The hottest 'thing' going on in school recently is definitely the student council elections. This is our first ever SC elections even though this is our 2nd batch of students. I wanted to comment about the election long ago but I waited until all the votes were casted before voicing my opinions. Besides, the classes had their class committee election not long ago while I believe many CCAs are electing their leaders too. So the concept of leadership seems to be in everybody's mind right now. It's a shame that we are doing intra personal skills like time management instead of leadership skills in civics now.

I don't think I would want to talk about what it takes to be a leader or what are some characteristics of a leader. I believe that there are many more resources and people who can do a better job listing down these ideas. But I shall share with you some ideas that I have of leaders and to quote some of the recent issues in schools as an examples to illustrate my points.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Types of Leadership
Obviously, I can start with a line that goes "there are many types of leaderships blah blah", but let us cut the chase and go straight to the point.

Visionary Leaders
Or what Keirsey mention as leaders of leaders are the best known type of leadership today. They are leaders who can envision what an organisation can achieve in the long term and most important of all, how to get there. They are the big picture kind of leaders who can inspire other leaders and followers alike to achieve great things together. Hitler is a visionary leader, just that his vision is evil.

The student council will definitely need visionary leaders to bring the senior high (and the junior high) SC to greater heights. They will be leading the students back to our new campus in 2009 with many unknowns, uncertainties and opportunities. They could set the tone, culture, environment for subsequent batches and bring the school to greater heights. They can inspire people to follow them with a common goal worth going for. Similarly for our new CCA, we need a visionary leader to set the directions for the CCA for the students at the beginning.

A visionary leader may feel out of place as a house captain/leader or a class chairperson. As a class chairperson, he/she may be required to take up the responsibility of keeping law and order in the class, performing a supervisory and administrator role rather than leading the class to, urm... greater heights. After all, the greatest height you can reach as a class leader may just be to win the class league or something. Similarly, as a house captain/leader, their objectives may be to promote cohesiveness as a house and perhaps to become the best house among the houses. They are required to come out with a game plan to lead their house within specific rules of the game.

Visionary leaders like to define the rules, that's how they always win (just kidding).



Moral Leaders
These are the people persons. They can be morally upright people who are great role models in school, often singled out by teachers as an example for the rest to follow. All SCs are suppose to be moral leaders first as they are expected to set good examples for their juniors. Moral leaders lead by the heart as they can empathise with others. They will always look for a cause worth fighting for when they lead. Their goals is to make the world a better place for everyone, perhaps including animals and other living things.

All students in the school are expected to be a moral leader to their juniors, to set a good example and display the positive characteristics as a role model. In fact, the society expects moral leaders out of teachers and political leaders too (even scholarship holders). We need many moral leaders to feel comfortable in the society as many would want to live in a world where they feel that the world is good rather than evil. To maintain the positive image of the school, we need these moral leaders to leave good images in the public's eyes.



Managerial Leaders
The class chairperson example given earlier will be a managerial leader. They need to manage the class and before they can manage the class, the class must be willing to be managed by them. Therefore managerial leaders tend to have good relationships with their followers. They will take good care of those they lead and are willing to contribute selflessly. As the title suggests, these leaders are there to manage a given tasks or group. They take responsibility to make sure that things get done and are done well. Most club and society CCA leaders are managerial leaders too as the person who really decides on the direction of the CCA is the teacher in charge. They are important leaders because without them, there will be no one to make sure that things get done




Ra Ra Leaders
The house captain/leader example would be a classic Ra Ra leader type. They are really fun people to begin with and are usually good with their hands/feets/words (so are good with things like cheers etc) They are spontaneous and quick to adapt to changes. These leaders can lift the morale of their followers and are willing to take risks. They usually rise to the position of a leader simply because they are the best at their trade (like sports etc). Ra Ra leaders are very important for SCs too.

-------------------------------------------
The SCs, or a CCA or any organisation for that matter needs all 4 types of leaderships to be successful. An individual student may be able to perform well in 2 to 3 types of leaderships but they definitely need others to be leaders to make things work.

As for the SC elections, I see a lot of managerial leaders who promise to do a lot of things for the school, to listen to feedback from the students and make contributions for the students in the council. I see a lot of Ra Ra leaders who are good at campaigning and are willing to take up the risks to challenge the norms so that they can have a fun and exciting school. I know some moral leaders as they have good character, academic results and attitude for example. But I only manage to find a visionary leader, and it's not through the campaigning process.

In the coming executive president elections, I hope to see a visionary leader being elected in the process, even though the visionary leader may not be the best at campaigning. Which brings me to the point of the flaws in a democratic elections which I may, or may not be discussing in the future.

----------------------------------------------

Disclaimer - do you think i need one? well.. let's just say that the stuff above is my personal opinion only. I only decided to type it out after i failed to load videos from tudou.com even though this issue has been in my head for quite some time.