LEADITUDE: Why is it so Important?

One funny truth about leadership is the fact that you can only lead people as far as you have gone in life, that’s why I believe leadership to be an attitude. I’ve come across people who feel they can just stumble on leadership and have a lovely time in it, but the reality is that it takes time for a person to attain a stage when he can call himself a true leader. Leadership is such that it improves with the passage of time and consistency, so much so that it outlives your very existence, and resonates through the time-space quantinum into the very essence of generations yet to follow your principles and provide guidelines for them to live by.
A real leader’s journey starts from the moment he is able to guide himself through life by setting some standards he will adhere to, and discipline himself a great deal. This is where attitude comes in. in my previous post, I described attitude as a person’s disposition, action and reaction to the circumstances of life. And if you plan to successfully lead people, you have to have something extra about your ordinary that will make people want to follow you. Without this trait, people will ignore you, or if you’re already leading a group of people, once they catch up with you, the leave you at the same spot and go their own way. Therefore, there’s the need to constantly upgrade you intellectual capital and attitude.
FACTS ABOUT LEADITUDE
 A leader is responsible for his/her attitude. You are totally responsible for the way you react or respond to life and people. I believe that there is always a time-line between action-reaction complex in which you can decide on what to do.
 A leader’s attitude does not run on automatic. The fact that you attained a particular level does not mean you can be there permanently. If there’s any indication, it’s only a cry for you to keep improving, as you may deteriorate if you remain at the same level for too long.
 It’s not what happens to you that matters but what happens in you… you have complete control over your reactions.
 The leader’s attitude is the determinant of the attitude of those around him. I believe that the most important things in life are caught, not taught.
LEADITUDES TO DEVELOP
I will only discuss two of the attitudes in this write up,( I’ll save the rest for my next blog article)and they are:
1. Service: leadership is such that you continually have to serve the people who you lead. In my previous article, I wrote that leadership is all about solving the problems of a hundred people who will just solve one of yours. Service in leadership is also about contributing to the success and progress of anything you are involved in, and servitude has to be with excitement and enthusiasm.
2. Positivity: at times when all things are down and going haywire, it is the leader’s responsibility to constantly remain positive. The truth about the people you lead is that they have a heightened sense of sporting when things are going wrong and fear In a leader. When this happens, they begin to migrate away from you and that spells the beginning of downfall. Therefore, you cannot afford to be down. You have to constantly encourage them and make them see the positives in what you are doing as this will prove to be a source of strength for them to go on