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The Essence of Leadership(ภาษาไทย)
It is normal in any organization or community to have both good and bad citizens. Generally, if most of the members are good, the organization or community will grow and prosper. In contrast, any organization or community filled with crooked members, it will naturally have lot of problem and later deteriorate
Good people are naturally good from inside out. They would encourage people around them to do good things, not for themselves but for the society at large and the country. Bad people, in contrast, are generally incapable . They only look for personal benefits. They would create conflicts in the society and break the society into groups in order to increase importance for themselves.
In building and making an organization, society or a nation prosperous, the leader must be goods. His Majesty the king once said,
In a country, there are both good and bad people. No one can make everyone good. To insure a peaceful society, it is not about making everyone good. It is about supporting good people, empowering them to take leadership, and controlling or preventing bad people from having power.
As a leader of a particular group or organization, a person has to make critical decisions. Some people may like the decisions he makes while others dont. Some people may love the leader while others dont. This is normal . Take the lord Buddha for example. He is highly respected and loved by a lot of people. Still, some people with conflict of interest, even monks like Phra Devatat, did not respect him and even attempted to harm him many times. Having people who love or hate you is just normal. We can never avoid this truth of life.
In simple words, when leading an organization, one cannot expect everyone to love himself. What we can do is to manage the organization and ensure that we are surrounded, respected and loved by good people. We have to manage it and ensure that we are not surrounded respected or loved by the crooked. In other words, which may make it a bit more complicated, we have to manage an organization by ensuring that bad people hate us. When we feel that some bad people start to like us, we have to look back inside ourselves and make changes to our management style.
The next most important issue in managing an organization is how to identify who is good and who is not. Everyone behave both good and bad ways. Life today is more complicated. It is difficult to tell exactly whether one is clearly good or bad. According to Buddhism, we can improve and develop ourselves to become good people by refraining from wrong doings, taking good actions, and purifying our mind. When our mind is clear and clean, we will be able to make the right decisions and take positive actions
However, most of people have not yet had clear and clean mind. They, therefore, have a mix of good and bad actions, depending on the quality and state of mind.
In comparative sense, we can define good people as those who mostly think, speak and do good things. (They have high possibility to be good.) At the same time, we may define bad people as those who mostly think, speak and do bad things. (They have low possibility to be good.)
Again, it is very difficult to decide who is good and who is bad. Most bad people try to hide their wrong doings. They pretend and paint a picture to deceive others that they are good. The real good people, however rarely tell others about their good actions.
To figure out who is good, we have to find more information about a person and use our experience in understanding the person. We have to be very careful about bad people. Lord Buddha said that we should refrain from befriending with bad people. Even when there is only a handful of people left on earth and they all happen to be bad, wed better stay alone.
As the world moves fast and life is becoming more complicated, we have to meet and work with a lot more people, both good and bad. If we are lucky, we do not have to associate with the bad ones. We should avoid getting close to or befriend with them. If we cant avoid associating with or compete with them, there will be more complications and confusion in our organization.
Birds of the same feather flock together. Bad people usually group together. Benefits or profits are strong enough to attract bad people and encourage them to stay together. It is easier for bad people to form a tight group and create power.
Good people generally are loosely bonded together because of no such strong benefit. It will take a strong leadership to form a group. It takes a common believing to bond good people together.
Considering this fact, the crooked have more advantages because they can form stronger network to fight against good people. In the fight, good people generally lose because they are outnumbered by the crooked ones.
In the war between the good and the bad, if the good ones can avoid fierce fighting and instead make this war lengthy, the good ones will have greater advantages because they can use wisdom and rightfulness to their benefits.
The reason is that the relationship between the bad ones is fragile because only benefits bind them together. Their alliance is weak and can be easily broken. In contrast, the good ones stay together because of shared value and mission. It might take them some time to learn and understand one another. Once they do, they will bond stronger and unbreakable relationship.
In a lengthy war, the good people have much greater advantages over the crooked ones. Shared values and mission of the good ones are the strong foundation for a healthy ecosystem. In the world where competition is high, we cannot avoid fighting with the villains. Only virtue will lead us to the fairness and righteousness.
This is true to managing an organization. In summary, we have to firstly begin with self improvement. We have to become a good person with high capability. We should not mingle with the crooked. And, if we have to fight with the crooked, we have to use our brains. We have to create shared value and mission to win over the bad ones. The next big issue is to help people in your organization develop themselves to become highly capable persons with strong morale and ethics. This is the only way to lead an organization to wards success.
More importantly, we have to know when the time comes for us to leave behind the power and the benefits that come with the position. Everything has its end, which is rule of nature. If there is luck, praises, titles and power, there will be one day noluck, no praise, no title, and no power.
Dr. Rungruang Limchoopatipa
President of the Software Industry Promotion Agency
Pornchai Sirinukulchon publisher
9/9/09
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