Happy new year everyone! Hope all of you had a great time celebrating the new year.
Everyone has resolutions what they want to achieve in the new year, what they want to stop doing, start a new one or do the same ones with more consistent. So here is mine.
One thing I want to archive in this year is to get the leader inside me awake. I admit that it’s been sleeping soundly inside last year. What do I mean by leader inside me? I’ll tell you a story which I just heard early this year in a conference.
What do you think what attribute we require to be a leader? Followers? Charisma? Hold that answer in your mind. (you can have different answers too)
When you observe the current trends, people are getting more and more agreeable to gain popularity. Why? So that more and more people like them. Why? (keep asking why, it’s a good thing) because those people or followers can be turned into their financial support. This kind of mindset is popular because of the entertainment industry, starting from Hollywood and now K-pop industry. It’s about money.
Anyway, those are one from many examples. I’m sure you can find those examples from different industries including politics if you’re more familiar with that areas.
People are more agreeable because the netizens will condemn them when they are having different opinions. Not always, but that is more likely to happen.
When we compare famous figures from the past, they stood on their ground regardless others’ opinion. They stood for what they believed was good. Of course you can rebuke me by saying including those bad people from the history, like dictators. Yes, you are right. Some were wrong but there were right too. We can’t just judge it from one side, can we?
So, my take from the conference is, leader is someone who is not afraid to be firm about what they believe in, not always agree to common perception, dare to think differently, and they don’t care about whether they will be popular or not.
My question to myself now is, if you know what do you want then why I still don’t do anything to make it happen? Do I care so much about my likability? So what am I going to do with the popularity? Will I achieve my dream by becoming popular? (the answer is no, unless you are in those industry)
You can ask the same question to yourself too. Sometimes the path is not easy, but if we never try it, we’ll never know, won’t we? We are leaders for ourselves.
To conclude, let’s think about it, and let’s rock 2013!
