Is Bangabandhu Mujib’s (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) boyhood regarded as a ‘full-range leadership’ model? The leadership model or theory is not a commonly exercised issue in the discourse of political leadership study. Yes, a recent study that I co-authored presents the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in line with the Full-range leadership model’ that is principally practised in the management discipline.
It stands for the range of activeness or passiveness of a leader responding to fellows and followers and looking to the goal set by the organization. Such leadership shows the effectiveness of actions pertinent to performance, internal motivation, and people’s well-being. As an unparallel political leader, Mujib gained humanitarian qualities like the ideals of life, education and learning of the love and sympathy for the people and communal harmony since his boyhood.
The leadership traits Bangabandhu Mujib achieved made him an outstanding political character. He conceives all characteristics that the full-range leadership correspond. Hence, this well-accepted leadership model is entirely applicable to the whole political career of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
In the study of political leadership, discussion of the leadership model is absent. This academic field does not practice the political leadership model, particularly the full-range leadership model considers a comprehensive model of leadership. Interestingly, it directly corresponds with the political activities and patriotic thoughts of Skeikh Mujibur Rahman that all harvested in his feeble mind in his early life.
The model of full-range leadership principally is orbital around the degree of activities and degree of effectiveness. It developed during the 1980s and 1990s, and famous leadership researchers Bernard Bass and Bruce Avolio are the pioneers of this theory. According to these two scholars, leadership determines the leader’s scale of activeness or passiveness in responding to others and the organization’s aims and goals. In addition, people want to see the collective outcomes of performance, internal motivation, and well-being related to leadership effectiveness. In terms of Mujib’s leadership, these characteristics were pervasive.
There have a few sorts of leadership that make up the full range model of leadership. In this connection, Laissez-faire leadership avoid conflict and intervention, and passive management does intervention if the standards are not met. The active management by exception model of leadership monitor follower performance. Another leadership type is the contingent reward model. It clarifies the needful by offering rewards whereas the idealised leadership is a role model for followers and instils pride. Likewise, intellectual stimulation encourages followers to change their attitude, and inspirational motivation shows the vision for followers. Amusingly, in respect of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, followers found these collective qualities. These all built and concentrated in his personality through the practice of morality.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the creator and father of the nation of Bangladesh and is popularly known as ‘Bangabandhu.’ He was a great philanthropist who achieved leadership qualities since his boyhood. Max Weber stated that leadership dominates global politics and a leader is an image of an extraordinary individual’s collective qualities and is considered to have exceptional power like supernatural or superman to his followers. Mujib was a leader like that to his followers.
In his early life, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman occupied the position of boyhood leadership. From childhood, he learned how to help others, and share happiness with others. As Mujib grew up with many cousins and sheltered children, he felt the feelings of others, their happiness and sorrows. He shared his food with the fellows and enjoyed a greatly congenial home environment in his early life.
In this way, Mujib lived a life of simplicity. He loved the natural environment of pastoral life and loved to mix in the simple life of the people of his village. Such a natural environment and simple lifestyle made his mind a great one. So, he did not learn any evil way to earn more to live in the latter. Patriotism, social work and human rights he conceives from the relatively early days of his life. Mujib was also politically conscious from his boyhood which is an exceptional trait. This quality facilitated him in involving national politics through the practice of morality.
Figure: Bangabandhu and Full-range model leadership
Bangabandhu’s political leadership was the combination of individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and idealized influence that all appeared in his activities even when he was a young school student. Because of having these qualities, Mujib was able to work as an unparallel mentor. By attending to the follower’s concerns, he took risks for the sake of his fellows, showed a proactive attitude towards his peer group, maintained high ethical and humanitarian behaviour, and gained respect from the mass people.
On that account, Mujib’s leadership essentially correspond to the traits of the full-range leadership model, and this massive leadership authority was created through the exercise of moral and humanitarian norms that he envisaged in his boyhood, and carried out during the course of his lifespan. Such a massive foundation of the leadership of Bangabandhu tremendously represents an exceptional model of political leadership that aid him to create a new nation, Bangladesh.
[This article is written based on an article that I co-authored and published in an academic.)