Leadership, a Definition. To define leadership is actually quite hard and arduous.

Until today it is still quite a mystery to what define a leadership and how exactly we should define it. According to Bolden (2004) there are two fundamentals difficulties in defining leadership. Firstly, leadership is open to subjective interpretation. Everyone have their own understanding to what leadership is based on their experience and what they have learned. Secondly, the way leadership is defined and understood is usually influenced by ones theoretical stance. Some view leadership as those who possessed the character traits of what define a leader and to others it is a social process that resulted from group relationship. These mixed opinions will produce a different definition of leadership. However, to make things simple, we look for a common trait to each and every opinion to produce a simple and basic understanding to what is leadership. Northouse (2004) found four common themes in how leadership now is usually viewed. First, leadership is usually is a process. Second, leadership will involve influences. Third, leadership occurs in group context and fourth leadership involved goal attainment. So to define it simply, leadership is process where an individual influences a group of other individuals to achieve one common goal, whether that goal is as simple as simple as to decide where to have dinner or as big as responding to a national military crisis. To achieve this common goal a leader must have certain traits and character that sets them aside from other group of individuals. To make it simple, a leader should be effective, able to influence and inspire others, and able to make effective decision to achieve that common goal. Most of the characters of a leader that one could think of usually consist of good characteristics. Clever, intelligent, honest, confident and many others that one could think of that usually is a good characteristics. So, in theory, a leader must be a good individual that the other group of individuals can look up to and can be influence by. Also, in theory, someone who possess all of these good traits, and has the ability to influence other, and has enough confidence to become a leader should be proud with the leadership title that he or she carries. But, as of nowadays, a leader is no longer always associated with a good person and good characteristics especially if you are a leader in politics. Political leaders were always associated with corruption, scandals, and if it is country like America, leader will always viewed as a warmonger. The tendencies of blaming leaders for each disasters and mistakes in a country or organization contributed to the downfall of leadership image and bring forth the question whether someone should be ashamed rather than proud of leadership and leaders.

Leader and Leadership: Shame or proud? In my opinion, due to the tarnished image of political leader, the view on leadership nowadays has differed from back in the old days. When we were asked of an example of a good leader, we tend to look in the history book rather than todays newspaper. We look at Julius or Augustus Caesar, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, or Tunku Abdul Rahman rather than say Barack Obama or Najib Tun Razak. How many people nowadays can stand up and proudly say that they are proud of their country leaders without sounding politically biased. It was really hard for us now to say that we are proud of our leader because we create an image of a perfect leader in our head that is almost impossible to achieve by any individual. We expect a leader to be effective, intelligent, smart, knows every answer in his pocket, and many other traits of a great person and at the same time we also expect the same quality in his or her personal life. We expect a leader to lead a clean life, for him to be caring, environmentalist, having a smart and lovable wife and family. All of these personal life qualities can be achieved through the help of propaganda, covering the real personal lives of these leaders, only showing what people wanted to see. This kind of media manipulation might work back in the days, but with todays information technology and social networking allowing people to get any information on their leader without their media masking the true personal life. Through this kind of access of information, we evaluate the leader and his leadership based more on his personal life rather than his effectiveness. March and Weil (2005) said that leadership will attract curiosity and gossip. Followers will claim rights to know about a leaders personal life because supposedly it will assist in assessing character and establishing rapport.

According to March and Weil (2005), leadership can destroy both the privacy and the quality of personal life. An individual with leadership tendency will always be associated with powerhunger and the need to control others. So, instead of being proud of being a leader and having the quality of leadership, an individual, due to this unfortunate association, will be scrutinize and thoroughly analyzed throughout his leadership days. This tendency of over-analyzing every step of a leader will decrease the sense of appreciation towards leader and leadership thus making a leader as an individual will feel less proud in their leadership. Many will focus on criticizing rather than appreciating leadership when they were too focusing on unnecessary gossip and curiosity.

Appreciation towards leader In my opinion, peoples lack of appreciation towards leadership nowadays because of the failure to distinguished private lives and public duties of a leader. More evaluations were focus on the quality of his personal life rather than the effectiveness of his public duties. So we will have a situation where a leader done his job effectively but will still be disliked by his people due to overanalyzing towards his personal life and the bad stigma that leadership carries. The under appreciation towards leadership doesnt help much in helping to build a stronger sense of pride of ones leadership. One could say that this is almost a thankless job. March and Weil (2005) said that to appreciate leadership is not in the sense of glorifying it but in the sense of being fully aware of it on the basis of sensitivity and understanding. It must be constructed on a foundation of knowledge and surrounded by a point of view. When talking about appreciating leadership, we usually evaluate individual leader, assessing their reputation of having done well or just good. But, just like art, where the appreciation of the artist isnt as much as necessary as the appreciation of the art, we can say that it is leadership that is to be appreciated and evaluated, not the individual leader. In that manner, the problem of being a leader which has corrupted more people into leading unattractive lives that creating certain stigma towards leader and leadership may not lie with the people who have become leaders because after all leaders are just human like any other individual. The problem lies with leadership and the concept and the perks that leadership usually bring especially in the political field. One of the themes of leadership as identified by Northouse (2004) is influences. Leadership usually involves influencing others and the ability to command others to achieve whether common or personal goal. The problem occurs when leader taken by the concept of giving and taking commands abused it for personal gains. With the ability to influence others, a leader will usually gain power and with this power comes the temptation of abusing it to achieve personal goals like wealth, women and many others.

