Valued Leadership in the Voluntary Sector

I have been considering some traits evident in leaders of voluntary organisations.

The common characteristics seem to be someone who feels an overwhelming sense of emotional awareness and cares enough. This emotional awareness may be realised at any point of someone’s life and may be induced by being directly or indirectly affected by a social issue. That is to say, directly affected by personal involvement, or, indirectly affected by accidental discovery or investigation. And simply asking, why?

By whatever means, leadership then seems to surface through the reactionary force of the will to bring about change. That conscious awareness then requires vast amounts of dialogue, pragmatism, and endeavour. And to bring this to life, the construct of leadership will require drawing on an individual’s reserves of intellect, passion, integrity… So will be uniquely nuanced for each leader.

It would seem that the most valued leaders are those who are ever present in the public psyche. They are relentless in the cause. They take every opportunity to highlight the problems and court engagement to make changes and improve lives. They learn to become savvy media operators, and possibly, have to learn to deal with an evolutionary rush from the ensuing groundswell of support. I think these battle cries, are not only good but necessary. However, infectious leadership will only be valued by other like-minded humanitarians. This is because they recognise the selfless quality that is an amalgam of caring enough combined with the will to rigorously examine the question of why. For anyone less sensitive, it is still hard to ignore the persistence of an impassioned leader.