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Leadership Lessons from Mandela

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Leading like Madiba: Leadership Lessons from Nelson Mandela
Posted on August 17, 2011 by Martin Kalungu-Banda
The world is in dire need of great leaders, ones who inspire people not through words but by serving them. The cutting edge in leadership discourse is the old fashioned idea of leadership through service. The whole human race, we could say, desperately needs these servant-leaders who really attend to others and are beacons of hope in our search for a world society where justice, fairness, care for the weaker members of our communities, and love flourish.
The call for leaders who genuinely serve their people is obvious in social and political communities. We can see it equally in the economic sphere, in business organisations or corporations. The high turnover of staff in many work places suggests that people are looking for what Lance Secretan, a Canadian guru on leadership, calls ‘soul space’[1] – an environment where they will not simply be cogs in the wheel of production but can live full and happy lives.
In my book, Leading Like Madiba: Leadership Lessons from Nelson Mandela[2], published in March 2006, I have attempted to present through stories the type of leadership that will take our world a higher ground.[3] What is so extraordinary about Mr Mandela’s style and practice of leadership is that it crosses the boundaries of culture, gender, race, religion and age. Madiba (as he is fondly referred to in his home country) has done so in a society that was once more polarized than any other – one the world expected to explode along racial and ethnic lines. That it did not was largely due to this extraordinary man and his unique leadership style. What is equally fascinating about Madiba is the fact that each person that has encountered, in one form or another, his leadership feels personally attended to and served.
Mr Mandela’s leadership transforms

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