“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader” – John Quincy Adams.

“Indeed, you are a great leader that is why they called you to attend the leader’s meeting. It is really a blessing to be among the leaders.” - Francisco Mendes

Can rubbing shoulders with the greatest teach to be a good leader? Is a great leader born or made? Alternatively, is there a deliberate effort to find and learn new skills to become a good leader?

A good leader is able to delegate his roles and mentor subordinates to manage tasks allocated to them efficiently and effectively. Many leaders of small and mid –size enterprises are hesitant to relinquish their roles to maintain ultimate control.

Start-ups and growing enterprises require a lot of direct involvement from the owners to provide the leadership and motivation during the inception stages. This period is also a good time to try out delegation skills since the owners are closely involved.

The subordinates get to learn new traits directly from the owners, which makes them appreciate the roles and evolvement within and outside the enterprise. As they manoeuvre around from one challenge to another involving cash and other immeasurable constants.

Keen leaders normally use this period to weigh the abilities and weaknesses of their subordinates to facilitate designing programs to strengthen the areas of weakness. This period is vital in designing operating procedures when both the manager and the subordinate are involved in working through core work processes.

A good leader should allow for some mistakes during the learning period. It is of paramount importance that the leader possesses some qualities of a teacher which include a willingness to listen and observe the within and outside the environment in this case the business.

Finally, good leaders should be willing and able to delegate the roles no matter the level the size of the entity. The leadership cycle is not complete until delegation is evident in the operations of the organisation.

Some lessons learnt through experiences and the best experiences involve failures. All managers should strive to teach their subordinates to be better at dealing with failure during periods of uncertainty.

Those small and mid-size enterprises that have mastered the art have survived beyond the condemned 3 years in Uganda because they have been successful at building and preparing their staff for the tasks ahead. Most importantly, they have spent vast amounts of resources - finances and time- preparing their employees to deal with failure.

Arthur Kaliisa