Leaders must be developed

True leaders are those who will go beyond their own self interests to achieve the purpose of any entity’s organized existence. The most influential person in the world has been the Prophet Muhammad pbuh. He was the great leader of the Muslims during his prophethood. In religious sense, all prophets are leaders, right from Adam a.s until Prophet Muhammad pbuh. Prophet Moses and Aaron were the leaders during the time of Pharaoh. Prophet Isa during the revelation of Injil. And history been documented either truthfully and falsely the prophets who had to face rulers or leaders who are against them. This requires a different discussion.

Leaders are everywhere and in all situations. We must develop and train potential person to be leaders that can lead different organizations into the future. In accordance to Islamic teachings, the greatest leader is the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). There are four characteristics of the leader. They are: 1. Siddiq (Truthful) 2. Amanah (Keep to promise) 3. Tabligh (To communicate and preach truth), 4. Fatonah (Wisdom – in all our actions)

Any person who are given the responsibility and accountability to lead a group of people are called leaders. Here, I focus on leaders in organizations and define what are the characteristics of a great leader that we should try and emulate whenever we are put in these positions.

Siddiq means truthful. A leader must be truthful in all his (also her as well) intentions, words, actions. A truthful person will speak truth and will not lie to his followers, his bosses, or even to himself. A truthful person’s actions follow noble intentions and words. Noble intentions can be seen by followers. In Arabic is niat. As an example, if the leader promises some things during his dealings with his followers (subordinates/employees), he will be assessed and evaluated on the fulfillment of things promised in the time of his tenure as the leader (can be Manager, CEO, Prime Minister, President , Member of Parliament, etc.). And if for some reasons, it was not fulfilled, the leader must admit the failure on his part and can sincerely apologize for not meeting the things promised. As long as the followers believe that the reasons are reasonable, they may forgive and let them go. However, in the case of political leaders, the people can always resort to changing the leader in the next opportunity to change such as during the national or provincial elections. So, it is better that a leader not offer any promises if he knows that the promise is very highly difficult to be fulfilled. If a politician who is the member of parliament promised that he will build a new hospital when put in power but at the back of his mind, he is only making ‘false’ promises than he better not make it. Remember that as leaders, we will all be questioned by God every single promise that we have made to each and every one of our subjects/followers/staff . In fact all our deeds (as small as zarah-atom) will be held accountable in front of God in the day of judgment. May Allah save us from the Day in which Everyone will Regret. The bigger or the higher the responsibility or position one have taken in this world the more questions we will all be asked to the level of truthfulness in words, deeds and actions.

The second characteristic is amanah in Arabic. Amanah is a concept relating to the person being responsible, accountable and willing to carry the trust bestowed upon him to be the leader. Amanah relates to carrying out our lob as leaders to the best of our abilities and without fear or favor. Amanah in our teachings relates to responsibilities put on shoulder everything we must carry. We must do our job to the best of quality, to the best of performance, to the best of meeting our bosses request, to the best of our clients and customers level of satisfaction. We must not cheat, we must not take bribe, we must bribe our way through for promotion or getting projects approved. The inspection results must be reported according or actual outcome. Fail means fail. Remember especially being al leader, the amanah is to be as fair (adil) as possible to the subjects/employees/ subordinates in their performance appraisal at the end of year. Making decisions that is adil to your staff. It is very heavy responsibility if only people care to think about it.

The thid characteristic of leader is tabligh. Literally it means to communicate or to convey knowledge. For a leader to be respected , one must always communicate his vision, mission and directions as to where the organization is going. The leader must convey his ideas and be able to convince his followers the need to move and to do the things required. He must also be someone who not only wants to tell others what to do, how to do, but why do it, what are the reasons behind the ideas and actions. At the same time, he must also consult his followers or to get his key persons and followers to voice their opinions on his own ideas. There are points of contention that must be resolved amicably by everyone. The most important is to alsys look at the big picture. The organization’s goals is more important than the unit’s goal or even the leader goals. Selfish leaders will always think about his own survival and popularity than the followers interest. Of course, leader will be able to judge this difficult conditions and must remove his interest which leads us to wisdom, the most important characteristic of a leader.

Fatonah or wisdom means ‘the quality of having experiences, knowledge and good judgment, and the quality of being wise’. (Oxford Dictionary). The ability to make unbiased judgement, compassion, self knowledge from experience, ethics, intelligence (Wikipedia). And it comes with age normally but of course there are cases for wise young man to exist. So, the wise person/leader will not fall in the trap of bias decisions based only from one source of information. He scrutinize from everyone all feedbacks, complaints, grievances, and emotional expression from an objective and intelligent manner, wisely. He who is wise thinks for others more than himself. He donates and shares his God given rezeki to less fortunate people or to the employees social club to prosper, he is wise in all his decisions especially when faced with difficult personalities and wrongful behavior, or people who are faced with disciplinary issues. There are many other wiser people around you. A wise person/leader will also get someone elder and wiser to provide inputs to issues to confirm his opinions and to change if needed. Only older persons who have gone through hardships and life experience be able to provide sound piece of advise and make reasonable judgment that do not destroy the future of the newer less experienced to be more confident of themselves. If the leader who thinks that his way is the best, and everyone else is wrong, and he is only doing it right, then you are heading to destroying young budding workers hope for success in life and work. A great leader is a father who loves his children. He balances the carrot and stick. He rewards and praise when they have done a good job and he will raise his voice when his staff has made a mistake that is costly to himself (the employee) and also loss to the company’s valuable resources in which the leader is accountable. Staff may not know the importance of wasting a piece of paper costing 5 sen. If one staff waste 10 papers during photocopying and if (assuming) 100 staff waste 10 piece of paper . the money goes drown the drain, of which the leader is held accountable.. Even one atom will be questioned by ALLAH Azza wa jalla.

Great leader leaves behind his knowledge and wisdom. [sha’ri yusof, 2020]

Leader is not concerned about leaving behind a legacy. The legacy live in the people that he left behind. [sha’ri yusof, 2020]