What is good leadership?

By Zechariah Manyok Biar

July 3, 2009 — African foreign ministers are reported to have reached an agreement not to execute the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for President Bashir. African countries are supporting President Bashir because he is a leader. This forces us to ask a question about good leadership. Why do we regard somebody as a leader that we can trust and support? Is President Bashir a good leader? Is his leadership also good?

On June 30, 2009, I listened to a panel discussion from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) about leadership development. The panelists made good points about what good leadership is.

The first point was that a leader must stay calm through crises. This goes well with how President Obama is now dealing with economic crises in the USA. But the panel discussion at MIT was done in December 2008. Maybe Obama had listened to that discussion, or maybe he learned his leadership style from Harvard Law School. Or maybe it is his personality. I don’t know. What I know is that staying calm is a great technique in managing crises as we see it now in the USA. It was the panic that drove Wall Street crazy at the beginning of this year. So the market needed a leader who would assure business community that things were improving.

However, in Sudan, President Bashir always panic when somebody or a group disagrees with him. He does not take time to think through the crisis. This is the reason why he gave permission to Janjaweeds to kill innocent people in Darfur without asking himself on why Darfuris are taking arms against his government.

In the upcoming referendum in Sudan, it is clear that President Bashir is panicking. That is why Al-Tahir said that the “NCP view is based on the belief that they will not facilitate secession through a law” (Sudan Tribune, June 24, 2009). This statement sounds like things might blow up again between the North and the South if mishandled. But being calm does not mean denying the fact of the situation. The MIT panelists made it clear that a leader needs to be honest about the situation. He or she should be transparent in what he or she does and says as well as what is happening in the country. That is not how President Bashir is, as we know. He is always in denial of the atrocities committed against innocent civilians in Darfur.

The second point that the panelists made was that followship is very important in leadership. They said that title does not matter in leadership if a leader does not have followers. These followers, I should add, must be people who are motivated by a leader’s good leadership, not tribal or party loyalty alone. A leader who motivates people in what he or she does will always have followers and followers are the ones that let work done. It is clear that President Bashir have few motivated followers even in the North.

The third point was that a good leader must have some few good friends. This can apply to advisors of a leader. Even if an advisor was not a friend to a leader, the leader must try very hard to develop friendship with such advisor because advisors are the ones who help leaders succeed.

However, the problem with Bashir is that he has wrong advisors, like Bona Malual, who do not understand how marginalized people of which he belongs feel. A leader must have some strategic advisors who can develop strategists for dealing with any crises a nation faces, not people of yes who side with the leader against the citizens. People want to be happy. They need to see their problems solved. If a leader does not know how to solve national problems, then he or she can easily lose followers. I should also say that leaders need to have compassionate advisors in addition to strategic advisors, advisors who feel what people feel. Compassionate advisors can force the leader to feel the pain of the suffering citizens and deal with it.

The fourth point that the panelists made was that a leader must have good mentors. Mentorship is very important here in the West as it is in Africa. In Africa, our mentors are always our elders. Here in the West, mentors are professionals, people that are respected because of their expertise or their experiences. Our leaders should have some few gray-haired people who have wisdom. They should also have some professional mentors. A mentor is not necessarily a paid worker. A mentor is a person that a leader takes as both a model and a personal advisor. A mentor is a person who gives answers to questions of life generally. However, President Bashir likes mentors who are ideologues, people who do not have connection with ordinary citizens, and people who have lack of understanding of pluralism. These mentors will do President Bashir no good at all, because they do not experience life in its totality.

The last point that the panelists made about good leadership was that a leader must follow his or her attitudes. I would add that these attitudes must be positive attitudes that build rather than destroy. The panelists believe that it is important for anybody to listen to what his or her feeling tells him or her. Dictatorship is out of question here. If a leader’s feeling leads him or her to dictatorship, then his or her government will never be in peace. The attitudes that a leader must follow are the ones that made him or her think in the first place that he or she is fitting to be a father or mother of a nation.

This advice, to me, is very important in decision making. We know that leaders have many advisors. Some are official advisors, others are not. It becomes confusing when a leader is faced with many advices that seem to make sense. As we know, there are no rubbish advices, but not every advice is constructive. In this situation, a judgment of a leader is crucial. This is a time that a leader should follow his or her feeling about what he or she thinks is good for his or her people.

In conclusion, good leadership is not about a leader’s title. Good leadership is about what a leader does. This is the reason why there are leaders who have great names but few followers, and leaders who are less known but have huge number of followers. Our leaders in Sudan will choose between cheap popularity and good leadership. These are two different things. President Bashir will seek protection from African leaders who are not better than him, but the only happiness for him will come from the people of Darfur if he understands what they want.

Zechariah Manyok Biar is a graduate student at Abilene Christian University, Texas, USA. He is pursuing a Master of Arts in Christian Ministry and a Master of Science in Social Work, specializing in Administration and Planning. [email protected]