THE ROLE OF LEADERS
By Celina Lardapide

The Role of Leaders

A Leader's Basis

Hartmut Esslinger: Design Leader

Developing Leadership Skills

Forging the Future

Refrences

A Leader's Basis

Creative leaders are not born, but made, and usually self-made. They have different approaches and personalities, but they all share these basic but relevant characteristics:

• Guiding Vision: a clear idea of what he/she wants to do and the strength to persist in the face of setbacks, even failures.
  
• Passion: the underlying passion for the promises of life, combined with a very particular passion for a vocation, a profession, a course of action. The leader that communicates passion gives hope and inspiration to others.
  
• Integrity: self-knowledge, candor and maturity are three ways that team members come to rely on the leader’s integrity. Leaders know their faults as well as their assets, and deal with them directly. When one knows what integrity consists of, and knows what to make of it, only then can we invent ourselves. The key to self-knowledge is candor. Candor is based in honesty of thought and action, and demonstrates a commitment to principle.
  
• Maturity: Maturity is important for leadership, because leading is not simply showing the way or issuing orders. Every leader needs to have experienced and grown through following and learning. Aspects of maturity are dedication, caring and flexibility. A mature leader is capable of working with and learning from others, never servile, always truthful. This is the basis of trust and cannot be acquired, this has to be earned from co-workers and followers.
  
• Curiosity and Daring: leaders wonder about everything, they are eager to learn as much as they can, are willing to take risks, experiment, and try new things. They do not worry about failure, but embrace errors, knowing they will learn from them. (Bennis, 2003, p.31-33)