The Challenge of Leadership

 

President Buhari with World Leaders at the G7 summit in Germany

The issue of leadership has become an unending topic for debaters and arguments not only in our nation but all over the world. The world is groaning under the weight of bad and cruel leadership but we can make our society enjoyable by not joining the bandwagon.

A leader according to the new Webster’s dictionary of the English language is ‘someone who acts as a guide, a directing head of chief’. A leader must have a vision and know where he is taking his people to. Success does not dwell in isolation. You are really successful when you produce more success. The ability to have followers who believe in your leadership qualities makes you a good leader.

The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is action. While successful people take action, it is not so with unsuccessful people. They have dreams as well which lie only in their bosom. They are always full of ideas that never get implemented. God endowed everybody with talents but most people have allowed theirs to remain dormant. Success is planned. Nobody stumbles on success. It is a culmination of positive activities or processes one has worked on or gone through. Successful people have clarity of values. They know what they want and set their priorities aright.

Pastor Chris Oyakhilome defines success as ‘impacting your world with the investment of your personality’. He goes further to say it is ‘influencing the world around you to think like you and to aspire to your inspiration’.

Transformational leadership is where people’s lives are changed from the inside out. The leadership challenge in Nigeria has remained an issue because leaders have not effectively engaged their minds to be able to design policies to enrich the lives of the led. The recycling of obsolete procedures and systems that have achieved nothing over the years has posed a great challenge to a better life for the citizenry and until they are discarded, the issue of genuine development will remain a theory and topic for heated debates and round table discussions for a long time to come.

A successful person invests in himself to be able to impact others positively. It is when one has invested enough in himself that he can have the capability to change another. The world system is not really fashioned for anyone’s failure. People have been known to do well even in very bad economies. Successful people do not trade blames. They rise to the occasion when it is demanded. They take responsibility for their actions and blame no one for their failures (if any). 

Success is achieved not only through vision but ideas and strength. As a person, you have something to offer because god made you in his image and likeness and imbued you with the seed of greatness. Your ability to harness that inner strength will mark you out as a leader with a difference. If what you have is locked up, you are no different from the one who lights a candle and puts it under a table. The light has failed to illuminate the darkness it was meant to. You deny your world the opportunity of appreciating what God has endowed you with if you are not walking in line with his purpose for your life. It is not enough to come into the world or live long; but living too champion a noble and worthy cause and leaving your footprints in the sands of time.

We should let our works be such that will serve God’s purpose. You begin to fail when you compare yourself to someone else. That another person is succeeding doesn’t make you a failure because you are gifted differently. You are a real failure when you refuse to listen to the spirit of God in you to know what you have been called to do. You’ve got to use what you have to influence your world. Your path through life may have been tortuous or probably you grew up with a disability but all that is not enough to explain away the non-pursuance or total negligence of your dreams and aspirations. 

The road to failure is strewn with excuses. People who compare themselves to others are visionless and lack taste. They live a life of mere existence. Successful people look for solutions to problems. They are not afraid to take up challenges because they are aware they have what is takes to meet and overcome them. Success births success. Everyone created by God has something to offer this world, never bury your talent like the servant whom his master left with a talent but who out of sheer greed did nothing with it. He failed to realise that greed is a robber of integrity, diminishes one’s achievements and terminates destinies. In as much as we are living in a world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to live a good life, you must be up and doing with your divine endowments and leave the world better than you met it for the generation following. 

You are a success when you influence the world around you to think like you. Like, they say, begets like. This becomes possible only when you have made concrete and beneficial deposits in you. There is no gainsaying the fact that you can only give what you have. 

The reason the Nigerian society cannot boast of enduring development even with the enormous resources at her disposal is because those in leadership positions have not imbibed this notion. You become eminently qualified to draw from your wealth of experience and affect others in your sphere of contact positively when you make adequate deposits in you, otherwise, you may not have anything reasonable or remarkable to offer and you’ll make no impact.

Leadership suffers when the leader is bereft of ideas, lacks insight and is clueless about what means, strategies to employ to improve the lot of his followers.

Anyone can be a leader, including you.