Real leadership is a little less talk, a lot more walk

A good leader knows that people will hear what he says, and follow what he does.

The problem is that too many people leadership are very good at getting into leadership positions, but not very good at actually leading.

The approach seems to constantly be "Do as I say, not as I do".

When Jacob Zuma declared that he didn’t ask for the upgrades at Nkandla, thus he shouldn’t have to pay for them.

Outa responded that Gauteng motorists didn't ask for e-tolling.

Thus far, if reports are to be believed, the bulk of e-tolls have not been collected; a fiasco that shows one of the basic flaws of ANC governance.

And these flaws go further than Gauteng, just about every problem area in our country suffers from pretty much the same issues.

Consider how much workers are told to take responsibility for their tasks – it is a very important aspect to having a work ethic that you are responsible for what you do.

So how many times have our mayors and MECs reacted to service delivery protests with prayer meetings? Gathering people together to pray for solutions?

I know I couldn't get away with that at work, my editor would have me over a barrel if I suggested we pray for some higher power to do my work for me.

Yet we have that example being set by politicians the whole time – and then we wonder why lower level government workers so often seem so willing to hand off their responsibilities.

But leading by example is more than just doing what you think is right, it is a basic empathy for those you lead.

After all, if you want people to care about what they’re doing, you need to care about them.

So consider the police, and some recent accusations that have come up in the Farlam Commission of Inquiry into the Marikana massacre.

Lt-Col Salmon Vermaak said the following, "In a consultation with the police legal team, it was mentioned to me that I am going to carry the responsibility for the people that were killed at koppie three."

Basically what he was saying was that it was decided he would take the fall for his superiors.

This is not a culture of managers who care about their subordinates, and police work is one of the fields that requires a strong level of empathy.

How much empathy has been shown to our cops – when we keep getting national police commissioners who end up turning out to be involved in shady dealings?

And what do we see coming out of this culture? We see cops stripping and beating up people in the street, we see taxi drivers being handcuffed to police wagons, we see all the brutality of a brutalised people.

In order to make our police effective, they need to be led by someone who cares about our cops. Not just fighting crime, the cops themselves. Show them some caring, and they will show more in their work.

For a positive example, because not everything the ANC has done in the past five years has been wrong, look at our hospitals – under Manto Tshabalala-Msimang the health department was a total mess, with a discouraged workforce that ended up creating frightening conditions for patients.

Under Aaron Motsoaledi– things are still bad, there is a lot of work still to be done, but there is also this sense that it is being done.

We see things improving, because Motsoaledi cares, not just in a general “Healthcare is important to the nation” sort of a sense, but in that passionate kind of a way that gets down to specifics, that is interested in the specifics faced by doctors and nurses.

Where we see this leadership by example in our government, things work surprisingly well. Where we see it fail, where we see graft and corruption the problems aren’t just isolated to the ones in charge, you see it course through entire departments.

That is why we need honest leadership – because dishonesty spreads from the leader on down. That is why we need compassionate leadership, because compassion does the same.

We need our leaders to understand that the change you want in your staff, is change you have to embody in yourself. 

Until that happens we are going to lack effective governance, because people hear what leaders say, and follow what they do.