What does de­rail­ment have to do with lead­er­ship and why do lead­ers de­rail? Re­cent­ly, the ap­point­ments of two se­nior Min­is­ters of Gov­ern­ment were re­voked, in a promi­nent fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, a se­nior man­ag­er was fired and an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, who was al­so chair­man of the Stock Ex­change re­signed.The ques­tion re­mains: what was the un­der­ly­ing cause of these sit­u­a­tions?

The late Steve Jobs–con­sid­ered one of the most suc­cess­ful CEOs of our time–de­railed from the com­pa­ny he found­ed. How­ev­er, he learned from his fail­ures and came back to suc­ceed be­yond ex­pec­ta­tion.De­rail sim­ply means "cause to run off the rails." Ap­ply­ing this de­f­i­n­i­tion to lead­er­ship, what caus­es our lead­ers to run their ca­reers off the tracks?

Dr Tim Ir­win, au­thor of De­railed said that "de­rail­ment in our jobs means that we are off the rails. We can­not pro­ceed in our present jobs, just as a de­railed train can­not con­tin­ue on its in­tend­ed path."Dr Ir­win stat­ed that lead­ers de­rail be­cause of a fail­ure in char­ac­ter, not in the sense of dis­hon­esty that re­sults in fraud­u­lent be­hav­iour, but be­cause of ex­ces­sive pride or self-con­fi­dence and be­ing dis­mis­sive of oth­ers.

Many peo­ple who as­pire to high of­fice be­come ar­ro­gant when they get there and dis­miss the peo­ple who helped them at­tain suc­cess. They de­vel­op an en­ti­tle­ment men­tal­i­ty: "I made this com­pa­ny what it is, and de­serve to be treat­ed spe­cial."Some of them be­gin to think that the prof­its of the com­pa­ny are for their own ben­e­fit. Maybe this is al­so the rea­son why the pop­u­la­tion has a per­cep­tion that min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment, both past and present, feel the Trea­sury is at their dis­pos­al.

Our char­ac­ter and val­ues guide us in all our de­ci­sions as well as how we treat the peo­ple we in­ter­act with. The traits of our char­ac­ter that caus­es de­rail­ment are root­ed in these four crit­i­cal qual­i­ties:

1. Au­then­tic­i­ty

2. Self-man­age­ment

3. Hu­mil­i­ty

4. Courage

These be­hav­iours are the ones that can mould our char­ac­ter and help us achieve the very suc­cess we seek, but when we al­low our­selves to go to the dark side, that is when we go off track.

Au­then­tic­i­ty

In Lead­er­ship From The In­side Out, the late Kevin Cash­man makes a pow­er­ful dis­tinc­tion be­tween char­ac­ter, the essence of who we are, and the per­sona: the ex­ter­nal per­son­al­i­ty we have cre­at­ed to cope with our every­day life. "A leader who leads through char­ac­ter is guid­ed by au­then­tic­i­ty, while the one who leads from per­sona is guid­ed by im­age."

There­fore, lead­ers who choose to lead from a po­si­tion of char­ac­ter, guid­ed by trust and com­pas­sion will stay on track. How­ev­er, the leader who is con­cerned about his self-in­ter­est and leads from a po­si­tion of fear, will fail to com­mand the re­spect and sup­port from their fol­low­ers.

Self-Man­age­ment

Can we tru­ly lead peo­ple if we can­not man­age our­selves? Lead­ers who fail to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their own ac­tions and be­hav­iours do not pos­sess the abil­i­ty to dis­play self-con­trol, to be trust­wor­thy, show ini­tia­tive, be flex­i­ble and pos­i­tive­ly di­rect their own be­hav­iour.

Hu­mil­i­ty

Moth­er There­sa, Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi and Nel­son Man­dela all had one com­mon thread be­tween them, and that was hu­mil­i­ty. Lead­ers who want to in­spire peo­ple need to demon­strate not what they have ac­com­plished in life, but their char­ac­ter.They must have pride in what they are do­ing and use their po­si­tion as a plat­form to bring peo­ple to­geth­er to do greater things for ex­am­ple, to build or­ga­ni­za­tions and coun­tries where peo­ple work and live in har­mo­ny.

Hu­mil­i­ty al­lows lead­ers to ask "How can I help" rather than say "I built this com­pa­ny, so the prof­its be­long to me" or "this is my Min­istry and there­fore I can help on­ly my friends and fam­i­ly". Lead­er­ship is about build­ing char­ac­ter first and then skills.

Courage­So what is courage?

It is sim­ply act­ing on what we should do, re­gard­less of any fear we may have. It is choos­ing to live life guid­ed by our val­ues and to do what is right. It is to pur­sue our dreams, to be suc­cess­ful peo­ple, to lead the way for oth­ers.When lead­ers lack courage and al­low fear and ar­ro­gance to creep in, they will fail to do the right thing be­cause it is the right thing to do.Lead­ers who lack courage will fail to take the de­ci­sions need­ed to move an or­gan­i­sa­tion for­ward.

In the cor­po­rate world, lead­ers who demon­strate courage are con­sid­ered as in­no­va­tors and opin­ion lead­ers, whilst those who lack of courage are viewed as "yes men" who are the po­lit­i­cal­ly cor­rect de­fend­ers of sta­tus quo. In pol­i­tics, lead­ers with courage are states­men and stateswomen and those who do not have the courage to act by good char­ac­ter will be con­sid­ered politi­cians.

As Win­ston Churchill, a for­mer British Prime Min­is­ter said "Courage is right­ly es­teemed the first of hu­man qual­i­ties... be­cause it is the qual­i­ty which guar­an­tees all oth­ers."In con­clu­sion, lead­ers de­rail as a re­sult of fail­ure in char­ac­ter. Jim Rohn, wise­ly wrote "char­ac­ter isn't some­thing you were born with and can't change, like your fin­ger­prints. It's some­thing you weren't born with, and must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for form­ing."

Nashroon Mo­hammed,

BA (Hons), Dip L.C., CCC, CLTMC

Work­place Coach

coach­nashtt@gmail.com