As the Secretary-General of United Nations, there are some essential qualities and characteristics that we should pay attention when select the next Secretary-General. First, he or she should be a good manager and charismatic leader. Most of the people will say that the Secretary-General ought to be pay attention on politician than a manager. But in fact, management skill are always critical for each of the top job, no matter how much is delegated. Sometimes, the Secretary-General needs to be encompass himself with the right people and his chief lieutenants must believe that the boss is looking, that he knows ineptitude, idleness, and duplicity.
Besides, a charismatic leader can be more easily to coordinate and lead the division in both of the United Nations’ General Assembly and United Nations Security Council, so it mean that only someone with charming, persuasive power, and forcefulness will be able to make a headway.
To become a Secretary-General of United Nations, he or she should be have the quality of moral courage. Based on the research of Wikipedia, Moral courage is the courage to take action for moral reasons despite the risk of adverse consequences. In the short words, moral courage means doing the right thing in the face of your fear. Let me show an example, when the personal support become most important or what is saying or doing also become the right thing absolutely, because it is the right thing, then you need to know that you will generate a firestorm in the process. Moral courage require that we can rise above the apathy, hatred and fear-mongering in our political system, socioeconomic divisions and cultural of religious differences.
For the real and powerful Secretary-General are already prepared to put themselves in the risk to damage and affect their image seriously. In the respect of moral authority, it doesn’t come from preaching bland nostrums that will offend no one, but take the real risks from it. For example, the seventh Secretary-General, Kofi Annan had gave some example of the moral courage like in his speech for the year 1999, he said the challenge is not only the whole international community to face the challenge of genocide, atrocity crimes and humanitarian intervention, but also the developing countries in particular to recognize that their sovereignty was not absolute in this respect.
In the year 2003, the United States military offensive of Iraq was illegal as a matter of international law and then he be determinate to open up the issue and challenge of the Security Council permanent membership, although he knew that the chances of change were slight and this could not the way or absolutely no way to get the affection of any member of the permanent members. In addition, moral courage on the high-ground issues, but there is adequate scope for courage on more common peaceful and security problem. Despite Thomas Franck’s encouragement, there may not be the full hopefully for a Secretary-General say that an outright “no” when member states seem determined to follow some unpalatable or undeliverable course, but there is certainly area for push-back, rather than timid reflex acquiescence; the best Secretaries-General have always been willing and able to do that.
Furthermore, a Secretary-General should be have practical intelligence. Based on the dictionary, practical intelligence is the ability to find the best fit between yourself and the demands of your environment, use acquired knowledge and put problem in real world context. In order to be a successful Secretary-General of United Nations, it is not sufficient to simply possess this intelligence, but they must be applied it in a consistent manner and refined over the time. For example, he or she should be able to understand the pattern and shape of the organization’s information and data. At the same time, he should requires an ability to absorb, retain and organise mentally a huge amount of information across a very broad front. Besides, a Secretary-General don’t have to generate a good idea, but he or she must understand and able to recognize them. A secretary-general also have to understand the people’s foibles to get a chance of making the right personnel choices.
Other than that, Secretary-General need to have the ability to process information which are collected from the society. The Secretary-General is the one who stay in the high office and faced with the million set of the information collected every day. He or she need to be press report, adviser’s reports and briefs, panel reports, governments’ blandishments, lobbyists’ appeal. Among all of the information, there are not all of these needed by the Secretary-General of United Nations, so the Secretary-General is more crucial in effective conflict prevention and resolution in which he or she is notoriously under-resourced in-house for the kind of really detailed analysis of the situation and possible strategies. For example, although there has been some catch-up, and maybe will be some more with the creation of the Peacebuilding Support Unit, we are all familiar with the sad history of the Brahimi Panel’s recommendation for the creation of an Information and Strategic Analysis Secretariat (EISAS).
An effective and powerful Secretary-General has to be able to escape from the time to time for the comfortable insulation of his institutional environment and reach out for the kind of information that he or she really need it. He or she also need to be the one who like media attention, but not too much. The task for the next Secretary-General is rebuilding the organization’s global stature. A secretary-general who unable to get the understanding by the global media will bring the disadvantage to United Nations. For example, Mr. Annan’s lilting voice, attractive wife and affinity for the Manhattan social scene helped to give the United Nations a bit of panache that made the organization seem slightly less depressing than it otherwise would have in its darkest hours. But the member of United Nations will strike back against a Secretary-General who they think is trying to steal too much limelight for accomplishments they see as their own.
Besides, a Secretary-General of United Nation should be have the thinking time. Having only the adequate information and carried out the practical intelligence are not much useful to an organization if didn’t have a properly thinking time to think about the issues. For example, a responsibility Secretary-General should be set and limit an appointment or meeting to a few hours a day or can just apply the 15 minutes rule relentlessly to all of them. No doubt a good deal of time could also be saved in not spending hours listening to set piece speeches, in the Security Council and elsewhere, that could much more quickly be read if they are worth absorbing at all.
But of course, if a Secretary-General of United Nations follow any of these prescription too enthusiastically would be to quickly acquire a bad impression from the society like Boutros-Ghali. During the formal public sessions and events, gossip and schmoozing are time-wasting.