Leadership isn’t the most important thing. It is everything to success. Nations and tribes rise and fall with leadership. Economic, social, and spiritual development and growth all hinge on leadership. How far the nation can go depends on leadership. How generous and wicked a people can depend on leadership Personal development depends also on how one governs and leads his or her life. There will not be progress or regression without the presence of leadership. Change can't happen without leadership. People can complain about bad economic and social conditions all they want, but they will never change for the better without the presence of a good leader.
"A group of ships led by a lion will always defeat an army of lions led by a sheep". From this quote, it can be concluded that with leadership comes everything. The vision, attitude, and character of a leader will determine where the followers will end up. How the followers behave is a direct replication of how the leader behaves. One can easily deduce that this particular group of people are the followers of such a leader. This is so because leadership reproduces itself in multiplicity. If the leader is corrupt with a crooked mindset, expect to have him or her in abundance from the followers. This will, in turn, produce a corrupt nation. You can't expect to have sweet water from a bitter spring.
An immoral leader will lead the nation into great levels of immorality and corruption, and the world is now full of such leaders. From the above statements, it still begs the question, "How do we allow these leaders to lead when we fully know that they are leading us into destruction?
The success of a family sorely depends on the good leadership of the man or woman (if it's a female-headed household) in the house.
Leaders should have a vision of where they want to end up. They might not know how to get there, but at least they have an idea where they are going. Can the blind lead the blind? Yes! But we all know where they will end up. We also have this scenario where the blind are leading the sighted! Particularly in Africa, where our leaders have no clue where they are going!
The success of a good leader is never measured by how many people follow him or her. But a great leader is judged by the impact and change he brings to his followers. A great leader empowers his followers to be who they were born to be. The continuation of the leader's vision after he is gone is another indicator of great leadership. If everything comes to an end when the leader leaves, the leader has failed. When leaders leave, we have power vacuums. Projects and plans for development have been halted.
Great leaders impact people's lives through influence, not coercion. In Africa, for example, we had leaders like Kamuzu Banda, Kwame Nkuruma, and Julius Nyerere who led the people with an iron fist. They practiced a humanistic type of leadership where people basically worshiped them as gods. In Malawi and Ghana, for example,the names Kamuzu and Kwame Nkuruma could not be mentioned in any way. People were told that the man could hear them whenever they mentioned his name. Their names were so fearsome to a point where one could not name their children the same name as Kamuzu. They ruled by taking advantage of people's spiritual weaknesses and putting fear in their hearts. They didn't influence people to be followers, who could, in turn, develop into good leaders. Anyone who had a different mind and opposed them was either killed or imprisoned for life. They are celebrated as fathers of the nation, but their leadership contributed to the lack of development in African countries, and the effects are still being felt today, even after they are long dead. There were times when people were forbidden to own more property than Kamuzu had. People were forbidden to drive expensive cars like Kamuzu. They suffocated development because people were so afraid to work and improve their ideas and skills to develop themselves and their communities. However, this doesn't take away the contributions they made to their countries, but they could have done more than what they achieved.
Leadership is about motivating others to achieve their full potential. Great leaders inspire rather than manipulate their followers. Some of the leaders we've had feasted on exploiting people's ignorance and poverty to get what they wanted. There is a story about an African president who cheated his people by telling them that if he won the elections, he would buy them shoes. People voted for him, but when they reminded him of his promise, he turned around and told them to leave, calling them insane. "How can I buy your shoes if I don't know your sizes?" he wondered. People forget that being a leader is a privilege, not a right. Leadership is founded on
Trust is the foundation of leadership. People follow you because they believe you have what it takes to lead them to the promised land, but they frequently betray that trust from the moment they are declared the winner! One should always ask himself or herself if he or she is capable of following himself or herself. Why should others follow us if we cannot follow ourselves? If we can't trust ourselves, why should others?
We now have a generation of leaders who are completely self-centered. They advance their own personal agendas and interests. They are only interested in themselves, not in the people they are supposed to serve. They are under no moral obligation to serve the people. Leadership is about serving others rather than serving oneself or being served. When today's leaders enter into agreements with corporations and financiers, they first negotiate their cut of the deal before considering the people. They are concerned with self-improvement, whereas the majority are in desperate need of basic necessities. They live large without regard for the people they lead. The majority of the deals they make have long-term negative consequences that they must pay for.
This goes to families too. A man who is supposedly the leader of the family needs to have a clear picture of where he's taking his family, but more often, it's the opposite. Men have no clue as to where they are taking their families. Most of them cannot give an outline of the activities they want to take to achieve their families goals. How can they have activities outlined to achieve their family goals if they have no purpose in their lives that brings out a vision and the vision produces goals both long and short term in order to achieve the vision, which will fulfill the purpose? That lack of purpose leads men to wonder about like headless chickens, not knowing what to do or where to go. A man who doesn't know where he is going is never lost! As a result of this, they waste time with unproductive behaviors like gambling and drinking alcohol excessively. This is why we have a lot of broken homes and unruly, spoiled kids. How then do we expect to have productive communities and nations since families make up communities, and communities make up a nation? It is from these families that our corrupt and unproductive leaders come!
For Africa and the rest of the world to change, we need new leaders—leaders with a purpose and a vision that benefit their people. They may not know the route, but they are certain of their destination. We require leaders who are focused and determined to improve the lives of their followers. This generation's mindset must be changed for this change to occur. Because leaders come from families, this change should begin with the family. If corruption and rottenness begin at the family level, the chances of having a good leader in the future are also bleak! Change must begin with us! "Everything rises and falls with leadership," said John C. Maxwell.
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