Leadership Characteristics of Judgment

by Ashish
(Delhi, India)

Leadership characteristics (good or bad) often become apparent when people step into positions of power. A lack of quality leadership traits can show through when leaders assume that they have all the answers just because they may have access to the power to judge every individual or situation. They start forming their judgments based on their personal perceptions. Here is a short short story about leadership and judgement...

Once there was a king, well known for his justice. One day he fell ill and could not attend the court. He, however, delegated the responsibility to the most intelligent minister he had.

The minister occupied the king's chair and felt that he had excellent leadership attributes and could deliver better judgment than the king.

A dispute between two farmers was brought to the court before the minister. Both the farmers claimed their rights to a piece of land. The minister asked for a proof and both produced official documents showing the ownership to the same piece of land. This made the situation complex but the minister was quite confident of his intelligence.

He asked both what proof they had other than the official document that justified their claim. One of the farmers claimed that for the last many years he had been tilling, sowing and harvesting the crop on that piece of land. Since he had labored on that land and made it fertile, so he should be given the ownership of the land. It appealed to the minister's intelligence, given both had an official document but only one of them worked hard on it. So he delivered the judgment in favor of the farmer who had been harvesting crop from the land.

Next day, with great pride, he narrated the case and judgment to the king. Having listened patiently, the king fired the minister.

The minister was shocked and asked the king to explain.

The king explained to him that he had relied heavily on his intelligence to deliver the judgment rather than calling on true leadership characteristics. The personal intelligence is a combination of knowledge (that is always limited for any person), personal biases and perceptions. Any judgment made only on the basis of intelligence, therefore, is biased.

A good judgment requires high level of diligence and very limited intelligence. On the other hand the minister had spent much less effort on diligence, probing and getting to bottom of the problem. He was in a hurry to deliver the judgment and earn the praise of the king.

Is this what we do in our everyday lives? How can we start now and cultivate better leadership characteristics?