The leader I admire most
Leadership can be defined as one’s ability to get others to willingly follow. Every organization needs leaders at every level. According to Yogesh Ambekar leadership is nothing but the quality which makes a person stands out from other ordinary employees. It is associated with such a person who has aggresiveness in speech and action, love for the employees, and who can handle pressure under different circumstances and a person who is always ready to fight for the rights of employee. A leader is useless without a follower. It is the followers who makes a person as a leader and if required overthrow him.
From all the great leaders our history has to offer I choose Mahatma Gandhi with whom I admire most. Few men have ever had as much of an effect on our world as Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948), though he used the message of peace and love, rather than war and destruction. One time a prominent lawyer in South Africa, Gandhi gave up practicing law and returned to India in order to help ease the suffering of the repressed people of his homeland. Gandhi's love for people and his religious fervor made him a revolutionary in many of his ideas and actions. He desired to see India freed from British rule in a bloodless revolution, similar to the Glorious Revolution of Seventeenth Century England. Knowing that violence only begets violence, he began the practicing of passive resistance, or as he called it, Satyagraha which means holding onto truth. In his famous Salt March of 1930, Gandhi and thousands of others marched to a coast where salt lay on the beaches to protest the British Governments' prohibition against the Indians making their own salt. Though many were beaten, arrested and killed, no one fought back. Over the course of his life he led three major crusades, rallied support for nonviolent strikes, urged Indians to boycott anything British, and championed women's rights.
Gandhi exemplified many characteristics of a great leader. His love for the people of India was boundless; he wanted nothing more than to serve and help them. Always putting others above himself, he sought to make himself even lower than the lowest member of the Hindu caste system. He even humbled himself to the point of sweeping up excrement left behind by others, hoping to teach that disease was spread in filth. One of his most admirable qualities was that he led by example and never preached that which he was not willing to do himself. A common thread between Gandhi and many other great leaders was that no matter what he did, he did it to the best of his ability. He once said: No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important. For it will be by those things that you shall be judged. He gave up his life and material possessions, fasted, toiled and suffered for his people and their cause. He showed that passiveness is not synonymous with weakness, and became a leader in the truest sense of the word. Perhaps Gandhi's greatest contribution to the world continued long after his assassination in 1948. Few realize that had it not been for his influence, we may have never witnessed in this country Martin Luther King Junior's I have a dream speech, the lunch counter sit-ins, Rosa Parks, or Nelson Mandela's struggle against antiapartheid oppression in South Africa. These people and many more who have followed in his footsteps bear witness to Gandhi's leadership ability and his legacy that will continue for many centuries to come.
For Gandhi, Truth was everything, and it was intrinsically linked with the concept of the non-violence and spiritual renewal that was "Satyagraha" and "Swaraj". "Satyagraha" was not just a political method but a moral statement about how to act politically. Unless events were conducted the right way, he would rather not act, and often called off protests or other actions as a result.
Truth was also connected to humility, cleanliness, celibacy and poverty. It was connected to unity (of religions and beliefs), and to the goodness of humanity. He always believed that people were intrinsically capable of good – which was both a key to his success as a Leader, and one of the reasons for his failures. He believed in action, and not just words.
He believed in industry and in self reliance. He was skeptical of Modern society, and especially of the breakup of the rural communities as people migrated to industrial cities. Gandhi believed that natural methods were the best way to keep one healthy, and except for an appendix removal never used "modern medicine". Finally, to Gandhi, being vegetarian was more than a "health" issue. It was a question of morality.
His entire life story is about action, to bring about positive change. He both succeeded and failed in what he sought to do, but he always moved forward and he never gave up the quest for improvement, both social and spiritual, and both for individuals and for the Nation as a whole.
In some changes he succeeded, and in some he failed. And, in some case, the success came years after the action. For example, the Salt tax was only fully repealed at Independence. But, in every case his actions were targeted against a specific change he was trying to bring about.
The qualities I have mentioned above about this great leader Mahatma Gandhi is quite worthy of emulation. And as I see it in our present governance now these promising qualities of Gandhi is somehow lacking in our political leaders because mostly their very own desire to lead is only geared towards their personal invested interest especially about money and honor. The bottom-line is progress in a certain country or organization is mainly laid upon the shoulders of the leaders. Without a leader who has great leadership then success is impossible to happen.
