Selling Happiness, Not Leading

Leadership is not easy, it has multiple facets. Some days are good while some nights are awfully short. The American President Harry S. Truman had a sign on his desk that said: “The buck stops here”. It means as a President, all tough decisions are to be made by him, and ultimately, he has to accept the responsibility for those decisions as well. A Wiseman once said If You Want to Make Everyone Happy, Don’t Be A Leader, Sell Ice Cream.

Leadership requires a leader to see the course of the present and upcoming events from the top. Pretty much like an Eagle that flies high to a certain point and keeps a sharp eye at any opportunity.
Leadership also means thinking about the best interests of your people with complete determination. Be it a small brick-and-mortar organization or a large firm, a leader is responsible for every action taken by their management. A good leader always needs to be well informed about every activity taking place in their organization or country.

As a leader, some people may agree with your decisions, others may outrightly refuse to work under you or may disagree with your decisions. One of the leadership principles says: if you want to make everyone happy, Don’t be a leader, Sell ice cream.

This means a leader can not please everybody and honestly, there is no point in even thinking about that. A leader should be able to see the larger picture and must look after the common interest of people. If a decision is made keeping in mind a particular group of people, a segment, that may not go well with other people and will eventually bring a bad reputation to the leader.

A leader has to think and act far beyond being liked by everybody. Being liked by all is not easy, in fact, it is impossible. To be a leader is to be unpopular at times but that’s okay, as long as you think about the interest and betterment of your people with a broader perspective.
A good leader must command with a reason. There should be no self-interest and all decisions should be made without emotions. If a leader makes a decision with emotions over a reason, those decisions are destined to fail in the long run because they overlook a massive public interest.
You will be liked by some and hated by others, but a leader needs to look after the interests of everyone without worrying much about being liked. Eventually, if the decisions are good, popularity falls in place and negative opinionated people begin to change their views too.

If you have a problem with people disliking you and are unhappy about the course of events, perhaps the leadership is not for you. On second thought, leadership is not for everybody.

It requires a nerve of steel to be able to make tough, unpopular decisions. People may not like you. With the popularity of social media, people are destined to voice their opinions against you on social media.

Afraid much, ahh – forget about leadership. You ain’t made for that, better go and sell ice cream.

Hey wait, don’t forget unique — flavors, please.