Conceptual Understanding of Leadership
Genesis of leadership
When the number is one, question of leadership does not arise, when the numbers are two, the germ of leadership is sowed, when the numbers are more than two, question of leadership appears visible indistinctly but when the numbers are more than three, question of leadership is manifest and, therefore, unavoidable. As a result, the question crops up instantly, what is leadership? Unpretentious simplest answer is, a leader is a person who is followed by others, whether it is in a family or in a society or in a club or in religious institution say, mosque, church, pagoda, temple or in an association or in an office, corporate and non-corporate, or in an administration/government or in a political party. Old debate, Patriarchy predates Matriarchy or Matriarchy predates Patriarchy still remains unsettled in the disciplines concerned, although 99% of the population on earth Planet hold ‘Patriarchy predates Matriarchy’.
Therefore, avowing the proposition ‘Patriarchy predates Matriarchy’ this can safely be concluded that historically, leaderships originated from husbandhood (The condition of being a husband) meaning the first female of mankind accepted the first male as both partner and guardian, turned into husband and wife and started leading wedded life, which acted as the basis of the family. It swelled and elongated when the couple attained parenthood by giving birth to child/children and, as a necessary adjunct, grew there management and leadership in nebulous mood and mode. And so, the sequence stands as ‘husbandhood – parenthood – leadership’.
Concept of leadership began ballooning in the context of time, space and dimension with various forms, natures, folds and dimension in wider scales in national, regional and global outlooks. That’s why there we find the words family leader, social leader, national leader and global leader and necessarily, as well there emerge business leader, corporate leader, trade union leaders, political leader and so forth. But one must not miss to bear in mind that the very concept of leadership is ‘atomic in nature and positive in manifestations under all the circumstances, favourable or not’. From such viewpoints, chief of thieves, smugglers, hooligans and so on in the same veins and spirits are not to be treated as leaders rather they may be termed otherwise.in pejorative connotations indeed, say, gangster, don, mafia et cetera.
For long leaderships have been being defined from various standpoints with luminous characteristics and today the very domain is getting flooded with theories after theories encompassing both political to non-political ambits.
Here our concern is leadership in political parties and administration (government) within the fold of politics.
Concept of political party in a democracy was neither known in ancient time nor in the middle Ages. So long Parliament beginning from the day of the signing of the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215 at Runnymede in England remained as an advisory body of the King, the necessity and concept of political party/parties was a seven heaven even.
The emergence of political parties took place in 1679 pinpointing the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678-1681 followed by the dissolution of Parliament by Charles 11..Supporters in favour of the Bill got united and petitioned for a new parliament came to be known as ‘Petitioners’ while those who expressed their abhorrence of the attempt to force the king to summon parliament were consequently named ‘Abhorrers’. Later ‘petitioners’ became known as ‘Whigs’ leading to the formation of the Liberal party and the ‘Abhorrers’ came to be identified as ‘Tories’ leading to the creation of the Conservative party. Sway of political parties over the people began to increase and swell bit by bit and people at a certain stage effectively became dependent on political parties for their concerns and matters in a state, which can be well understood from political landscapes of the then United Kingdom, motherland of multi-party parliamentary democracy. W.S. Gilbert in 1882, understanding the Influence and gravity of political parties over the people of UK, wrote:
‘How nature does always contrive
That every boy and gal
That’s born into this world alive
Is either a little liberal
Or else a little conservative
Having distastes from.
This is really attention-grabbing to note that in his 8 January 2015 write-up ‘When all night long a chap remains . . .
WS Gilbert (1882’ the writer held ‘First performed on 25 November 1882, the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera ‘Iolanthe’ targets the aristocracy in its satire. At the opening of Act II, it is seen a lonely Grenadier Guardsman, Private Willis, on sentry duty reflecting on politics, and reaching the conclusion that ‘every boy and every gal that’s born into this world alive is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative‘. Was this Gilbert being sarcastic, or was he just poking fun at the Establishment and ingrained political affiliations from birth with his piercing and brilliant wit’ (https://mikejackson1948.blog/2015/01/08/when-all-night-long-a-chap-remains-ws-gilbert-1882/).
Considering the functioning of diametrically opposed political parties in confrontational moods and modes in United Kingdom as threats to national unity, Founding fathers of USA thoughtfully avoided the presence and operation of political parties in the soil of America but soon it proved to be futile exercise when it was found that sharp differences arose and developed manifestly in 1796 presidential election, one supporting more say of the federated united, called states in American Constitution, while other standing by central dominance. With incumbent President George Washington having refused a third term in office, the 1796 election became the first U.S. presidential election in which political parties competed for the presidency. The Federalists became united behind Adams and the Democratic-Republicans supported Jefferson. Thus, came into being the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
In the British Indian sub-continent, Congress was floated with the leadership of Barrister Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee under guidance and inspiration of former British Imperial civil servant (later the Indian Civil Servant), political reformer and botanist Allen Octavian Hume in 1885 followed by Muslim League founded and led by Nawab Sir Khawaja Salimullah Bahadur GCIE KCS in 1906. Alongside were born many political parties in various shapes, natures and dimensions with divergent ideologies and approaches., although only Congress and Muslim League came to formidable standing to dominate the political landscapes as a whole. After partition of British India into two sovereign states, India and Pakistan, Pakistan began to continue with Muslim League headed by its Father of the Nation Quaid- e- Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah later followed mainly by Convention Muslim League, Council Muslim League, Pakistan People’s Party, and Awami League first led by Maulana Abul Hamid Khan Bhashani, then by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and finally by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, titled in 1969 Bangabandhu( Friend of Bengal) and later became Father of the Nation in Independent and sovereign Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, today there are at least 50 registered political parties, however, only a few named Awami League, Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jatiya Party are meaningfully in the fields with representations in parliament.
