“Leadership must be based on goodwill. Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob. It means obvious and wholehearted commitment to helping followers.” – James Stockdale
There is no shortage of goodwill during this holiday season, the time of giving, though most of the countries are struggling with Covid-19 as they prepare to bid farewell to 2021.
In addition to the few receiving individual acts of kindness, there will be millions more around the world hoping for the goodwill of the leaders of world organisations, countries, multinational corporations, all the way down to the neighbourhood church, temple, and mosque,to overcome the atrocities they are facing due to the pandemic. Real leaders, of course, create goodwill all year round. Goodwill of the leader encourages loyalty, forgiveness, credibility, and respect within the organisation.
Conduct
Organisations don’t usually have to spend a whole lot of money to conduct workshops or human resource development programs to create a goodwill culture among the stakeholders. It could mean simply saying ‘thank you’ to an employee or a customer, wishing someone a happy birthday, best wishes on the birth of a child or a grandchild or offering condolences upon the death of a relative.
Though they are not expensive gifts, they do mean being aware of the people who follow that leader. Whether you are a parent or a teacher guiding your children, a religious leader, a principal of a school, a Vice Chancellor of a university, a CEO of a company, a Mayor, a Governor, a Prime Minister, or a President of a country, you always have the choice of being nice or being a grouch.
Given the choice, taking the high road and being nice will always produce a higher return on investment than being a grouch. There, of course, are times when leaders have to be strict and push the followers to accomplish their tasks and missions.
If the one being pushed feels the goodwill within the intentions of the leader, then the mission will be accomplished even beyond the expectations of the stakeholders. Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban has said that he and his team were more productive when he brought a positive environment to each meeting rather than allowing his negative emotions to dictate the atmosphere of the meeting.
He has been able to stay away from any emotional responses by not allowing the perceptions created in the past to influence the present. He said: “One of the most underrated skills in business right now is being nice. Nice sells. I went through my own metamorphosis if you will.
Curse
Early on in my career, I was like bam, bam, bam…get mad and curse…and whole nine yards. Then I just got to the point where I wouldn’t even have wanted to do business with me. I realised that I have to change, and I did, and it really paid off.”
Leaders and followers alike should be careful not to misunderstand popularity as goodwill, though the goodwill can make one popular among people who appreciate it.
There are people who would do things or make decisions only to gain or improve their popularity, knowing very well that what they are doing is not in the best interest of the stakeholders.
For example, a teacher can become popular by not trying to discipline the students and teach them the proper behavior within the environment they are in and/or giving them passing grades in examinations even when the performances are not up to passing level.
Most of the students will also enjoy that since it is very hard for them to see long term repercussions of getting a passing grade for examinations without learning the subject matter properly. Needless to say, that it is the modus operandi of almost all the politicians in countries like ours.
Some would want to be popular among their supporters and others just want to be popular among their party leaders irrespective of the impact of their actions on the general public.
Unfortunately, this pattern is fast spreading through other institutions too, particularly in the State sector including universities. Two primary goals of such selfish leaders are: i) to satisfy their support base to secure the position for the longest possible period and climb up to the next level at the end, ii) to prepare the ground to plant their most loyal (but less competent than them) follower at the position when they leave so that all their sins will be forgiven, while being seen as a better leader than the successor.
Stakeholders
It then would be the duty of other stakeholders to explain the danger of such selfish actions of leaders to all stakeholders and even to those leaders themselves giving both parties to make the changes in their thinking.
Another common occurrence within educational, business, political, or even charity organisations, is that the student, employee, or the volunteer with the goodwill, who doesn’t want to say no to the hierarchy out of fear or not having enough courage to do so, will be asked to attend to all the tasks while others use the time to their own personal development. Leaders who are selfish enough to check the boxes to say that they accomplished this, that and the other are not even interested in finding out the type of exploitations happening under their noses.
At the end of the day, when those people who have been working hard see the others who have been using their time to gather extra qualifications and get into the good books of the leader climb up the hierarchy only, they realise what has happened. It usually is too late to do anything about it anyway.
The leaders who exploit followers in such situations would always try to show that giving more and more responsibilities to the same person as their way of recognising the hard work and giving those opportunities out of goodwill. What such incompetent leaders really want is to get something done the easiest way possible even if the person they assign the task to is not qualified or competent to do it properly.
Incompetent selfish leaders certainly will not let any follower who seems to be more competent than them participate any activity since they consider such followers as a threat to their survival.
Irony is that there are hundreds of selfish followers who are willing to be slaves to such selfish leaders since that would be the shortest and easiest path to achieving their own selfish goals.
Real leaders
Real leaders do not usually have to make an extra effort to create goodwill. It is their nature. Their conscience does not allow them to spread their goodwill only to some groups and not the others.
A good leader of a country, a business, political or charity organisation, school or a university would be a competent person with a vision for the country or the organisation and the courage to always stand on higher grounds of moral and ethical standards.
It is extremely important for the followers to know the difference between a leader with goodwill and one without, since we can only see what we know and nothing more.
The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic for over twenty years in the USA and fourteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected])