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Leaders don’t only maximize the resources available before them. Instead, they look for more by actualizing the full potential of others.
Leaders don’t only improve the situation they’re in by leading people in front or pushing them from the back. Instead, they should be among the body, interacting, listening, and addressing them from within.
By its definition, a leader is someone who commands or leads a group, organization, or country. In essence, this purpose doesn’t change. A leader will always commandeer the crowd they’re leading. But how they will handle or manage this responsibility, the virtues people seek in them, depend on preferences. What leadership people value the most hinges on what they need and prioritize.
Regardless of these differences, there will always be a common trait people seek in their leaders. This should be someone who looks beyond flaws to actualize the full potential of others.
Why Is There a Need for a Great Figurehead?
Leadership may take different routes and dimensions, but they all are aimed towards one thing: forward. A great leader inspires, listens, and motivates followers to achieve a common goal. And most of the time, this goal is geared toward improvement. Whether for personal satisfaction or a community-centered objective, leadership exists to help attain this.
A leader is an authoritative figure who can influence followers and guide them in the right direction to make proper decisions and fulfill their goals. An excellent figurehead should also help define the crowd’s ethics and morals by establishing appropriate rules that reward and punish depending on ethical standards and morals. As someone who oversees people’s complete development and the community’s enhancement, they must also be someone who can help actualize the full potential in others, inspiring their followers to be what they can and should be.
With people’s transformation at their fingertips, leadership can be powerful. It can change the course of an individual’s life or the history of a community. This possibility is what author Fritznel D. Octave exposes in his book Haiti Between Pestilence and Hope. Midst, the unfair perception the country receives is the political instability it suffers from the hands of failing leaders, who overlook the country’s ills and potential. Over centuries, the leadership’s failure reflected on the land they governed, and over time, Haiti mainly became known for traits it could’ve avoided with exemplary leadership.
Changing Directions, How Leaders Actualize the Full Potential of Others
Contrary to what happened in Haiti, leaders can govern their crowd in the right direction by helping actualize the full potential of others. When their followers have been molded to become the best, there’s no need for leaders to fret about the future. They know that whatever comes, their followers have the capacity to handle opportunities and challenges reasonably well with the potential they hold.
Encourage Individuality
Excellent leaders won’t trap their followers into a solitary box. While they believe they can lead others toward their goals, they won’t force others to think similarly. This makes the community develop a limited perspective on matters that would benefit from separate insights.
Instead of enforcing a single mindset, leaders who desire to actualize the full potential in others will encourage them to embrace their individuality. They will respect and honor different opinions and ways of thinking to build people’s strengths and leverage on these. Communities can benefit from individuality in enhancing every aspect of their society, depending on their members’ strengths. Hence, leaders must sincerely understand and respect their followers’ uniqueness.
In respecting their individuality, leaders ensure every potential is adequately managed and nurtured. After all, unlocking the full potential in others isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. Leaders can’t simply deploy a singular activity or rule and expect everyone to learn and develop. In honoring their followers’ strengths and weaknesses, leaders also provide proper decision-making opportunities. They can fully understand the gravity of their decisions and capabilities, converting this wisdom to reasonable and success-driven actions.
However, this should be viewed separately from micromanaging or discriminating against an individual.
Actualizing the full potential of others means equal treatment across the crowd. There shouldn’t be any injustices because this will make people withdraw from the group and avoid development.
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