Public leadership in Indonesia : Telling in the age of inspiring

Public leadership in Indonesia : Telling in the age of inspiring Novianta Hutagulung and Zamsu Bahar Arifin ;  The writers are Public Sector Leadership and Management Consultants

JAKARTA POST,  08 Januari 2013

In the wake of various fundamental challenges and unresolved predicaments facing the country, new problems seem to emerge and keep arising no matter how hard we try to solve the previous ones.  While we are still struggling to eradicate the rampant corruption that has been plaguing development in the country for many years, new challenges arise as if to add insult to injury.  The unrest in the Central Sulawesi town of Poso, religious intolerance, human rights abuses, the airport radar malfunction and the unclear direction of our education system are just a few of the predicaments.  Many initiatives have been introduced to curb these perplexities, predominantly driven by the assumption that all of these resulted from dysfunctional behavior. Stricter rules, regulations and operational procedures are introduced in the hope that people’s behavior can then be set in order.  Leaders in the country seem to be carried away by the assumption that the best way to help the nation maneuver through the age of uncertainty is by employing tight rules, regulations, procedures and instructions with a command-and-control style to keep everything in order. When most people are considered incompetent, immoral or ill-motivated, telling them the right thing to do seems to be an appropriate and tactical way of managing.  There is a growing tendency in regional governments and public organizations to intrude deep into the public’s private territory. Banning religious greetings to followers of different faiths, not allowing the wearing of jeans and straddling motorbikes and requiring holy script reading proficiency among candidates for public posts are examples of instructions or the “telling approach” popular among public leadership in this country.  To make matters worse, the government, which insists that leadership is about telling, is planning to drop English from the national curriculum and make religion and character building part of it.  The leaders always say what’s right or wrong with their people and what the people should do without ever giving them a chance to think about their relevance.  Telling people what to do is a shortcut, tactical and instant way to set their behavior in order and as expected.  However, things have changed dramatically. The landscape of both private and public sector organizations has changed and continues to change in an immeasurable longitude. The world, which previously changed in an orderly and linear way, is now changing in such a way that it has an enormous impact on people’s way of thinking, decisions and life.  Leading is now a paradox between maintaining order while embracing chaos. Competency nowadays is more about ability, adaptability and resilience to cope with a sudden, abrupt and complex nature of change rather than keeping things in order.  Complexity is the core characteristic that signifies predicament within the new landscape. Hence, learning becomes the essence of new capability for survival and growth in sustainable ways within the new era.  People will profoundly learn why, what, when and how to learn from the ongoing exploration, experimentation, elaboration and experience of either failure or success.  Today, leadership must be redefined. Instead of telling, the new leadership approach needs to transform into one that inspires, nurtures, embraces, enables, gives way and facilitates people to lead themselves; leadership that engages with the real problems yet are bound to the vision and universal principles of kindness and common causes as well as purposes.  When new leadership is adopted, development will not be vicious ways of fixing countless, exhausting and seemingly never-ending problems without any context.  Instead of trying to fix everything and meddling in people’s private lives, the new year resolution for this country should focus on endeavors that are guided and inspired by a clear vision of where we want the state of the future to go.  The vicious circle can only be replaced by a circle of virtues through the rise of inspiring leaders. We must breed inspiring leaders, or else we will compound problems with other problems that are actually self-made. ●