Leadership and Ethics in Higher Education 135It is to recognize the skills, intelligence and effort that are required of us
in different environments of leadership that we get to understand how
best we can help achieve what is the best. (Shisan: 1937)
I need to express myself with a bit more care and nuance. We speak
so often about “achievement”. We are inclined to be “driven” by
“success”, by a profit or benefit motive, sometimes referred to as
leadership by objectives. Often we fail to measure that element of
leadership that is about human fulfilment, the capacity to realize one’s
human worth, and for the potential to be unleashed are not easily
quantifiable or identifiable. That “worth” may not immediately translate
into the bottom line or cash value, but nonetheless it cannot be said that
it is without achievement. In other words it is at the level of the
confluence of three categories of being that we find Leadership
“success”: human worth, realization of potential and meeting declared
targets or strategic objectives.
Many of the studies on leadership have been about strategies that
work to bring about the intended ends. Such studies are often about the
social psychology of working with people, designing vision and mission,
inspiring people to achieve, working together as a team or as a
collective, checking and directing progress, assessing results.
Leadership is also not just about personality, or the position (in
African language, ‘a stool’ the “leader” occupies). Leadership is more
than just the personality, or character of the person who bears a title. It
is about the values or the content of leadership – in other words, what
does the leader stand for? It is at that point that one has to look beyond
the leader to those who follow: who are they? Why do they follow? It is
important to understand the people who are led or who follow the leader.
They have certain personalities that may affect or influence the tenor of
leadership. They are the ones who shape the quality of leadership,
otherwise there is no point in being a leader without followers. Leaders
and followers together do so in order to achieve shared objectives.