In the next elections Zimbabweans need to choose a President with the following leadership qualities.

Throughout history successful nations have been those whose heads of state have excellent leadership qualities that are focused towards the best interests of the nation. The President’s performance is often a measure by which we all judge the performance of a country because the President plays a vital role in the life of the country. Being a successful President means being a leader, but what, exactly,
are the characteristics of leadership that result in a successful president, what are the leadership qualities that are needed for good and effective presidential leadership? It is such presidential leadership qualities that Zimbabwe needs in its President for it to develop into the Zimbabwe full of splendour that its citizens long for. Presidential leadership is an intangible that most of us intuitively believe matters in making a country successful and unfortunately usually when we go and vote we do so without making an inquiry on the topics that would afford voters an opportunity to take the full measure of the candidate as a leader. That is how he/she engages followers, listens, treats allies and adversaries, perseveres, and responds to the unexpected and the urgent. In the next elections whenever that is, Zimbabweans need to choose a President with the leadership qualities listed below. I list these Presidential qualities with trepidation, because I am not a politician and many might have the opinion that, that fact alone disqualifies me from airing my views concerning Presidential leadership qualities but that will not stop me from listing them anyway.

1. Zimbabwe needs a President who can empathise with the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans and is able to successfully work towards improving the lives of all Zimbabweans. Great Presidents have always been those who are in touch with the ordinary men and women on the ground such that they have a deep connection with the needs, anxieties and dreams of the people. I do not believe that any man can lead a nation successfully who does not act under the impulse of a profound sympathy with those whom he leads, a sympathy which is insight founded from an understanding of the people you are leading, an insight which is of the heart rather than of the intellect. Presidential success largely depends on the consent of the governed which means that Presidents without a national consensus for major policies touching people's everyday lives are politicians not serving the interest of the people and are therefore courting defeat. Successful Presidents are those that have earned credibility among the people they govern and that credibility and trust is earned by keeping in touch with the ordinary countrymen that they lead. Public opinion is something that a President should listen to and respect but not to the extend that it dictates his/her every move or to the extend that he/she puts aside what he/she believes in and focuses on adjusting what he does and says to what’s acceptable to public opinion at that moment. Every president would like to be loved by everyone in the country, but presidents who sacrifice convictions to a quest for popular affection are not likely to be regarded as great Presidents. The President should be a person who believes in the ability of Presidential leadership to change public opinion, he should be flexible, pragmatic and capable of compromise but also firm, decisive and principled.

2. Zimbabwe needs a President who possesses a strategic vision about an ideal Zimbabwe and has a set of overarching goals with explicit and consistent viewpoints that are grounded in specifics. Every successful President in the world had a clear and comprehensible grand idea of where he wished to lead the nation in its quest for a better future. They are concerned with big issues and big challenges, and seek to explain their vision in a way that allows people to understand their circumstances and develop confidence in their vision as well as confidence in the set goals and policies. Great Presidents the world over have been likened to the commanders of ships at sea who must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer and a port to seek. The helm to grasp represents the vision that the President has for the country, the course to steer represent the positive goals that the President wants to achieve so that the nation can experience his vision and the port to seek represent the development and growth in the nation that is going to be a result of the President's vision and goals. Not only should a President have a noble vision but he/she should be able to lead people towards the achievement of the goals related to that vision. The President should be able to stand firm and consistent in support of his/her vision and give attention to details of the content of policies and an ability to assess their feasibility so as to be able to set the terms of policy discourse. As much as consistency of vision is important in a President it shouldn't make him/her rigid, he/she should be willing to change strategy in moments of crisis, vision can remain the same while the strategies continue to be modified. The costs of vision-free Presidential leadership include internally inconsistent programs that are unachievable, policies that have unintended consequences and therefore fail in the implementation stage, and sheer drift like a rolling stone that gathers no moss.

3. Zimbabwe needs a President with an excellent organisational capacity and perceptiveness about people which bears heavily on the quality of the President's appointments and his ability to mold his people into an effective team. An awareness of gaps in his/her own knowledge and concerns should enter the President's criteria when making his ministerial appointments. Proficiency at effective team building lies at the heart of every successful Presidency and it largely depends on how good he/she leads and motivates the ministers, as well as how strong-willed the members of the team he chooses are. Take note that a successful President behind the scenes should lead his/her ministers and what should be visible to the rest of the ordinary people should not be the President as a manager but the President as a leader of the people who has this grand vision for the country that they should eagerly help to fulfil. Managing has more to do with directing day-to-day tasks, whereas leading has more to do with casting a vision, goal setting, and motivation. The President must understand what his ministers are managing so that when he delegates work to the ministers he/should then know how to keep track of the delegated work. Team members are bound to have some disagreements sometimes and the President must be shrewd enough to see when infighting is unavoidable, even useful, and when it is destructive. Not to be underestimated is the need for the President to be surrounded by a strong team that is honest in giving solid, straightforward advice to the President, always telling him/her the truth as they see it and not simply what the President wants to hear. Karl Rove once said, "An effective President is one who can allow people to give advice that may not be in agreement with his views and values and opinions, and yet to feel secure in the knowledge that they are serving the president by doing so. Creating this environment for rigorous give and take, and minimizing leaks and the use of the press to pay back other members of the staff who said something with which you might disagree, is a difficult thing for a president to do, but a vital thing." Success of a President is guaranteed if he is able to ask were he is making a mistake and is given a truthful answer. Lastly the organisational capacity of the President is also judged by how well he/she has executive oversight and control over the fearfully complex systems and institutions in his care and his/her clear sense of priorities.

