How To Succeed In Leadership As A Melancholy.

Steps To Succeeding In Leadership As A Melancholic Leader:

Leadership in recent times has for a fact become the bane of the numerous problems and challenges the world is presently confronted with. Naturally, man was gifted with everything it will take him to rule and govern himself by God, but rarely has he been able to fully and exhaustively harness these gifts, resources and potentials to solve the problems he’s faced with.

Leadership is not just about ruling a set of people or governing them. It is rather more about bringing solutions to their problems, and making some very positive and remarkable impacts and influence in their lives. And this is where a lot of present day leaders often fails in their leadership role.

You can build all the skyscrapers as a leader, construct all roads and bridges and perhaps build all the best gigantic infrastructures, but the question now is, how has your leadership style been able to impact directly the lives of the people you are leading? Perhaps, by way of either improving their living standard and economic well-being, or influence their thought-life positively, and also to maybe bring solution to their problems? This is obviously is the hallmark of a leader.

I have been pondering on this for a while now, while so many present day leaders often fails to live up to their leadership roles, in positively and directly impacting and influencing the lives of their followers, and also effecting the needed change where it is necessary in the society.

Consequently, I recently discovered that in leadership, no one can give out what they’re destitute of. If you do not have it, then you cannot give it out. As humans, we are diverse in so many ways. And these diversities clearly reflects in our strengths or qualities, and also our weaknesses.

However, these strengths or qualities and weaknesses didn’t just come from nowhere. They no doubt came from our inherited temperaments, which was first exposed by an ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, who believes in the theory of humorism.

Our temperament is our inherited traits, which were transferred to us by our parents and even more from our grandparents during our conception. However a person acts or behaves, such actions, attitude or behavioral patterns can be traced to the type of temperament they were born with.

Since temperament does not change, it follows us all through life, although parental upbringing, environmental and societal influences may attempt to tweak it a bit, but they rarely do change it, as we will always be seen yielding unknowingly to its influence on us.

Our temperaments often influences our individual or personality traits in every aspect of our lives. It’s basically for this reason that different persons often acts and behaves differently as a result of the temperament they are born with.

There are basically four categories of temperaments; they’re the sanguines, cholerics, melancholics and also the phlegmatics. And each of them has no doubt got their respective strengths and weaknesses, which are inherent.

Consequently, these weaknesses and strengths often comes to bare in all that we do or venture into in life, also including how we’ll lead others when we’re entrusted with leadership. It is basically for this reason that in our post today, we want to consider how a predominant melancholic person can succeed in leadership regardless of his or her weaknesses.

How A Melancholic Can Succeed As A Leader:

A melancholic personality is one of the four temperament categories. He’s described as earth, meaning he’s both hospitable and accommodating but also very retributive if undermined. He belongs to the introvert category as explained by Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung. This means that he’s rarely outgoing and often more concerned about himself and how others view him.

A melancholy is the most intelligent of all the temperament categories. He is got the highest IQ among all. He’s very detailed, analytical, enterprising and self-sacrificing, and often manifest all these strengths and qualities in many relevant areas and aspects of his life and in his interpersonal relationship with others.

However, despite all these personable qualities, a predominant melancholy still battles with moodiness and low- self-esteem, and these are basically some of the weaknesses of a typical melancholic temperament.

His perfectionist tendencies makes him become too critical of himself when he fails to achieve one hundred percent of all that he wanted, to the extent that he becomes very moody or looses his self-esteem.

The typical melancholic’s attitude of not appreciating himself for who he is, the thoughts of always thinking that others are better than himself or has got something better than his best even when he’s got the best, also no doubt contributes to his moodiness and low self-esteem.

When it comes to leadership, a typical melancholic person is a strategist and an analyst, whose conscientious and perfectionist nature often makes them want to please and satisfy everyone.

Melancholics often makes one of the best leaders because of their passion to directly impact positively on the lives of their followers, and to also make everyone feel very comfortable and happy.

They are one of the temperaments that always have a burning desire to bring about changes where necessary when going into leadership. They often wants to do everything right and perfect to ensure that everyone is carried along in their leadership role.

This temperament always have good intentions, aspirations and dreams to bring the gains and benefits of good leadership close to their followers. However, even with all their qualities and strengths to be very efficient in leadership.

But rarely do typical melancholics want to put themselves forward to be entrusted with leadership or vie for leadership positions just like their phlegmatic folks, unless when they’re found worthy or are encouraged by others to take that leadership role.

They’re the temperaments that always wait for you to deem them to be very qualified and competent enough to be entrusted with leadership role in any capacity. Hardly will you see a typical melancholy fight so dirty to occupy a leadership position as it is in politics of some countries or become so much desperate to get a leadership role, unless if he’s got choleric or sanguine as his secondary temperament is very considerable amount.

Melancholics often likes the “behind the scene” roles where they will be the brain behind some of the major achievements of that leadership era, and they often function perfectly in this role, since they’re thinkers and strategists. It is mainly for this reason that they often make very good and efficient second in command.

However, despite how promising a predominant melancholy may be in leadership, but he’s got some flaws and weaknesses that will definitely impede his success. It’s basically for this reason that we want to consider how a typical melancholy can achieve seamless leadership success despite his weaknesses.

I have always maintained that there’s no temperament that can succeed in leadership alone without the efforts and contributions of the other basic temperaments. For the reason that our temperament weaknesses will no doubt often tends to scuttle our gains in our leadership efforts.

It’s basically for this reason that we want to look at how a predominant melancholic can succeed as a leader eventhough they are not so much interested in being at the helm of affairs. But should in case leadership is placed on their shoulders, how can they without much struggle succeed, despite their weaknesses?

A typical melancholic person has no doubt got some of the basic qualities required from a leader, and which for sure makes him somewhat successful in his leadership role. Strengths and qualities of conscientiousness, justice, compassion, forthrightness, integrity and their hospitality, are some of the strengths and qualities that enables them to easily succeed in leadership.

But the two major essentials that they lack which are also very important to FasTrack their leadership success are; courage and decisiveness. These two are an essential qualities of a leader. They’re important to the extent that they enable a leader to make timely and crucial decisions when it’s tough, and to also be courageous in taking responsibilities when it matters most.

For a predominant melancholy, like his phlegmatic counterpart, courage and decisiveness are the least of his strength when it comes to leadership. And it no doubt often affects their efficiency and productivity in their leadership role.

A time always comes in leadership when a leader needs courage and the ability to take some drastic and timely decisions to surmount a challenge or to forestall an incidence from taking place. But typical melancholies, for fear of offending anyone, and trying to please everybody, coupled with their overthinking and perfectionist lifestyle often find themselves delay taking that bold and precise step that would have remedied a particular situation, prevented an unfortunate event from happening or perhaps bring about a timely success.

Consequently, they get overwhelmed, and perhaps found themselves in a mix or at a crossroads. For a typical or predominant melancholy to excel and overwhelmingly succeed as a leader, asides all his good leadership qualities he needs to be more courageous and decisive in his leadership role.

Furthermore, if a typical melancholy can work very closely with a more courageous, decisive and productive choleric, and learn to delegate some responsibilities to him, especially some practical tasks or field roles, then he’ll excel better in leadership and also achieve more.

For a typical choleric will bring his courageous, decisive and productive lifestyle into leadership, while the melancholic leader will also bring his aforementioned strengths into his leadership role, and both of them will make an unbeatable team.

Feel free to post your comments, questions and suggestions on this topic. If you find this post helpful, kindly buy me a cup of coffee or support me to maintain this blog’s running cost. Thank you.

Advertisement