Leadership in politics

I am not a big fan of politicans, and I guess I don't distinguish myself too much there. I truly believe that the difference politicians choices make are quite limited on an individual scale (bare with me - I am not talking about dictatorships here). Only the individual has the ability to create happiness for himself, whatever that means. Therefore I see politicans as facilitators of this.

Make sure you don't mess things up too much. Make sure people have the freedom and possibility to change their own destiny without the possibility of reducing their fellow mans space of freedom. Ensure freedom and justice, and trust the individuals.

However, in what direction the individual chooses to take himself to pursue happiness is subject to surroundings. And that is where true leadership comes into play.

Bold moves, bold statements. Inspiration. Showing direction. This speech by Barrack Obama struck me as particularly appropriate.

(move to 13 minutes)

Defining leadership is not easy in my opinion. Defining management is quite alot easier.

Management in some way or form refers to managing resources in my book. That may be human or other resources. Effectively and conciously managing these resources to produce the desired results is hard, of course.

Leadership on the other hand has primarily to do with direction. You lead somewhere. Also, it most definitely has to do with people - you lead people. These to aspects mean that there are essentially two things any leader must posess. First of all the ability to clearly see a vision and stake out the direction to get there. Secondly the ability to get people sharing that vision and willingly moving in that direction.

Once you know where you want to go, and people want to follow you, you can start working. That's where the management part comes into play. There is no use talking of great visions and inspiring people if you are not enabling action towards that goal. However, management requires a hands-on approach. You can only manage what is around you, available to you. Therefore, the more people you are leading, the less of a percentage of them you can manage. You manage your direct surroundings, who then manage theirs etc. But the leadership has to transcend these immediate limits for there to be any effect!

What impresses me about Obama is his relentless ability to clearly stake out a direction and a path in which he leads. He also has the ability to make people want to move in that direction. Leading a country means he has to get people seeing his vision. He has to communicate that constantly and enable people to want to move in that direction.

What is harder is the management. When will we know whether this management actually moves the resources and this huge country towards this direction? I think it can take years before any sort of sobereyed appraisal of that can be made.