Commanding leadership.

A question that burned in my head for the past few days as i thought to myself, "how am i going to command leadership, in my company that's full of sgts and some of them in the company longer than I've been."

Its not just wearing the rank on my shoulders and expecting everyone to respect me. No doubt they've to obey my instructions, but are they doing it with a willing heart or out of no-choiceness?

I thought being nice and everybody's friend would be the key. But soon i realized that there would be some that would step over your head and make a fool out of you. Sometimes you let personal relationships decide who gets the shitty jobs and who gets recognized.

I soon abandoned that choice.

Then I began to adopt a neutral attitude towards everyone. I should treat everyone as equal and set specific people to certain tasks. Knowing his capacity and abilities, I'll assign him tasks equivalent to his ability.

Then they begin complaining of overwhelming amount of work to do and why they're always doing such things.

Classical example of the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer. Anyway, that's not the main point for this entry.

Based on what would my guys run if I ask them to. If I ask them to do something, will they do it because I said so or because i did so?

Being a leader, I set standards. At the same time, I'm a walking example of how things are to be conducted. If i want them to be neat, I've to be neat myself. If i want their uniforms ironed, mine has to be ironed. Everything I do HAS to be better then what's expected of them.

So if I ask my guys to run faster, I've to run even faster then them.

Something that i learnt during my exercise was that i set the morale and tempo of my troops. If I'm excited, they'll be excited. If I've a nonchalant attitude about things, so will they.

Basically, they'll adopt whatever the leader is carrying.

Of cos, I'm no superman. There'll always be somebody who's fitter, stronger and faster than me. So now, its not how I'm best in everything, but it's how I handle the situation.

I can be a loser and blame everything for the 'defeat'. Or I can be the ultimate winner and learn pointers from the other person. I believe this is what a leader is about. He's not just there to lead others, but he's also there ready to learn from others.

Leaders have always been associated as high flyers, proud snobs and impatient people. Not true! Jesus's a leader in his field of expertise. We don't read in the bible that He goes around ignoring people, insisting that everyone worships Him because He's the Holy One.

Instead, He goes around serving people and wins them over. He goes all over the place, preaching the gospel, healing the sick and performing miracles. So when Jesus asked His disciples to go into the world and preach His word to the lost, His disciples did!

Basically, they did what Jesus did when He was on earth. The disciples preached, healed the sick and performed miracles! Just like what Jesus did! Till today, such things are still happening all over the world.

So can you imagine the impact you'll be able to have, if you were to be like Jesus, going around doing things that you want others to do as well and in that process, impact their lives.

Wow.