Power corrupt leaders Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men. Sir John Dalbert-Acton The core of leadership is influence and power. A leader will usually use power to get things done or to achieve a goal. This influence and power lead to the temptation of achieving one personal gain because of the benefits that it brings. Riggio (2009) said that there two forms of power that act as simple distinction. First one is the socialized power. Socialized power is the power used to benefit others. These are the power used in order to achieve a common goal. We always hope that leaders have this type of power in their mind and mostly concerned with the best interest of those under their leadership. The second form of power is called the personalized power and this is using power for personal gains. However, Riggio (2009) said that these two forms of power are not mutually exclusive. A leader can use his power to benefits other and at the same time still gain personally giving the example that none of the former U.S presidents are poor. But, he said that the problem occurs when personalized power dominates and what the leader gains are usually at the followers expense. Leader can somehow fall into the delusion that whatever they are doing is actually for the best interest of the people while actually it is more to his personal gain. Price (2005) calls this as exception making, a belief that the rules that govern what is right and what is wrong does not apply to the powerful leader. It is like, this might be wrong for other people to do it, but because the leader feels that he/she is doing it for the benefits of the people, then it is okay for them to do it. He/she is holding on to the concept of the end will justify the means. This will cause the leader to become inebriated with power, doing the wrong thing and engaging in immoral behavior simply because he/she can get away with through personalized power. And sometimes even the followers, usually the most loyal, are willing to accept and make exceptions under the pretext that it is okay because he/she is the leader. Riggio (2009) give the example of a suggestion that President Clinton's engagement in sexual scandal with
intern Monica Lewinsky simply because "he could."

Power definitely has both advantages and disadvantages for leaders. Riggio (2009) gave two sides of power which are the positive sides and the negative sides. On the positive side, power makes the leader more confident and assertive in their job which enables them to move forward on the chosen courses of action. In short, leaders need power to get things done. On the negative side, the more an individual posses power, the more he/she will focus on their own desires and the less they will able to see from others perspective. This is what happen to leaders with too much power that they become corrupted and only think about their own personal gains and they will use their power to justify all their immoral behavior. So, to make it simple, a leader needs power in order to achieve the public goals but with power also a leader can be corrupted into using it for his personal gains. This bring the question whether is there such thing as a perfect leader. The image of a leader that most people imagine in their head where a leader is effective, intelligent, capable of making such a pinpoint decision and at the same time isnt a little bit corrupted by the power, never dabble deliberately in the personalized power agenda, never thought of using influences for personal gains. Is there exist such leader nowadays especially in the political field?

A Perfect Leader: Is there such a thing? There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant. - Liu Shao-ch'i

According to this President of The Peoples Republic of China who succeeded the great Mao Zedong, there is no such thing as a perfect leader. A leader is like others, a human being, full of flaws. It is really hard for a person, presented with so much power to not using it for his/her personal gains. Leaders too have desire, something they wanted for themselves, and when they have the power to make it possible, its really hard to say no. And it i s a slippery slope because once you started to abuse even a little of the power, its only going to get bigger and it will, if it isnt curb earlier, lead to scandal and immoral behavior.

The public need to draw a line of expectation of what to be expected from their leaders. The bigger expectations the bigger disappointment is. In my opinion, as long as the personalized power used by the leader doesnt dominate the socialized powers and what the leader gains is not at the follower expense, and his/her leadership can be considered as effective, he/she can be considered as a good leader. Because in all honesty, to get a perfect leader who is smart, effective, intelligent with many other good characteristics and at the same time also have a squeaky clean image and personal life, is almost impossible to achieve. Not with the public evaluating and scrutinizing their every movement. So, to lower ones expectation of leadership maybe could help bring back the good image of leadership that could instill pride in someone who is a leader and proud in someone who is a follower. When the public begin to differentiate between evaluating the effectiveness of the leadership and not the individual leader maybe view on leadership could change. Conclusion In general, leadership involves a process where an individual influences a group of other individual to achieve a common goal. In the process of achieving this goal the individual might use his/her influence and power to achieve personal gains which can lead to immoral behavior or a scandal. This is what usually destroys the image of leadership especially in the political field where followers and competitor will wait for something like this to deface the leader and at the same time leadership as a whole. General public may have to overlook the private life of leader because the one that need to be evaluated is the leadership not the individual. Maybe as long as the leader is effective in achieving that common goal and the public interest is not at his expense, he/she should be appreciated as a good leader. There will probably come a time when we have to choose between two evil and the good choice is to choose the lesser evil.

References: 1. Bolden, R. (2004). What Is Leadership? UK: Leadership South West 2. March, J.G. & Weil, T. (2005). On Leadership. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing 3. Northouse, P.G. (2004). Leadership: Theory and Practice (3rd Edition). London: Sage Publications Ltd. 4. Price, T.L (2005). Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership. London : Cambridge University Press

5. Riggio, R.E. (2009). How Power Corrupt Leaders. Cutting-edge Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/200908/how-power-corrupts-leaders

Assignment 1

Inside leadership: Appreciating the effectiveness of leadership not the individual as leader

Prepared by: Mohd Safwan Salleh ZGA130009 Prepared for: Assoc. Prof Dr. Sharifah Mariam Alhabshi Due date: 30 September 2013