Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom

Other than being an incredibly inspiring story of one man’s determination for a cause, Long Walk to Freedom contains tremendous leadership insight. Nelson Mandela was an excellent judge of people and that was one of the fundamental reasons for his success. Other themes of his leadership that leapt-out to me were the importance of emotionally-detached decision making, selflessness and relentless optimism.

A leader needs to use her/his understanding of the people to make them feel comfortable around her/him. This ensures winning the trust of the team and that the concentration of the entire unit is in achieving the common goal. In this respect, I think there was a similarity between Ronald Reagan and Nelson Mandela. Both possessed a unique talent of keeping attention away from themselves and focusing it on their teams. This made the people around them feel valued and inspired faith in the leader’s judgment. There is evidence of this throughout the book but the passage that struck me most was when Nelson Mandela reacted to President Botha’s call to trade his freedom from imprisonment for renouncement of violence (Pg 522). Mandela’s message that was read out to the ANC supporters began by praising and endorsing Oliver Tambo’s leadership of the ANC. Acts like these strengthened the bond at the top of the organization which was essential for a united effort. Before taking any major decision, Mandela consulted with his ANC team and incorporated their feedback. Even when he took the crucial decision of initiating dialogue with the government, he mandated that the ANC Executive Council was ultimately responsible for holding the actual negotiations with the National Party representatives.

Another valuable take-away from this book from a leader’s perspective was that it is very important to avoid making decisions influenced by pride or embarrassment (Pg 218). Mandela was very tactful in handling the negotiations of ANC and the National Party. When President de Klerk’s inclination towards progress seemed insincere and ANC members were persecuted by state-sponsored acts of violence, the ANC leadership was outraged and called for resuming armed resistance. Mandela realized that it would not fulfill the strategic purpose of the negotiations and attempted to channel the anger through mass rallies, a means that would not wash away the progress made through negotiations (Pg 604).Nelson Mandela’s achievements also were made possible by his outlook towards life. He was fundamentally an optimist and chose to see the good in every person he interacted with. This is a major lesson that the future generation can learn from him. I have often noticed that a large number of people tend to be negative about life and identify flaws in everything they come across. It is not only a difficult task to work alongside such an individual but it is extremely discouraging to have someone like that as your manager or leader. By opting for a life of a freedom fighter, he sacrificed his desire to be a family-man and went through periods of grief owing to this. He easily could have moved away from his objectives during the decades he spent in prison but maintained an unwavering belief in his cause and remained optimistic about emerging victorious. These are the traits that we all can benefit from in both our professional and personal lives.