Leadership Brutality

Hello,
You guys might think, why did I titled this entry Leadership Brutality. Mainly, because I have encountered this brutal experience several times in my track record as a leader. I have failed some mission as a leader and yet, I haven’t found a right formula to exercise my own leadership style. Adding to that, I haven’t found a person whom I can work with easily.

Science Club @ HighSchool
As a president, I blatantly failed. I have tried everything from holding a regular meeting to break fasting together. I have even tried to give a free gimmick and stuff like that but that doesn’t work. In that organization, I act as a President plus secretary plus treasury plus operational clientel.Job Expo @ College
I’m the organizing commitee president and I still failed. The main problem which I can see is that the core team seldomly meet due to the uncertainty of individual schedule. If the core team cannot meet and discuss about things, how on earth does the entire commitee can work. Plus, it’s some part my fault too because of the lack coordination.

JAMZ @ College
In JAMZ (Journey Across Marketing Sensation), I held a responsibility as vice president and focusing on marketing. Somehow the entire commitee failed. The apparent reasoning that I can see is that the president its self lack of coordination with its sub-peer. In this case, we cannot even get a decent speaker for the show thus making things hard for me to do all of those marketing. It’s not entirely failed since we are still way out of the deadline, it’s just that I can smell that this one is failing.

A Business @ College
I formed a business with 8 of my friend in college. I act as the CEOand somehow I failed again. I don’t know what syndrom gets into me but somehow I managed to fail all of the leadership task that was bestowed upon me. In this business group I really – really – really don’t know what’s wrong. I tried everything I can from motivating the people and even working on my own to make things work. I’ve invested more than 3-4 million rupiah (around $300-$400, that’s a lot on this part of the world) in this business alone in some period of time but we still cannot enjoy the fruit of the sweat.

The member is now starting to doubt me. The heck I know why. Probably because I’m not giving them enough ‘directive’ or probably I’m just not the leader type? What’s missing in me? I’ve set the job description for everyone, I’ve motivate everyone continuously, I’ve even make an outbound session for us to know each other better. I’ve coordinate with everyone on their job but after that, it should be their on creativity in play right?

Geez, I am out of option here. Probably I should just resign from the position of CEO? Taking a role as a member instead and giving them all the taste on how hard it is to be their leader. They seemed wanted to have everything done with less effort on their side. I once adopted this style and being this somewhat ‘semi-dictator’. None of the job’s done. I tried leisser faire style, none of the job’s done.

I remembered from one of the seminars I attend that leader is a lonely journey. Remember when the birds fly in packs and forming a “V� formation? The leader is in front of the pack—alone. Yes true that sometimes I changed direction, but that’s for the good of our company. Once our core is webhosting, when it didn’t work I turned to web development and somehow it didn’t work either. So then we tried a content provider (which is not working AT ALL). And again for the third and forth time, our core business changed to online store and then webhosting, back to square one.

It’s like commandeering a ship where the crews don’t know anything about a ship and as a captain I don’t know where I’m going. Or is it because that I’ve involved in too many activities? I just wanted everything to work. Probably I am not a leader type afterall.

I have negotiated something with my parents that they agree to invest some capital in my next business. I’m still confused, should I play in the stock market (bigger profit, bigger risk), buy a franchise (medium profit, medium risk, leadership excercise), or magazine (small profit, small risk, high prestige, stabil income, leadership excercise). Probably I should quit being a leader of this business group.

Someone please give me an advice…