Are you a Leader or a Cheer-Leader?

Are you a Leader or a Cheer-Leader?

To know that those who Lead are not necessarily but proclaimed leaders.

A Leader is primarily a Proactive person (Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

There two types of characters:

Proactive and Reactive. Let me describe the language of a Reactive character comprising the majority of people:

They speak as follows:

“You have destroyed us”

“You did not do what you should have done”

“It is not my fault. It is yours, the systems, the society’s …….”

“I wish you have done your part and I would have been able to do mine”

“My life did not treat me fairly, that is why I did not do one or the other”

“The conditions have constrained me to do or not to do………….”

In other and plain words, Reactive People blame others, other conditions, systems, even ghosts, for their failures. They never take up their own share of responsibility for any problem not do they prepare themselves to absorb the consequences of their actions.

A fundamental life rule says that you are responsible for every problem that affects you or your objectives. Remember Albert Einstein’s: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.

Even, when reactive people are convinced of this, they go to the next denial stage. They measure each one’s share of responsibility: “But you have 80% of the blame, so you must take action to resolve the problem”.

As an Engineer, I have never come across an instrument that measures blame. Have you? And who cares? Solving the problem is what matters! How do we move forward and not the autopsy matters.

By now, it should be evident to the reader, who Proactive People are. They are plain, everyday people facing all sort of problems who understand two simple things:

Therefore,

(1) For every problem they face, they are part of it and have their own share of responsibility.

(2)To solve the problem that affects them, they need to take action and not wait for others or the Universe to conspire in their favor.

After all responsibility comes from Response – Able!

So now what do you think?

Are we lead by Leaders or Cheer-Leaders?

Yiannakis Mouzouris

B.Sc. Mech. Eng.m M.Sc Eng. Mgt

Conicon Ltd