Leadership Skills

A key trait a leader should possess in order to be effective in his/her position is fairness. This is because when someone works with and listens to the viewpoints of others, they become enlightened and more knowledgeable, learning things they might have otherwise ignored. When people collaborate, the end result of the collaboration is an idea which would be very difficult to perceive individually. If a leader does not show fairness, and does not allow all ideas to be presented, it could result in ill-advised decisions. For example, in the book, Ender’s Game, Graff makes most of the decisions on his own, without the help of anyone else.  Although, at the start of each chapter the use of two different viewpoints from Graff and Alexander portrays the sense of fairness, in reality Graff is forcing Alexander to trust his ideas, which happens to involve Ender, showing the lack of fairness as Ender has no saying in a issue regarding him.  As seen in chapter 9, as a result of the suffering Graff causes Ender, he begins to gain rebellious traits, such as distrust, causing him to question the system. This is mainly because throughout the book Graff switches Ender from army to army, isolates him, and manipulates him, which is different from the way Graff treats the other kids. Seeing how Graff decided Enders faith on his own demonstrated his lack of fairness, as he did not take any input from Ender when deciding what to do. If Ender had worked alongside Graff to find a solution to help make him capable of fighting the Buggers, the result might have been completely different, as Ender would not hate himself. Yet, Graff manipulated Ender into committing actions that were against his beliefs, which caused hatred to build up inside him. Also, later at his desk, Ender received a message from Valentine, his sister, which made him further question the system, and made him grow angry at himself for becoming more like Peter, his brother. This shows that fairness is crucial for a leader because without it the ending result is often worse than the problem.