The Politics of Leadership

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Emotional intelligence (EI) is one of the top leadership qualities needed for growing positive influence. As scholar and leadership expert Dr. Robert K. Cooper explains, “Emotional intelligence is the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, connection, and influence.”

Here I will borrow an old idea well expressed by Karl Deutsch (1980, 134-38) in the notion that the boundaries of a political system can be identified in terms of frequencies of transaction. A social group, and its attendant internal political process) can be identified in terms of the relative frequency of transactions as among one set of actors and another set identified by the same means. Thus, membership in a group is enacted by the behavior of a set of actors in terms of each other. In this way, the effective boundary of a group might be established by comparing the distributions of frequencies of transaction among individuals or, potentially, among sets of groups since small groups are subsystems of larger social systems. Nevertheless, it may be that the appropriate place to begin leadership study is at the level of small groups wherein the frequency of transactions is sufficiently high to provide a discernible boundary and the pattern of those interactions reveal a leadership process.What we digitally consume on our cell phones (or through other screens), both in quantity and quality, affects us mentally and emotionally. Given the addictive nature of digital platforms, we are very exposed to consuming a poor-quality digital diet, investing hours of the day on them. Usage of leadership concepts which derives from the leadership desired, or the results desired, rather than from a common generic function betray a misleading normative bias. To say that leadership is manifested in a political environment may avail us of little if we then become enmired in locating the criteria for “good” leadership and “good” politics! The approach to this sort of dilemma may best begin with an acceptance of the objective coexistence of leadership and politics and work from there toward a conception that is less value-bound. The following are nine dimensions that should be included in a political leader’s toolbox. Not intended to be exhaustive academic research on each topic, the objectives of this section are: (1) that it serves as a foundation on which to build a syllabus, whose objective is to create awareness and provide concrete tools that can become habits; (2) that it provides a self-examination reference tool for those in a leadership role to use; and (3) that it becomes the basis of a permanent initiative, thinking about the design of support teams that can support the leaders at each stage of their career. Therefore, it is an issue of efficiency, which leads us to think that politicians should be trained and supported in a different way. It does not make sense to think that we can have good results in our societies without it. It is like thinking that we will win a soccer world cup or a gold medal in the Olympic games without all the preparation and the coaching and training of these athletes.

In general, the formation of a politician is rational, and he tends to omit his personhood as his career progresses. Continuous Procedure: Leadership is a continuous process. A leader must constantly oversee and supervise their team members to ensure that everyone is working toward the same goals and not deviating from them. While there has been a near universal avoidance of the notion that the key to the leadership phenomenon is its fundamental political nature, the problem has been compounded by the failure of most analysts successfully to distinguish “leadership as process” from “leadership as property.” As the presumed property of those possessed of status, rank, or position, leadership is reduced to a subordinate aspect of preexisting social structures. Hence, overwhelmingly, research on leadership is conducted on the presumption that leadership is a property associated with formal position within formal organization.

Course overview

Leadership emerges from relationships but it is insufficient to say that leaders emerge from group interaction alone. There must be a pattern as well as a frequency to that interaction, but neither tells us anything about the content of the interaction. The pattern should be triggered by the primary political process in which the functions of conflict processing and resolution are performed. The intensity of interaction–a function of time and frequency taken together–may reveal even more. Small groups which have a stable leadership structure may be able to resolve conflict more efficiently than those with unstable structures which must spend time searching for leadership in the conflict resolution process (see Verba 1961, 159). What I learned confirmed that there was something worth exploring further. I began to work more systematically to understand the personal and human dimensions of leadership. I was finding valuable people and tools that could be useful for other leaders who would face challenges like those I had faced. And I saw that there was a different perspective of the world of leadership to explore—different from the more rational one in which I had been trained, first as a graduate student in political science, then as a politician. That process outlined the path that led to this paper. The Personal Dimension of Politics In both groupings, there is leadership and there is a support structure. They are not always successful, but almost always when they are not, it is because there isn’t an appropriate distribution of responsibilities and revenues. No individual can work alone. Leaders create cooperation among supporters to work, aggregate and arrange their exercises with authoritative exercises and objectives a leader functions as chief of the group. Motivation: Leadership is an incredible impact that upholds discipline in the association beyond what formal principles and guidelines can. Individuals will be submitted and faithful to rules and guidelines if their chiefs believe in them.

If leadership is to be considered a social process, in the basic and generic sense, then it must follow that it is rooted in the political aspect of all social life. That political aspect might be approached by its degree of formality, but the degree of formality cannot determine its existence. There is a certain safety in restricting our study of politics to public government and there may be illusory assurance in studying leadership from a deliberately nonpolitical perspective, but there is too little truth. It would seem therapeutic, at least, to give further consideration to politics in the full generic sense as a universal property of all leadership. And, if politics is ubiquitous and necessary to all organized social life, then we might be able to suggest that leadership also is a necessary process in organized social life. Ralph Stogdill argued that “leadership is an aspect of organization” (Stogdill 1950, 1-4). It should be taken as given that all organized groups (pardon the redundancy!) are political systems. Such logic, however, does not permit us to draw any conclusions ab out what kinds of leadership better serve such groups, only that it helps enact their organization. This conception of leadership also has another very complex side effect: it scares many people away from the possibility of becoming leaders. If you think that to be a leader you must be a chosen one, somebody superior from the rest, then it’s probable you will exclude yourself from that category. Understanding that the heroes, the founding fathers, and the great leaders of humanity were and are as human as everyone else is key.There was little point in asking them to think strategically, to design a more horizontal and empathetic leadership, to allow for team building, or to think long term, because they were basically trying to survive from day to day. Clearly, leadership must be understood to involve more than the exercise of formal authority. It must also be understood as a critical element in the process by which authority is both created and sustained (Weaver 1991, 161). The “office holder” may not be the locus of leadership in a social structure. A concern with leadership qua power and authority in formal organizations effectively diverts attention from the structures and processes of informal power and authority and, therefore, leadership within those organizations or in other social structures (Weaver 1991, 162). Leadership must involve more than performing an office; it must define and be defined “by virtue of intricate reciprocities of behavior and perceptions” (Weaver 1991, 162). 1 will repeat here a position that I have made before that “leadership is a generically political role that has something important to do with initiative in the definition, articulation, and/or authoritative allocation of values in any social construct” (Weaver 1991,162) . An old, apocryphal riddle asks “What is the difference between a politician and a statesman?” and is answered with the observation that “a statesman is a politician with whom one agrees.” So too, with most students of leadership, “a nonleader is anyone who acts the same as a leader except that we disagree with her or him in some significant way.” Ideally, this would be part of the task of political institutions—mainly political parties—but for that, clarity is needed from their own leaders as to the need to invest time and resources in their seedbeds in a professional way. Conclusion A third dimension has to do with the different social and generational realities. The fragmentation of our public conversation makes it difficult to see social situations that are out of our reach due to a generational, social, or geographic issue. I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.”