Personal qualifications for a leader of a social (ethnical) group

Abstract

Social leadership is socially and psychologically conditioned. In the first case it is connected with functioning of a group, in the second - with a personality of an individual.

There occur individuals in social life, who evince a permanent inclination for leadership. Psychological literature deals with such facts. It observes that there must exist a group of unusual, particular inborn features which predistine an individual to act as a leader, or which are indicative of the arrangement of needs possible to be gratified when acting as a leader.

Efficiency of leadership is another problem. At first it was connected with personal features of a leader exclusively. Now it is said that the efficiency of a leader is dependent on the two following factors: personality of a leader and psycho-social situation of a group: the type of function, the kind of a task, the size of a group. An accurate selection of a group of features of a leader’s personality in relation to socially motivated expectations of a given group members are conductive to the efficiency in leadership.

From among possible types of a leader’s personality it seems to be important to divide them into: (1) concentrated on environment and (2) self-concentrated ones. Those first represent a personality of a leader disposed to ideas and values. Two subtypes can be separated here: task-oriented and human relations oriented.. It is the task, its realization, what is most important for the first ones. For the second the basic value is a man and his well-being. For a self-concentrated leader at last the main source of motivation is the present state of his own personality. The ultimate aim of his activity, often unconsciously, is gratification of his own needs. In a, leader’s activity they find a substitute for something they need most of all: feeling of safety, feeling of becoming more valuable or getting rid of feeling guilty. Leaders who represent the above mentioned types of personality prefer different styles of leadership and their activity leads to various results in a group.

The fundamental aim of an ethnical group is activity tending towards maintaining its own identity. Motivation of this aim is different if the existence in a diaspora is temporary, and different if it is lasting. Then this identity finds its motivation in psycho-social premises of the development and existence of an individual.

In order to make human evolution complete there must be a definite system of values, a system which not only can regulate the social life of a group but also gives much sense to the psychical life of an individual, it secures an individual his autoidentification. Such evolution demands a certain stabilization and cultural continuity in a social environment. This stabilization has two dimensions: transversal and longitudinal-historical. An individual wants to see himself here and now and he also wants to see himself in course of time. An individual can find such a perspective through the affiliation to family life, as well as social and national.

Taking this into consideration it should be said that processes of rapid and hurriedly done interruption of ethnical ties are harmful both for an individual and for society. A leader’s activity in an ethnical group should tend to maintain its cultural tradition, this way making a full and harmonious evolution of individual members of ethnical society easier.