Leadership taking in its fold political party, parliament and government is neither amateurship nor sportsmanship rather it is both arts and science and hence, must be christened and ornamented with the best positive qualities of human beings overpowering the odds and evils all in all. It is inherently tagged with compassion, honesty, fairness and transparency, gallantness, responsibilities, responsiveness and accountabilities and sacrifices going beyond ultra plus. Knowledge and experiences both institutional and non-institutional, mission and vision, power of listening and understanding, power of digestion and bearing and power of delivery as and when required inalienably move with leaderships. Such imprints and imageries have been depicted in the thoughts and analyses of political thinkers, theorists, analysts, political scientists, sociologists and social thinkers with variations and peculiarities within respective epochs engulfing the periods from ancient to Middle Ages to the present.
One of the decisive characteristics of leadership has been exposed in the language of great Shakespeare who said:
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”(Julius Caesar (II, ii, 32-37).
Leadership(s) presupposes submissiveness and politeness in mental make-up and hardly a leader is proud of saying:
I am the Monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute (William Cooper, 1731-1800).
Leadership(s) these days implies emphatically radiation with centripetal and centrifugal forces being necessarily appraised of ongoing march of science and technology. That’s why a leader hardly sounds:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night (Jane Taylor, 1783-1824).
Therefore, it is for the reason that it signifies his/her lagging far behind.
Leadership(s) takes as fact that life is a curve and full of challenges, dilemmas and opportunities therein, not straight and not even sonnets (A sonnet is a one-stanza, 14-line poem, written in iambic pentameter: five sets of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables for a ten-syllable line The theme in first eight lines goes up and comes down in the next six lines).
Having all these in true perspective, there we find plenty of approaches and theories on leaderships such as Great Man Theories, Trait Theories, Contingency Theories, Situational Theories, Behavioral Theories, Participative Theories, Transactional theories, Transformational theories, Charismatic theories, Management Theories, and Relationship Theories and so on but not a single theory is enough to characterize leadership in its totality. Rather synthetic approach appears more logical, pragmatic, accommodative and acceptable on all counts. My understanding is, the moot test of leadership should be ‘‘whether a person is followed by others institutionally/formally or non-institutionally/informally under the circumstances, approving or not.’
Therefore, a person as such may be a leader in a political party from grass-roots to national levels say, departmental secretary, joint general secretary, general secretary, vice-president, president at district level and below and at the apex committee at national level with members, departmental secretaries, organizing secretaries, joint general secretaies/ joint secretaries general, general secretary/secretary general, vice-presidents/vice-chairmen and head of the party called President/Chairman or in parliament say, whip, chief whip, chairman of standing committee, deputy speaker and the Speaker or in government say, member of the Council of Ministers(covering Full Ministers, State Ministers and Deputy Ministers, if any), Advisor to the Prime Minister.
Likewise, a person may be a leader in an association, organization of volunteers, a teacher may be a leader at a university, a speaker or an author who has influence over people through his/her thoughts and ideas may be a leader from such standpoints.
Leadership(s) may fall into perversion sensing a state of standing when a leader starts falling/deviating from the essentials of leadership due to his/her swelling propensity towards self and/or vested interests at the defiance of common interests of the people concern. In such situation(s), he/she feels free and unapologetic to view his leadership not as trust of followers or population concern but as a profitable capital and investment for self and/or coterie gains and interests. Sycophancies, philistinism, cronyism, malpractices and corruptions all such vices play role to contaminate leadership(s). Such deviation/fall transforms leadership into perverted leadership, which I term as ‘capitalizership’ (in fact. as of today, there we find no taxonomy for perverted leadership and I believe such coinage shall duly be in operation in politics). Aristotle in his Forms of Government in the epoch-making book ‘Politics’ also presented conforming perverted forms say, Dictatorship into Tyranny, Aristocracy into Plutocracy and Polity into Democracy and since the concept of a political party was not in usage during his time, he did/could not touch on it.
It deserves to be noted here that for the last few years, I have been delivering speeches on so many topics including leaderships at various national institutes, centres and universities in Bangladesh notably come Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPATC) at Savar, National Academy for Planning, and Development (NAPD), Bangladesh Police Staff College(BPSC), Bangladesh Police Academy(BPA) at Sardah, Bangladesh Naval Academy(BNA) at Chittagong, Artillery Center and School (AC&S), Bangladesh Army at Chittagong, Jagannath University at Dhaka. There my intense studies on leaderships got enriched to a large extent through meaningful interactions with the participants and students (customarily, senior officers in respective services).What's more, I have so far written more than fifteen articles on leaderships in different viewpoints. All these reasonably convinced me to take notes on leaderships both from theoretical and practical standpoints since a scholarly focus on leaderships without having operational hindsight cannot be true reflections of conceptual understanding of leadership.
(Dr. Sinha MA Sayeed (titled ‘Global voice’ for the book O United Nations), writer, columnist, public speaker and Chairman of Leadership Studies foundation, LSP at sinha_sayeed611@yahoo.com.)
