Question

Essay on "Leadership and learning are indispensible to each other".

Answer 1

Dedicating yourself to continuous learning  can help you achieve ever higher levels of consciousness, a goal of every great leader: awareness of your inner power, the connectedness of everything and therefore your ability (actively or unconsciously) to affect a situation and people just by “being”. 

It also means learning to use this power responsibly: if you are committed to personal growth and increased consciousness, power will not corrupt but serve - both you and the common good. As never before, we need a change in the paradigm of leadership, to move beyond autocratic and dictatorial leadership styles and closer to spirit-driven leadership.

To be a conscious leader is to be growing and learning every day. Personally, I try to read at least a chapter or two a day of books on a range of subjects from leadership and success to psychology and emotional intelligence and from neuroscience to history. This goes beyond increasing knowledge, it brings about new insights, which as we become more aware and open to new ideas becomes ever more common and the insights more revealing. The opposite brings about complacency and hubris (arrogance/conceit) - a “know-it-all”, “my way is best” attitude that inevitably alienates us from people around us, especially those we wish to lead. As hard as it can be after years of experience, we must constantly be wary of the trap of thinking we know it all. 0SaveA good leader should be constantly learning

This closes our minds to the infinite possibilities that exist, often hidden, and is the opposite of innovation, which questions everything to spark quantum leaps in how things are done.

Leadership and learning, therefore, seeks to balance humility - in this case the recognition of how much there is still to learn - and self-confidence, a leadership trait that is key to gaining the trust of those under you. As long as these two are in balance, you will be a good role model for your organisation, community and family.

John F. Kennedy inspired a nation to reach for the moon. A seemingly impossible goal was achieved within his ambitious timetable despite his assassination just 14 months after his momentous speech and so not being around for most of the decade he foresaw would see the first human step foot on the lunar surface. In explaining his belief in the importance of  America being be the one to “win the race”, he showed visionary leadership while placing learning at the heart of his argument: “We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.”

In the notes written for his speech at the Trade Mart in November 1963, he clarified the link between leadership and learning. He highlighted first the importance of community leadership in the advancement of learning and the reciprocal necessity of learning for “leadership's hopes for continued progress and prosperity”. He pointed to the example of MIT, then already an institution attracting investment from industry and whose world famous Media Lab, founded in 1985 and recently doubled in size, is still a global magnet for innovation in both industry and community projects such as smart cities.

Kennedy then stressed that “the link between leadership and learning...is even more indispensable in world affairs.” Ignorance and misinformation, he said, “can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security.”