Leadership is mirrored with power. However, the “real” power is not the privilege to stand before everyone to command and claim the glory nor it is having and abusing “special treatments and privileges.” It is in the opportunity to deserve that emergent glory in leadership. It’s about humbling oneself and be of true service to those people whom you owe your mandated power. Words may never lose its meaning but the ones who once claimed them as their own may lose worth of it one does not hold true to what it really meant. It doesn’t matter what post you hold, what really counts is what you have accomplished to deserve such a question. Anyhow, whether you won their choice by an inch or a mile, the thing is, it’s yours now. So use it well. Make it worthwhile. Pay forwards the trust and confidence that the people have laid on you. Be the solution not the problem.

Leaders do not stand out, but that doesn’t make them different from everybody else. It’s just that they’ve got an extra task to accomplish, making everyone else’s tasks easier. Just because you’re in that “pedestal” doesn’t mean that you’re exempted from functioning as a member. A leader is also a member with just an extra task at hand. They too have to earn (instead of just demanding and commanding) respect by abiding law and being consistent with their duties. In that way, they have shown respect to the dignity of each person in the group, thus making them worthy to hold authority over them.

In leading, the organization one must always be flexible yet at the same time must still be established upon goals and systems. In the same way, problems like shortage of funds, deadly deadlines, opposition from higher authorities is inevitable. It may push us to compromise some of the organization’s goals, but if the leaders are firmly rooted in a yearning to achieve goals and a clear system, rest assured, the organization can still stand up on its feet. A leader exerts effort in every job and coming out bruised but successful in each challenge. Intrigues and rumors are all part of the obstacles that every leader would pass. Shaken but not broken, all these are normal. Trials mold you to become a strong individual and not crumple like paper.

This is often misunderstood. It is a fact that leadership is a responsibility. “With great power comes great responsibility”. As Spiderman’s famous line goes. Sometimes, the word “responsibility” makes you to have a sigh in exhaustion since this word often connotes something beyond our comforts. Time management is the key to juggling all the tasks at the same time. Using your time wisely and productively could help in easing possibilities of multi-tasking. Being bossy is not synonymous with being responsible. You’ve got to know where you stand and what your responsibilities are. You should stand for it through it all just like a single mother rearing the bay she never planned to have. In success or failure, in glory or in humiliation, a leader stands for the organization because it is his/her primary responsibility. He is held accountable for whatever happens with it. Therefore, one can neither hide nor escape because one’s love and commitment for the organization could really cut through the conscience. If leadership is founded on passion, then it can never be considered a burden.

Leadership is supposed to be shared. Let there be no such thing as a “one-man council”. Monopoly should have no room in tasks and benefits. An organization is a person united with a common goal to give the best for the organization they all belong to. They recognize that they are part of it and because of that; they claim a share both in the problem and the solution. Pinpointing and finding faults would be a waste of time. If we just do all our duties well, be at our best all the time and get our acts together, then maybe all could experience the difference, we’ve all been waiting for.

Leaders are our keys to success. However, the people whom they wished to lead also have the responsibility to follow and respect them. Leadership is also a give and take relationship. All members should also cooperate and not just sit around. On the other hand, members should listen to attain unity.

There has been an ethical conflict with the officials governing a country and even in a company or in an organization. Political system – democracy, monarchy, republic or even feudalism – each of these practice different cultures; they all have to follow certain ethics in order to run the government or the organization in the smoothest way possible. However, leaders nowadays seem to lose touch of the said political ethics.

Ethics, the science of right and wrong or simply a moral philosophy, is a critical element in a governing body. Much more, it is an essential quality that a good leader should have. Nevertheless, amusingly, most of those leaders in the government and/or organizations are the ones being conspicuously hovered with unethical politics. Everyday, one can read in a paper, government official and corporate leaders being sued for corruption, sensitive political issues, bureaucratic negligence and scandals. Oh, yes! They do make it to the front page. Even so, to them, it is more of a political campaign and rather popularity’s sake.

Issues on political ethics had long been present in the history of the world. From the time of Plato’s “The Republic” – a classical work of political philosophy, Aristotle’s “Politics”, Ethics of Nichomachean and Cicero’s Stoic, Gandhi’s idealism, Confucius’ teachings, Lincoln’s philosophy, Martin Luther King’s dream, Hitler’s inhumane philosophy, to Hussein’s leadership,  and now Obama’s serenade to the public. All of these are having political conflicts of their own.

Through time, unethical politics had shocked the world. Nixon’s resignation on August of 1974 was a desperate attempt to evade the Watergate scandal and was an evidence of dirty politics in the history of America. Even the church has its own glimpse of the controversies whenever its leaders commit unethical doings with respect to the church’s teachings.

Now, the concept of morality, equality, liberty and freedom will become just a vague picture in the history of mankind. Conflicts around the world are not being taken into consideration because of the mere fact that even leaders between countries and organizations have personal siege within themselves.

Politics as an art or science of government or the governing of a political entity will now just be a word synonymous with corruption, risk, indignity, immorality, unjust, scandals and those pertaining to the way leaders have shown to the public. Politics is now a means for an end.

However political scientist, philosophers, policy analyst, sociologist, and lawyers will look at it, political ethics are a dying art. Promising politicians and leaders will always be drawn to commit the same mistakes, one way or another, as what their forefather had committed for history will repeat itself.

People can only hope that in the near future, the trend in the political system will be true to its moral. Democracy should only mean “of the people, for the people, and by the people”. Republicans and Democrats will unite; the leftist and the government will agree on common goals; and leaders will rudder the entire boat for the greater good and not just for personal gain and convenience.

Politics will always be the guiding force in a nation. The leaders and the officials may have wanted to run a nation or an organization according to their personal judgment, but it is not at all time possible.  There are certain ethics in governing a political entity and that bending away from these morals and standards will mean destruction to the leader itself as well as the organization he is handling.

When Barrack Obama won the American presidency in 2008, one of his speeches promised “a new beginning”. Will this mean a new era of politics for a just and humane, moral-guided society? Alternatively, will it just be another promissory gone in vain? For all we know, we might wake up one day and politics has become a dead and rotten art already. So help us God.