Crisis in Leadership?

'Leaders need to have an intrinsic sense of right and wrong. These qualities don’t seem to be apparent in our society. This is worrying. The difference between what is expected of a political leader and a senior civil servant is that the latter helps to formulate policies, while the former assesses the soundness of the proposed policies, their long-term implications, and then goes out to convince people to believe in them. While we have good people with credibility and integrity in cabinet, not enough of them appear to have the acumen to explain them clearly and simply, and persuade the ground. This is a key quality of leadership, which in turn is a tacit balance of IQ, and EQ – an intrinsic capacity to listen.' Viswa Sadasivan I have extracted the above comments of Viswa's recent speech on the crisis of leadership in Singapore. Nothing new, but surprising and unbelievable to know that this is the perception of Singaporeans from all walks of life. I also share the same conclusion. Why surprising? How can this be when we are paying so much for the best, and the best, so well paid, give people this kind of negative impression? What is wrong? Paying not enough or the best is simply not good enough? With the money we are paying, and the honing of interviewing and selection skills, and scrapping the bottom of every barrel, we should be having very outstanding leaders whom the people can easily accept and associate with, and say, yes, these are the best leaders we are paying for. What we have are doubts and a feeling of unease, that they are not what they are expected to be. How many of you share this impression? Or is this just isolated cases of a small group of people having such views? The quality of leadership is not what they think they are, but unfortunately, what the people think they are.