ORD Commemorative Post II: On Leadership

A personal reflection

I. Drawing on experience:
Of being a half-cooked club president circa 2006-2007, and
Of being a follower of orders, joining ranks with those of like caste to sneer at whoever's up above-

Maybe leadership comes naturally to some of us, those who would be called born leaders. Whether or not such an attribute God actually gives to people in the crib, I belong to the other group, who lands into leadership like a soldier in Brunei lands face-first into swamp mud.

Suffice to say that what I said did not automatically get done, and that people tend to fall sick more often than is plausible. It gave me migraine and smashed my handphones.

In the two years that followed I found myself in a better position to see where I had failed before.

1. As my naïveté flaked off I observed that absenteeism is in fact a diverse and complex phenomena; As much as there are genuine cases of sickness, there are people sick from the reversed placebo effect (i.e. their minds are sick), people who lie outright, and people who would gnaw their own leg off in order to skip training.

2. People require a cause to work towards. In other words, doing work requires knowing what one is doing, no matter how painstaking or trivial. People will not do work if you insult their mothers.

3. Leaders do not do work by themselves as part of their job; they delegate jobs for other people and make sure that they do it. Unfair as it may sound to the corporal, it is important that leaders keep themselves composed and refrain from insulting people's mothers.

Drawing from anecdotes:
From Lieutenant General H.B. Kala of the Indian Army, in the book Demystifying Military Leadership (2003)
From historical commentator Yi Zhongtian concerning Liu Bang (256-195 BC) and leaders of the Three Kingdoms period (AD 220-280)

1. Kala's take at military leadership (my summary): acts effectively through means of persuasion and motivation. Knows the rules but is not limited by rules. Has moral courage to hard-press subordinates or contradict superiors when need be. As is described in the stories of Ming dynasty emperors (明朝那些事儿), the good ones who take care of their people tend to be bastards to all those around them.

2. Bastardry is not a necessary prerequisite to being a good Emperor! (e.g. Emperor Hongxi of Ming)

3. The basis of good leadership is, simply put, putting the right people in the right places, and trustng them completely. (In Yi Zhongtian's account concerning Liu Bang, his success in building the Han Dynasty lay largely on his subjects Xiao He, Zhang Liang and Han Xing and not on himself i.e. he never commanded any decisive victory, instated any policies, etc.)

Ok that's all. Alas, I didn't make anything less messy.