decisions based on personal interests but for the benefit of every stake holder that will be affected by their decision. They will not focus on benefiting themselves through their position but will focus on building long lasting systems that will bring long term benefits to people. A good example of such leader was the third president of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki.

    Source of security

    Good leadership makes everybody feel secure around them. They will not be worried about unfair deals against them because they know the leader is a reliable person.

    Think ahead

    Good leaders are able to create visions and provide their followers with a course to follow. They provide dreams to be pursued and ways to pursue them.

    Listening

    Good leaders are not a know it all. You must recognize that your followers have something to contribute. Offcourse you may be surprised surprised that the people at the bottom pyramid in your company knows better what is good for the company compared to the top executives. After all, they could be closer to the consumer s than the top leadership

    Ever learning

    Good leaders are always finding new knowledge and better methods of accomplishing their goals. You learn from juniors, read books, learn from mistakes and from fellow leaders.

    Compassionate

    Good leaders will be kind to their subjects. Their aim is to offer leadership and sense of direction but not to boss around. Joy and happiness of the subjects matters to them. And compassion and kindness always work to the favor of such a leader.

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  • Career dreams

    There is nothing like a good career

    Many people talks about their dream career and defines their childhood dream as what what they wanted to be when they grow up. Most often, when people talk about their childhood dreams, they are talking about the careers they thought they should be doing when they come of age.

    Those childhood dreams in terms of career does not mean that we were created to do the jobs we think we should be doing. It is the society that created our ideas about what is great or not in terms of occupation.

    Most often, when we talk about dream career, we are talking about what will make us look or feel important and so that could be the main reason everybody want have that high profile job. If you ask children about their career prospects, they will often mention those careers their society holds with high regard like doctor, judge, police, pilot etc. This is because people with those careers are highly respected in society.

    Little did we know that, some of the careers we want so badly have people that are depressed, wish to quit and hate it. Many of them , it was their dream job, but now it is their night mare. We usually imagine happiness and status after attaining a position but soon after few months of excitement we lapses back to our state of dissatisfaction. We are no longer happy with our new job, we become bored with routine, we meet toxic workers, nagging boss or we wish we had time to do things we like and most often, we want to quit. We want to climb the ladder, we take extra courses, we go for masters, we train and work hard so that we can compete effectively with our colleagues for the limited positions in the company we work. When we attain a certain target in our career life, we realize that we want to go further, and we spend our lives chasing this or that so as to remain competitive, involving ourselves with what we call the rat race.

    Most often, it is hard to develop strong bonds with people that we spend most of day with, because we dislike them. We don’t like them because we are competing for the scarce resources that we all need. Our colleagues in office are interested with the same position we are seeking. The competition and scarcity of positions we seek causes conflicts and we hates on each other.

    after settling in our job we soon realize that there are things we love, other than our job, we call them hobbies.

    Some people after developing their dream career to great to heights, finds themselves resigning because they realize that what they had been pursuing all through was not what would satisfy their souls. Soon you realize that, what your parents directed you to believe is great does not satisfy you, then you join a large pool of workers with emptiness in heart that is never filled by what they do, they perpetually seem to be seeking something they feel can only be found outside their work.

    Most of people stay in their jobs because they have bills to pay and children to look after. They are unhappy, thought they earn money. Working is what they do to survive, but they don’t work as a way of living.

    so what would make great career?

    Anything you do and makes you happen without materialistic or external motivation, and that can create value to human kind is a great career. If we remove money in life, so that you no longer need to go to job to pay the bills, if you no longer need to go to work so that you can feed your family, then the job or the kind of thing you will be doing without worrying about economy is the career you should be doing. And that should be the dream career.

    According to psychologists, people are motivated to do something by a number of factors. Behavioral psychologist, Abraham Maslow described the human needs as needs that are in hierarchy. when one need is satisfied, your soon sets itself in seeking fulfillment of another need that in the hierarchy. But i guess, what people lack and rarely get in their career is the aesthetic, self-actualization and the Transcendence needs.

    So people could be loving their jobs but still feel dissatisfied with it because of the working environment that prevents them from seeing the beauty of the world( aesthetic), self-actualization and does not cater for transcendence needs. For this reason, people that are highly paid in their jobs keeps resigning and changing company. Off course, they do so because they have the privileged of having skills and competence that are competitive across organizations. There are people that stays for years in an organization feeling dissatisfied and unhappy but the reason they stay is because they don’t have the means, knowledge or abilities to move. Their dream career when they were entering the industry is no longer their dream career when they are nearing the retirement age. What am trying to say is that, people don’t necessarily enjoy the job they thought they will greatly enjoy when they were searching them.

    career

    Final word

    A great career is not what look prestigious in society or the one that attracts hefty pay. It is what one would do without needing an income. It is what will sustain their happiness and satisfaction for years. It is what will make them remain at peace with themselves and other people for years on end.

    A great career should help you see the beauty of the world apart from earning, It is a career that will make you feel that you have are contributing something worthwhile to the world regardless of its monetary value and status.

    A great career is the one that will make you create and maintain worthwhile relationships with people for all the time, not the one that makes you compete with those that should be your companion for scarce positions and privileges.

    However, great career should help you and your family to lead a comfortable life.

    I don’t need to be a judge or pilot to earn a good living, as long as their is fairness in remuneration and work compensation that can cater for my needs.

    However, because of capitalism, people at the lower level of society are usually exploited, leading to them being dissatisfied with work life. This is because they have less negotiation power and lacks opportunities or means to protect their interests. If there is a fair society that makes people be treated well, because they are human and not because where they come from what they do, then every career is a great career, if does not cause harm to anyone.

    A great career is the one that makes you feel that you are important to mankind regardless of your position in society, It could be as simple as being a tea girl in the office, a sweeper, a janitor, teaching or whatever that attracts very attention, but as long as it is giving you opportunity to see beauty in nature, makes you have good relationship with others and makes you be at peace with spirits, then It is a good career. If your career is not having those things we have discussed, may nature provide you with a dream career:;;


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