Leadership can be defined as a discipline that aims to inspire certain objectives, which are established to satisfy the common good of those interested, who will follow the influence of the leader’s actions to satisfy their fulfillment.
In democratic societies, the public goes through us and makes us all responsible:
As social organizations that purposefully interact with diverse communities, as entrepreneurs that generate economic security for the dignity of families, as solidarity companies and organizations that assume social responsibility with the environment, as institutions for education and spirituality that cultivate being and they prepare for the actions of people, as individuals who coexist in society and are dependent on it.
Public leadership corresponds then to the comprehensive strategic exercise that is carried out at the service of the human community, overcoming pettiness and selfishness typical of the individual’s fear of the other, who is his equal, but never the same. Public leadership invites inspiration for our own who are also others, to the holistic vision of the human and a mission that recognizes us as social beings; to the good example, gratitude, respect and the conviction of contributing with our potentialities to the generation of public value.
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In democratic cultures, public leadership will be based on free will, open thinking, plurality, dialogue, peace and coexistence. It is incoherent to separate the categorical mandate of the public leader in light of the neoconstitutional legal paradigm (Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law) that currently legitimizes the power of the Republic, recognizing the State as the only institution of the democratic social fabric, which has the inescapable obligation to generate public value. The latter is the primary reason why we are all required to contribute taxes.
Western countries through Organizations such as the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), have managed to design documentary tools that serve as a guide for technical direction for the functioning of democracies in the hemisphere, highlighting the models of Governance – Good Government that integrate the management of different actors in inter-institutional synergy to materialize objectives and indicators of public value and quality of life effectively. For example, the reduction of poverty and gender gaps through business incentives that increase the employability and employability of women and the sexually diverse population, or the implementation of public policies to eradicate hunger in boys and girls who are in school.
The public leader is not necessarily a public servant, the public leader is that person capable of recognizing his humanity and exercising his category of citizen to build and inspire the construction of a strengthened social fabric, capable of integrating and cooperating between institutions of a different nature ( public, private, solidarity, community) for the achievement of the common good agreed through the social contract represented in the general interest contemplated in the Political Constitution.
In the case of Colombia, programs such as Works for Taxes are successful examples of public value generated by private companies through legislation that gives confidence to all citizens, beyond bureaucrats, to assume responsibility for what is public with vehemence, which impacts us to everyone (such as fiscal sanctions), in all spheres of our life in society (such as the use of a road in good condition or access to basic and quality education).
Genuine public leadership is very easy to recognize when we look carefully, since it is exercised by people whose purpose is inspired by the gift of service, love from humanity. Unfortunately, like many other situations and conditions of this time, it has been diluted in electoral products that are sold through political marketing, acting as defrauders of public morals and promoters of polarization that fractures the social fabric.