Nelson Mandela's Eight Lessons on Leadership

“I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.”

In the revolution led by Mandela to transform a model of racial division and oppression into an open democracy, he demonstrated that he didn’t flinch from taking up arms, but his real qualities came to the fore after his time as an activist—during his 27 years in prison and in the eight years since his release, when he had to negotiate the challenge of turning a myth into a man. Below are Nelsons practical rules for success, many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.

1. Courage is not the absence of fear — it’s inspiring others to move beyond it
. In 1994, during the presidential-election campaign, Mandela got on a tiny propeller plane to fly down to the killing fields of Natal and give a speech to his Zulu supporters.  Richard Stengel his Autobiography writer agreed to meet him at the airport, where we would continue our work after his speech. When the plane was 20 minutes from landing, one of its engines failed. Some on the plane began to panic. The only thing that calmed them was looking at Mandela, who quietly read his newspaper as if he were a commuter on his morning train to the office. The airport prepared for an emergency landing, and the pilot managed to land the plane safely. When Mandela and Stengel got in the backseat of his bulletproof BMW that would take us to the rally, he turned to Stengel and said, “Man, I was terrified up there!”
2. Lead from the front — but don’t leave your base behindMandela is cagey. in 1985 he was operated on for an enlarged prostate. When he was returned to prison, he was separated from his colleagues and friends for the first time in 21 years. They protested. But as his longtime friend Ahmed Kathrada recalls, he said to them, “Wait a minute, chaps. Some good may come of this.”
3. Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front.Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. “You know,” he would say, “you can only lead them from behind.”
4. Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport. As far back as the 1960s, Mandela began studying Afrikaans, the language of the white South Africans who created apartheid. His comrades in the ANC teased him about it, but he wanted to understand the Afrikaner’s worldview; he knew that one day he would be fighting them or negotiating with them, and either way, his destiny was tied to theirs.
5. Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer. Many of the guests Mandela invited to the house he built in Qunu were people whom, he told Stengel , he did not wholly trust. He had them to dinner; he called to consult with them; he flattered them and gave them gifts. Mandela is a man of invincible charm — and he has often used that charm to even greater effect on his rivals than on his allies.
6. Appearances matter — and remember to smile. When Mandela was a poor law student in Johannesburg wearing his one threadbare suit, he was taken to see Walter Sisulu. Sisulu was a real estate agent and a young leader of the ANC. Mandela saw a sophisticated and successful black man whom he could emulate. Sisulu saw the future.
7. Nothing is black or white. When  Richard Stengel began a series of interviews, he would often ask Mandela questions like this one: When you decided to suspend the armed struggle, was it because you realized you did not have the strength to overthrow the government or because you knew you could win over international opinion by choosing nonviolence? He would then give him a curious glance and say, “Why not both?”
8. Quitting is leading too. In 1993, Mandela asked Richard Stengelknew of any countries where the minimum voting age was under 18. Stengel presented him with a rather undistinguished list: Indonesia, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Iran. He nodded and uttered his highest praise: “Very good, very good.” Two weeks later, Mandela went on South African television and proposed that the voting age be lowered to 14. “He tried to sell us the idea,” recalls Ramaphosa, “but he was the only [supporter]. And he had to face the reality that it would not win the day. He accepted it with great humility. He doesn’t sulk. That was also a lesson in leadership.”

Source: fyeahblackpeople