4. Zimbabwe needs a President with knowledge and wisdom about how to govern a country as well as the kind of strategic intelligence that cuts at the heart of a problem. A successful President usually possesses a formidable ability to absorb and process ideas and information and then sift through all the various information and come up with a well-thought out informed decision. A President's cognitive style that can be likened to an engineer's proclivity to reduce issues to what he/she perceives to be their component parts has been known to lead to the success of a President in coming up with effective decisions. The President's ability to listen to a diverse, rich and varied fare of advice from a broad circle and encouraging debate among the ministers with the different viewpoints is important in ensuring that he makes the right decision. The President should be comfortable in making decisions and his/her decisions should be unbiased. Of importance is an analytical mind in a President so that he/she does not substitute mere rationalisation for reasoned analysis. All great presidents are leaders of thought at times when certain ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified. The President must be capable of thinking in contigencies and needs to be an optimist but one who has a built-in early-warning system so that his/her optimism does not blind him from spoting signs of trouble and facing unpleasant facts. The strategic intelligence of a President is shown by his/her ability to startle the country into constructive debate, and how to move people into thinking beyond short-run self-interest projects towards some longer term projects that impact positively on the general welfare of the country as a whole. The roots of a President's political philosophy needs to be grounded in an acceptable political ideology that respects the human rights of the people and a Christianity affiliation is necessary because most people don't want a non-believer President although certified historians and political scientists shy from such a value judgement, it is the truth. Successful Presidents are not mediocre-minded, the middle-of-the-road is not where you find them in their ruling ways because the middle-of-the-road is not the vital centre, it is the dead centre. Great Presidents the world over were not middle-roaders, they all took risks in pursuit of their ideals and they all provoked intense controversy at one time or the other. Such Presidents sought to positively change the nation's direction knowing very well that they are bound to alienate those who profit from the status quo but because they are not middle-roaders who are mediocre-minded they went ahead anyway. Of importance to the strategic intelligence of a President is his/her knowledge of local and international history concerning Presidency because history is a great teacher. History can offer no sure-fire solutions to current dilemmas and problems, but it can provide guidelines that Presidents can only ignore at their own peril. The modern world with its nuclear weapons, electronic communications, and national and international responsibilities compel presidents to think and act differently from their long ago predecessors in the history of Presidents but the elements of compelling leadership in history largely remain unchanged.

5. Zimbabwe needs a President who is an effective public communicator who has excellent political skills and an emotional intelligence that is above reproach. A President needs to be an effective public communicator so that the public is well-informed about his/her thoughts and what he is up to concerning the developments in the country. The media is the tool that the President should use extensively to communicate with the people but that is not to say the President should control the media so that it reports only what he/she wants it to report because doing so will be infringing on the human right freedom of expression of the press. The political skills of the President that enables him/her to use the powers of his office assertively, build and maintain public support, and establish a reputation among fellow policymakers as a skilled and determined political operator are a must for a President to be successful. To stress to you the importance of emotional intelligence let me start by saying, "Beware the presidential contender who lacks emotional intelligence because in its absence all else may turn to ashes." Emotional intelligence in a President is very important because it determines how the President will react to situations he/she comes across in that position of authority and his/her reaction will affect not only him but the whole nation. The emotional handicaps that significantly impair Presidential leadership are for example, mood swings of clinical proportions, defective impulse control, uncontrolled anger, defective temperaments, rigidity and a tendency to suspicion that results in being paranoid. Emotional flaws in a President can result in him/her being an underachiever because those flaws can act as an impediment to his/her peformance and a defective impulse control especially when it involves the control of sexual emotions can result in the President becoming an embarassment to the nation. The presidential bedrock must be integrity and that includes an honorable private life. The President must be steady and stable and have a normal personality which has presence, dignity, a certain touch of distance but not aloofness and be a person of substance who has high morals and courage. The President must be tough, even ruthless, but not find sick enjoyment in ruthlessness and he needs to possess a deep self-confidence, stopping short of a grandiose sense of destiny.

Let me end this article by pointing out that it would be reductionist to suggest that any of these Presidential leadership qualities can stand alone because the truth of the matter is that they are inextricably linked, each of these Presidential leadership qualities connects to and builds upon the other to form a seamless web of a great President. Taken as a whole and not in parts I am sure they will give you an idea of the kind of great President that Zimbabweans need to vote for in the next elections for them to be able to live in a developed Zimbabwe of their dreams. In the world of imagination it is possible to envisage a cognitively and emotionally intelligent Zimbabwean President, who happens also to be a brilliant effective orator, a capable and efficient country organizer, and the possessor of exceptional political skill and a clear vision. In the real world, human imperfection is inevitable, but some imperfections are more disabling than others and it is up to us the voters to choose a President whose imperfections will not be detrimental to the development of the country.