Let us not paint good and bad leaders with the same brush

Leadership is an interesting human endeavour. It is a common principle that infallibility belongs to God and Angels. However, it seems to me that many people expect their leaders to be flawless.

A good leader does not have to stray from principles of honesty and commitment to build a future of hope for the people. This does not take away the fact that no matter how good a leader may be, there should be some space to accommodate some minimal level of infallibility.

Some leaders obviously stray from the principles that define a leader. Unfortunately, I have realised that even if a leader gets it 90% correct, the 10% mistakes will be multiplied by ten(10) to cancel out the positive side of the leader and that will push the assessment score into negative.

This will wrongly push a good leader into the class of bad leaders. We should demand very high performance from our leaders but definitely, such unfair assessment will make it difficult for any human being to pass the leadership mark and that can be demotivating.

There are many good people with a very high sense of responsibility and the desire to serve as leaders to dedicate themselves to selfless service to people. Such rough leadership terrain discourages many good people from taking leadership positions though they may have the drive and the level of responsibility required for leadership.

I have encountered such an unfair assessment of some of my favourite leaders like Nelson Mandela. We should criticize our leaders but we should give credit to their positive side and encourage them with our appreciation for their sacrifice to lay a good foundation for the current and future generations. Surely, there would be good and bad leaders. We should differentiate them and not paint bad and good leaders with the same brush. Futurist Kowus