The post is partially inspired from the passing of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore. To me, he is in his right, a great leader to the nation of Singapore.

What is leadership?
How do a person become an effective leader?
Why is leadership important?

Those are fundamental questions that everybody encounters when you are within a group, whether it is a nation, or a Multi-National Corporation, or to being part of a family unit.

What is leadership?
So far in my life, in experiences of being a leader and also being under leadership, I would attribute that the fundamental of leadership is how well you can influence people. No doubt that there are different leadership styles (ranging from how Autocratic to how Democratic one is) but at the essence of it all, it boils down to how you are able to influence a group of people to work towards a vision through the goals that you have setup.

How do a person become an effective leader?
To be an effective leader, you need to have a Vision and goals for your group to work towards to. A leader without a vision is a headless chicken because what are you trying to influence your group to do? And that is why Vision is so important as this would be the default consideration any of the members would look towards when there is vague directions or difficult situation. The goals are usually part of the vision, materialized and focused into necessary steps to accomplish into a vision.

What about leadership styles? Yes it matters but I have observed that this is dependent on the group that you are working with of which you need administer the different leadership style.
When a group belongs to
"I do not know what i want"
"I do not know how to accomplish what i want"
"What i want and i am doing is going to hurt me and i don't know about that"
You could lean more towards the "Autocratic" slant if you know better.

When a group belongs to
"We are all educated and aligned"
"We know what we need to do"
"We have our ideas"
You could lean more towards the "Democratic" slant.

Why is leadership important?
This is not what i usually think of until today. Why is leadership important?
Because believe it or not, it impacts how your society is and impacts your life.
It is the leaders that would shape what your group does and that would result in shaping what you do.

It will make a difference if...
1)your leader's vision is to have you to be good people
Need effort? not much. Much growth? Minimal.
2)your leader's vision is to make you to be great people
Need effort? A lot of it. Much growth? You bet!
3)your leader has no vision
Need effort? A lot of it to find out what you are doing.. Much growth? Minimal.. it might even backfire

Remember, to be a leader you need a will like iron! It requires a lot of sacrifices.

It has been about half a year since I've written here.
Truth to be told, I would always thought that life would get easier after doing the 'necessary' and 'required' things. The dating, the job, the marriage, the ministry. When I was younger, I was always fond of the good life that was promised in the media. The life travelling around the world, drinking and wasting away.

I did have my fair share of traveling to end up finding out how excessively bad it is to my savings and how excessively lonely it can get travelling alone.
I did have my fair share of disco and drinking to end up finding how little is communicated during the disco and how horrible it feels to wake up with a 'pukey' hangover the next morning(my body does not seem to go well with alcohol).

I have found that that life was a chasing after the wind of which is this emptiness lurking within my heart.

I've found myself coming to a cross road to choose between
1) Climbing the ladder
2) Staying in my comfort
3) Listening to God
*Disclaimer: sometimes there are cases where Listening to God could be together with (1) or (2) but in my current case, it was mutually exclusive.

When I was much younger, I used to look down on people who is unable to heed God's calling to full time for a reason and another. Now, counting the cost and imagining how my family or spouse would be challenged, it humbled me to see those before me who truly gave what they had for the work in front of them.