ABSTRACT

Below are two descriptions on leadership. The first is to demonstrate that it is very difficult to become a great leader, and the second that there is not a definitive definition of a leader and much depends on one’s own personality and talents.

Dear Lord, help me to become the kind of leader my management would like me to be. Give me the mysterious something which will enable me at all times satisfactorily to explain policies, rules, regulations and procedures to my workers even when they have never been explained to me. Help me teach and to train the uninterested and dim-witted without ever losing my patience or my temper. Give me that love for my fellow man which passeth all understanding so that I may lead the recalcitrant, obstinate, no-good worker into the paths of righteousness by my own example, and by soft persuading remonstrance, instead of busting him on the nose. Instil into my inner-being tranquillity and peace of mind that no longer will I wake from my restless sleep in the middle of the night crying out ‘what has the boss got that I haven’t got and how did he get it?’ Teach me to smile if it kills me. Make me a better leader of men by helping develop larger and greater qualities of understanding, tolerance, sympathy, wisdom, perspective, equanimity, mind reading and second sight. And when, Dear Lord, Thou has helped me to achieve the high pinnacle my management has prescribed for me and when I have become the paragon of all supervisory virtues in this earthly world, Dear Lord, move over. Amen.

‘A Leader’s Prayer’, Charles Handy, Understanding Organisations (© Charles Handy, 1976, 1981, 1985; courtesy of Penguin Books)