Between A Leader and Manager

Posted on August 31, 2007
Filed Under Indonesia, Politics

Picture: Baharuddin Lopa the few good men in Indonesia politics

What differentiate between a person with leadership personality and a mere manager? The answer is plenty and will be in a very long list. I’ll just wanna pick up few of those. The order might not necessarily on priority basis.

(1) While the former thinks more on common cause and interest, the latter is busy to sharpen his skill for his own cause;

(2) The former is a more down-to-earth and populist kind of person in-build within him/her, the latter tends to be an elitist;

(3) While the former is humble regardless multi-skills he/she possesses and ready to help and sacrifice for the betterment of his/her surroundings, the latter hold the if-you-need-me-you-gotta-bow-your-knees-before-me kind of attitude.

(4) While the former is unselfish, the latter only remembers one thing: take more and give less. The list is on and on…

Unfortunately, Indonesian education is created to bring up a manager instead of a leader. And hence, the betterment of Indonesian life might not be seen in forseeable future. The reasons are obvious to me:

(1) With the sky-rocketing of higher educational fee, it’s only the middle-class citizens who can afford to further their education in to higher level (undergrad, postgrad, not to say PhD)

(2) The middle-class are clearly those already who have the privelege to live in ‘luxury’. In other words, they further their study not for the purpose of bettering their level of living, rather just to sustain the status quo.

(3) Our middle-class generally is not known for their generosity towards the underpriveleges. They live in extravagant way, luxury accessories without even have time to think and blink to their underprivelege fellows around them. Had they voluntarily lived in more humble way and spend half of their extravagant life-style expense for financing the underpriveleges, life would have been much balanced and better.

Leadership personality is usually not born from that kind of environment.

(4) Most of the poor young generation relatively have more sensitivity towards the society as a whole, hence more leadership instict. If these poor yet potential youth are not nurtured, bad thing like social instability would be just like time bomb waiting to explode.

Education, and opportunities to education for all is very important. If only the leadership out there want to listen.