“Verity is a very big component of leadership”
Source: https://paperjam.lu/article/verity-is-a-very-big-component
Before the 10x6 Female Leadership, which will take place on Wednesday 27 March at the Centre culturel Tramsschapp, one of the speakers, Runa Khan (founder of NGO Friendship), will share her vision of leadership.
Could you give us your definition of “leadership”?
Runa Khan. — “For me leadership is about taking responsibility of more than your own self and striving to bring in the best impact for the people around you, while staying true to your core values along the way.
No one becomes a leader by trying to become a ‘leader’. It is the sense of responsibility that guides you to taking the role of leadership. I did not start trying to become a leader, I started because I could not tolerate the poverty and hopeless desolation a family was suffering on a river island I was visiting where a mother didn’t even have a cent to spend to light a lamp to feed her child. I set out to solve just one person’s problem, and that led me to find so much more issues I needed to address.
The core values of leadership are verity, justice, empathy, courage, and humility.
- Runa Khan, Founder, Friendship NGO
The core values of leadership are verity, justice, empathy, courage, and humility.
Verity is a very big component of leadership. You must embody what you talk about. I remember I refrained from publicly lecturing about my work before working for 10 years on it. I felt like I had to prove my work before starting to speak about it.
We all are human beings and we make mistakes. But we strive for justice by being fair and truthful. In my work I often interact with communities who request some services from us that we cannot provide, we never give them false promises, but clearly say what we can try to do and what we cannot, this creates a lasting relationship of trust, that helps us grow with people.
“Empathy is what guides a leader to prioritise issues without the involvement of the ‘I’.
- Runa Khan, Founder, Friendship NGO
Empathy is what guides a leader to prioritise issues without the involvement of the ‘I’. Without empathy, a leadership role can be misguided to serve the wrong purpose. I remember when the Rohingya influx started in 2017, Friendship’s leadership team members, and then all the staff members, started to donate out of their own pocket before any donor fund commitment was made for work there. Now we are one of the key Local NGOs of the Rohingya response efforts.
One must always have the humility to take feedback from others to be able to lead properly, and have the courage to take a stand against the current when needed. When Friendship wanted to start the floating hospitals, no one seemed to think this would be possible to run such hospitals in these remote river islands where barely any infrastructure or security was available. But I kept on my vision and took inputs from experts to make the best service available to the communities. And now, 17 years later, by the end of this year, we will have seven such hospitals all over Bangladesh. It took both courage and humility to get here.
According to you, are there any particularities to the female leadership?
“Being a woman in this world, one needs to work twice as hard as men, to be taken as equally good. Being a woman in the leadership role in development sector leads you to work harder to be a hundred steps ahead for the success and the reputation of your organisation. It is always about how far you can think ahead to prepare yourself. Practice and preparation are vital for any leadership role.
Leadership does not mean you have to be the best in everything. It is the reflection of how you inspire your team of different expertise to come together under a single-minded vision. You need to gain their trust in what you envision and believe.
When I founded Friendship, I was not thinking of being a leader.
Runa Khan, Founder, Friendship NGO
People are not born leaders. You develop it through your mistakes, failures and successes. When I founded Friendship, I was not thinking of being a leader. All I had in mind was to help bring justice for the people who are suffering. My leadership role developed along the journey and it took time and a lot of hard work. I had faced criticism and scepticism for my dream, but now I think I have enough achievements to prove there was nothing wrong in dreaming big.
It is also often the case that people think that a strong man must be supporting a woman in a leadership role. They need to make an end of that mentality and start believing that women can become leaders through their own skills and hard work.
What do you think is the best way to showcase your leadership as a woman?
“The best way of showcasing your leadership would never be to worry about ‘showcasing leadership’ to begin with. By nature, women are often more intuitive and more caring. Women in leadership positions should harness that power to make the best out of it, driving changes that make lives better.
On the other hand, women are deemed more agreeable, which is not the best trait if you are aiming to work in a leadership position. When travelling the ‘less travelled’ road of leadership, a woman needs to embrace a particular kind of adamancy to make the tough calls and gain the respect from society.
Another thing I recommend is to focus on creating winning teams around you. These are people who have similar values but have different expertise and perspectives into the challenges facing you. They can guide you, help you and advise you to achieve a lot more than you could on your own.”
Note: Runa Khan created Friendship, an NGO supporting remote communities in Bangladesh. Established in 2002, Friendship now serves 4.2 million lives a year, providing integrated services in the health, education, sustainable economic development, climate change adaptation, inclusive citizenship and cultural preservation sectors.
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Instagram ► https://instagram.com/friendshipngo
