" Bullet The Blue Sky": Free The Black Riders 3 and Leadership Development Skills

 

Three leading members of the Black Riders Liberation Party, General T.A.C.O. (Taking All Capitalists Out), Comrades Stress and Aryana Shakur, have been indicted and arrested on charges of a conspiracy to possess automatic weapons and attempted possession of a machine gun in a b.s. set-up and entrapment case... Read / Learn More

Developing Leadership Skills:

Our goal here is to create leadership skills in everyone involved in revolutionary organization. With the strengthening of leadership traits in everyone, the organization will reduce the amount of dependence on a select few individuals and create a more even-structured and egalitarian organization, creating a higher degree of flexibility and options for the organizations. We must be able to provide the necessary room for people to be able to nurture these skills so they may grow, learning from their successes and failures.

Below are numerous traits that help make a good leader:

Commitment: If you are not committed to what you are doing, it will show. You need to have a long-term commitment to social change, and vision of what the future can be.

Honesty: Honesty, tempered with tactfulness, is always the best policy.

Positive Outlook: The world is full of negative people and negative situations. It is important to radiate a positive-ness that looks for solutions to problems instead of focusing on the difficulties.

Confidence/Self Assurance: A leader must have confidence in him/herself. Don’t assume that this means you need to act like you know everything, but rather you are self-assured to ask for help or assistance when you need it and to admit weakness. The confidant, self-assured person accepts compliments as well as criticisms.

Confidence is not only important in individual dealings and relationships, but also when the organization is facing adversarial person who represents an unjust institution (i.e., the State.) A person must be able to have confidence to hold firm in a position based on the organization's principles or strategy.

Trust in People: It is important that a person must fundamentally trust and like other people. They must draw out the best in people and urge them to live up to high standards, as opposed to waiting for people to falter. Most people live up to the high standards and trust placed in them.

Mistrust of Unaccountable Institutions: Although a person must trust people, they must mistrust institutions that are not accountable to people (i.e., the State and corporations) A healthy skepticism is a useful quality for leaders.

Listening: It is important to have good listening skill. This not only means opening up one's ears but also really concentrating on what a person is saying.

Diplomacy: There are going to be many times when diplomacy is going to be needed, whether it be with friends or people in organizations. So it is important to learn the skills of diplomacy including being direct, assertive, and yet while at the same time tactful.

Recruitment: As stated above, it important to learn the skills of recruitment. These skills like all the others mentioned need to develop over time and come with experience.

Personal Organization: A person must be personally organized. They need to have a good system for keeping track of meetings, follow-up with people, making calls and so forth. A person must follow through with their commitments as promised. This is not only important to being a good organizer but also to the work we do in the political prisoner aid movement.

Goal Setting: People need to develop skill in setting measurable and realistic goals. Without such goals, we are unclear about where we are going. If we get there, we don’t know how or whether we should congratulate ourselves. Learning these skills will help to reduce burnout, something that we have seen many times in the anarchist community. These skills are needed in all level of the organization from the individual to the chapter to the Federation.

The Leadership Development Process: Guidelines for Leadership Maintenance and Growth

Natural leaders aren't sitting around waiting to be called; leadership skills are developed and nurtured. Like we stated above, the goal is to develop these skills in everyone in the organization. With this goal, it must be necessary to create circumstances and positions in order for these leadership skills to be developed. Not only is important for people to take on responsibility, but it is also important for the collective to actively encourage these skills to be nurtured in everyone. It will take the whole collective to develop leadership skills in individuals. Some methods of how to develop these skills are listed below.

Practice Evaluations: Look for and give positive, as well as, growth-producing feedback. Regular group evaluations at meetings are good, but remember that positive feedback is just as important- if not more important- as criticism. Though criticism must be given to encourage growth, this does not mean you must attack a person. Too many groups and individuals focus all their energy on criticism. All this does is cause people to drop out or not want to be associated with the organization or individuals. Who wants to be criticized constantly? Growth isn't created by telling people how they fail. Growth is created by encouragement and helping people achieve success. In order to be successful in organizing, you need to let people know they are an important part of the process and their actions help to achieve the stated goals.

Institute the Rotation of Roles, and Develop Systems for Training People for New Roles:

Few of us want to remain doing the same job forever. In addition, many times power leadership roles can develop after people remain in certain positions for too long which is not encourage in an anti-authoritarian organization like ours. Rotation of tasks and roles helps to create a more egalitarian organization while at the same time encourages individual leadership growth. Taking on and concurring the new tasks build self-confidence, which is the basis for developing leadership skills.

Use Those People With Well-Developed Leadership Skill to Train Others:

It is important that those individuals who already developed leadership skills assist those who are still working on such skills. No one should ever become "irreplaceable." So it must be important that those skilled people assist others.

Set Goals for Growth (Personal and Organizational):

Goals set and achieved help to create self-confidence in a person and organization. Goals also create a direction, which makes easier to determine whether the direction is one, which collective wished to go or whether the direction desired is being achieved. Not only are Personal and Organizational Goals for growth important but it is also necessary to develop long-term and short-term goals for both.

Adopted and modified from:
ABCF/ Tools and Guidelines for Successful Organizing

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