The term ‘blusukan’ has become popular since Joko Widodo known as ‘Jokowi’
was being inaugurated as Jakarta Governor. Jokowi used blusukan as his
leadership style. According to what jokowi has done, blusukan is directly comes
to the people’s place especially the grassroot ( wong cilik), in slums area, rivers
side, garbage dumps, and others to know what are their problems and have a
dialogue with the people in order to make the right policy. More or lees this
style of leadership has sent Jokowi to Win the race of Presidential election in
2014. Regardless that jokowi used blusukan as an image or not, but this
leadership style is very effective and loved by the people. This is an
effective style because the leader can know the problem faced by the people
exactly, not just from the report from the bureaucreacy because we know that
sometimes the bureaucreacy just reports the good thing as ‘ABS’ (asal bapak
senang) in indonesian term. This essay will try to look the similiarity of
blusukan and servant leader as a concept of Islamic leadhersip style.
Blusukan is a Javanese
word, blusukan comes from the main word ‘blusuk’ which means “mlebu ing’ in Javanese
or entry (come in), and then plus suffix –an becoming blusukan, this means an
activity done by someone to enter some places in order to get something. As
leadhersip style Blusukan means a style of leadership that comes to the people
place directly in order to know, to hear, to talk, with the people to make a
good policy to inspire development programs that will be implemented, and to
know the effect of the programs that being implemented or as an evaluation of
program that is applied. So the blusukan
needs the leader to come to the people place, not the opposite. The leaders in
blusukan point of view are becoming a servant of the people. So the leaders
serve the people not the people serve the leader.
Leader and Leadership
are very important in Islam. In most circumstances in life, Muslims are urged
to appoint a leader and to follow him. According to the Prophet Muhammad SAW,
Muslims must appoint a leader during a trip, select a leader to lead the
prayer, and choose a leader for other group activities. One of the concepts of
leadership in Islam is servant leader, a leader who serves for his follower.
Servant leader is an Islamic leadership style, as what Prophet Muhammad once
said “The servant of the people is their leader”. According to this, the whole
purposes of leadership are to serve the people. One of the leaders in Islamic
history that implemented the concept of servant leader is umar ibn Al-khattab. Umar
is the figure of a leader who understood the interest and the needs of his
people, although he lived in poor condition. Umar often got around and
investigated the condition of his people in the night, this what we know as
‘blusukan’. So, Blusukan has sameness with the servant leader. Both of them are
oriented to the people’s need and interest.
According to Robert
K. greenlaf, he said: “The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the
natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice
brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is
leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or
to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve —
after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servantfirst are two
extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the
infinite variety of human nature” (Robert K. Greenlaf: 1970).
According to
Robert K. Greenlaf that quoted by Ahmad
Zubaidi in his journal, The Leadership Who Served In Reformation Bureaucracy, “Dimensions or
indicators used to
measure servant leadership
namely, (1)Listening, communication between leaders and followers is an
interactive process that includes sending and receiving messages, (2) Empathy,
"stand in the shoes" others and strive to see the world from
another's perspective, (3) Curing, realize that they have the opportunity to
help solve problems dihadi followers,
(4) Self-awareness, awareness helps
to understand issues
involving ethics and
values that are
universal, (5) Persuasion, clear
communication and tenacious
convincing others to
change, (6) Conceptualization,
trying to continue to improve her skills in looking at things from the
perspective that transcends the reality of the past and present (7)
Forecasting, ability to see the future (have a vision); so leaders understand the past, present
realities, and future possibilities, (8)
The duty to
take care of,
the leader seeks
to direct the organization's resources serve to steer
the good of society, (9) Commitment individual growth, leadership commitment to
help everyone in the organization in order to growth, and (10)Building
Communities, seeks to establish a close relationship as befits a family among
fellow followers” (Ahmad Zubaidi, 2014).
In conclusion, Servant
leader is an Islamic leadership style, as what Prophet Muhammad once said “The
servant of the people is their leader”. The question is whether blusukan and
servant leader are the same concept or not. Servant leader and blusukan are
leadership style that concern on the people. Both of them have the same purpose
to serve the people. The ten characteristic of servant leader is fulfilling by
blusukan. It might be that blusukan and servant leader are the same concept,
but it could be that blusukan is a way to implemented servant leader concept. The
important thing is that blusukan and servant leader is oriented to the people’s
need and interest. This is what Islam expected in a leader, which is put the interest
of the people as priority rather than their own interest, their family, or even
their group.
Malik Arrozzaq
UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta
1 November 2015
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