Effective Leadership and Cornerstones

Introduction

Hi everyone!

This article focuses on effective leadership and cornerstones of it. In particular, this article will provide information on these issues, while also including examples of leaders who are or have been living on these issues.

I wish good readings to everyone.

I would like to start by explaining what leadership means to me, because as you know, leadership has many meanings. I think leadership generally covers every environment, starting from the person himself/herself to his/her team. Because a person has to be the leader of himself/herself at first. If he has succeeded in being the leader of himself, it will be easier for him to be the leader of a team.

I would like to describe all the characteristics of a leader in this article, but for a subject like leadership, even mentioning thousands of characteristics would not be enough. So in this article I will focus on the 5 most important cornerstones.

These 5 characteristics are Vision, Communication, Reliability, Decision Making Ability and Emotional Intelligence.

1- Vision

"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." — Warren Bennis

Vision is one of the essential characteristics of a leader. A leader without a vision will not be able to make the right decisions today that will affect the future. In this case, lack of vision will always be a problem and will affect both himself and his community in a bad way.

A leader without a vision will not be able to make the right decisions today that will affect the future. In this case, lack of vision will always be a problem and will affect both himself and his community in a bad way.

For reasons like these, vision is one of the cornerstones of leadership. When we look at great leaders, we will always see a vision. The founder of the Republic of Turkey, the Great Leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, put forward a vision in a situation where Turkey was surrounded from all four sides and perhaps thanks to this vision, he redetermined the destiny of a nation. (With respect to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk)

2- Communication

"To lead people, walk behind them. But to communicate effectively as a leader, walk among them." — Lao Tzu

One of the cornerstones of leadership is, of course, Communication. Communication is known to affect a person's life from the beginning to the end. Communication, which is one of the competencies that can add value to our lives, is inevitable here.

From the moment you first meet a person to the parts where you strengthen your relationship, communication is the most important part. When leaders enter the environment, it seems that they easily shape it in a way that they can almost play with communication thanks to their strong communication.

Mahatma Gandhi stood out as a strong communicative leader. His speeches, writings, and actions conveyed powerful messages of peace, civil disobedience, and social justice, inspiring millions to join his cause. People with strong communication skills, such as Mahatma Gandhi, can explain their ideas to people more easily and convince them.

3- Reliability

"Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships." — Stephen R. Covey

Reliability is one of the most important cornerstones for leadership. I want you to go back in time. Think of a community where you were not a leader, just a participant. The trust you had in your leader will immediately come to mind. But if you don't trust your leader in this memory, you will also remember that there is no team.

Communities that do not trust their leaders have always gone through difficult times. Either new leaders have emerged in these societies and neutralized the influence of the old one. Or those societies have closed down, never to be formed again.

An example of a reliable leader is Nelson Mandela. He was such a trusted leader that he was elected as the first black president of the Republic of South Africa. Many movies have been made and books written about him. Throughout his life he was involved in many civil-society movements and became an increasingly reliable leader.

4- Decision Making Ability

"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide." — Napoleon Bonaparte

Decision-Making is another cornerstone that is indispensable for leaders. The ability to make decisions is essential in determining the destiny of a company, a person or a community. So it would be strange not to see the cornerstone of leaders in this article I wrote.

I want you to imagine that you are in a community whose leaders are incapable of making decisions. What would that community be like? Its leaders would always be independent of each other and wrong decisions would be taken. The community would never get where it deserves to be.

When we look at world leaders, leaders come to the fore at this point. In this article, I would like to talk about Steve Jobs in particular, because with his decision-making ability, Steve Jobs has brought Apple to the points it deserves and made it stand out among other companies.

5- Emotional Intelligence

"What really matters for success, character, happiness, and lifelong achievements is a definite set of emotional skills — your EQ — not just purely cognitive abilities that are measured by conventional IQ tests." — Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence is essential for a leader. Because with their emotional intelligence, leaders can understand the emotions of the other person and appeal to these emotions. Thanks to this, they can attract attention and stand out in every environment they are in.

Imagine yourself as a community leader and this community consists of 1000 people. Imagine that you need to keep in touch with this many people and have a strong relationship with them. Great leaders can easily handle this part and even use it to their advantage by not forgetting who they are talking to.

In this section where I talk about current and past leaders, I would like to give the example of Sakıp Sabancı, the founder of Sabancı Holding. He stands out with his strong bonds with his employees and his empathy. He is a leader who is especially concerned about the welfare of his employees and does everything to motivate them.

Conclusion

In this article, I have focused on effective leadership in general and touched upon its cornerstones, giving examples from the present and the past. By making you think of yourself in that environment, I made the subject more reinforced.