The COVID-19 Gift: Leader is Restored into a Human Being

Alulia CoachingMotivation, Uncategorized The COVID-19 Gift: Leader is Restored into a Human Being
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The title “leader” is overrated

From time immemorial, being a leader was never a choice or rarity. Something about people’s childhood experiences shapes them, their personal lives, purposes and visions. Childhood gives them leadership lanes; their basic yet unparalleled leadership qualifications. It also causes them to both attract and gravitate towards others who have a part to play to hone the leader in them. This natural order, albeit not without challenges, works like a charm when embraced. Individuals, teams and organisations that shine and make best and lasting impacts are mostly the ones whose leaders lead with intent and get things done through partnering with aligned others who lead with very different energies that they harness. These great leaders recognize value and payoff of co-existence and embrace diversity and inclusion, and much like a child feels after cracking a complex puzzle, become fulfilled human beings as they build their legacies on a daily. They partner with coaches and change facilitators to constantly build on the qualifications and experience that they already possess and because they are intentional about personal and leadership development as it relates to their life purpose.

Leadership is sustainable only through focus

Most, if not all, leadership lanes become lonely at times. People’s regard, tacit or explicit performance expectations, odds, fears and pressures contribute to this loneliness and how leaders generally show up in their roles. Many a leaders (presidents, politicians, business owners, priests, educators, colleagues and others alike) across societal sectors, in pursuit of position and status preservation, detract from the main focus and end up living in utopia that they ought to maintain a posture of an all-knowing, powerful and capable of delivering individual on all levels; hiding any internal concerns and fears that make them true human beings. It is as if they believe that if they dared show weakness or ignorance, this would mark the height of their downward spiral. This is when building one’s legacy becomes just another expression and covering one’s back most central. Leaders too, like other human beings, can be influenced by various factors like assumptions, prejudices, fears emanating from both within and others’ tacitly and explicitly expressed expectations of an increasingly VUCA world.

Leading in the post COVID-19 environment

As if the world had not been VUCA enough, COVID-19 happened. The pandemic adds to the distractions of leaders from focusing on their north stars. This is an even harder place for a less than authentic leader who operates in an environment that decries authenticity. For them the fog becomes even denser. When this kind of leader does not undergo coaching they may assume that in order to protect their perceived reputation or frontage at all costs because it is more important than authenticity and does not pose a loneliness risk. Thankfully, elsewhere, the shared vulnerability presented by the COVID-19 pandemic reveals a fundamental truth about human beings across stereotypes, a BIG fresh reveal that they are interdependent and altruistic. In the first two months of lockdown in South Africa I intentionally connected myself more than I ever did in all my life to networks of leaders of families, companies, departments and own businesses who hail from all walks of life, across the globe. Most are development practitioners who facilitate free, just-in-time training and coaching of others on virtual platforms. One thing is common between them and already performing leaders with whom they partner for further development is that they, like me, facilitate even better performance, mostly through coaching and facilitated training. Quite a few among them expressed a deep desire to operate in, and create with others, safe spaces where there is managed judgment or no judgment at all and thrive; they value love as a virtue that facilitates connection of fellow colourful human beings from different parts of the world in which they would most likely never set foot in their entire lifetime so that each human being feels that they belong. They blend coaching and facilitation of adult learning with authenticity for co-creation of each human being’s personalized development.

Does every leader need a coach?

I wonder…what if people who are said to be corrupt, self-aggrandizing, quiet good women and men when evil is triumphant, are leaders who have a deep desire to shine along with others at all costs and yet have intentionally or inadvertently suppressed or given up on their very personal visions or life purposes? What if they needed a coach by their sides to partner with as they thought their leadership roles through? Could it be that good human beings give up and choose secondary lives because they gave up on that childhood dream that would serve fellow human beings and settled for just getting by only with their tribes?


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