effective leadership growth through 3 key principles

The rudimentary key to a great leadership is knowing ones inner source of power.

The power to succeed is integral in the responsibility we are endowed with at birth. Each person has avenues to blossom his inner radiance,  The task here is to discover this great source of power, motivation or inspiration. This power is the light that will be dispelled to humanity and posterity, light that shines out the darkness of ignorance symbolized by our lack of love.

Every man woman and child is a born leader, though some make the mistake of thinking they may never achieve greater feats cos they think they are not born as leaders, a simple truth is that we are all great, its just that some of us wait for the challenges of later life to activate our greatness while for others from childhood have learned the art of taking the right decision (by virtue of good parenting, mentorship, self correction or other), hence they are considered born leaders.

You are the light of the world. The key to effective leadership then starts with self knowledge…….finding out that source of light power or strength within. Just like the gold miner, he goes to the mine and gets the raw material from which he refines out gold. We all have experience in life and to whom much is given not only is much expected but much is capable, life has impacted much on each and every person on earth and that is the crucible from which we are meant to build our leadership capacity. Life is a school with unending lessons where each and every experience is a teacher and a molder of our character and each person we meet has something that makes him our teacher and student. A truth about life is that the experiences that come our way are meant to arouse the best in us, they are designed to impel us to look at ourselves closely and see how we can better our environment using the lessons learnt from the school of experience and knowledge. In life we all have different perspectives and attitudes, these perspectives are coloured by our truest inner disposition, two people may see a man beat up another mercilessly, to the first person, the event may be a symptom of a morally insane society, to another the beater lacks self control, to another the one beaten deserves the beating, to yet another it’s a pointer to how he should beat others whenever he want to have his way. All these different meaning ascribes comes from our inner disposition which is usually coloured by our experience in life. The light of leadership within every person is a solution to the darkness around him. As chance or luck does not occur in creation, every event or creation is ordered by a higher power or the effort of man. True leadership is a lighthouse to the society because the leader creates solution to the challenges facing his society at that time of his existence. Dora Akunyili was a key in Nigeria and Nigeria as a nation was in dire need of someone like her, America needed a mind like Abraham Lincoln for her best interest, the world needed Thomas Edison more than any other thing as at when he came……….the globe also needs you now as she cruises into a more refines way of doing things. I call it “creative expectation” we are told that the EARNEST EXPECTATION of CREATION awaits the REVELATION of the GREAT MINDS.

One cannot reveal what he does not know. It’s the best within that we reveal in our short walk in the garden called earth.

A good thing about this source of power is that it can and will fill you with wisdom, enthusiasm to move on with an untiring spirit of excellence.

ii  THE ABILITY TO BRAINSTORM.

Brainstorm at this height of understanding implies our ability to generate a peaceful, non destructive, non violent method of impacting our society with those key leadership principles we have. Everyone is a leaders  in his own capacity, leadership is not the position, it’s more of the person, the position only serves as a platform to reach out to more people with the inner wealth in the leader, the wealth that blossoms as wisdom.

Lets take the case of the beater. A true leader will not be confortable with seeing someone beat another mercilessly, the act of beating will arouse something in him. He can act from the wealth of knowledge in him, he may approach the beater to inquire what lead to the beating……..an ignorant man may just think

“what’s my own, I don’t know them so let me mind my business” 

but what he fails to realize is that an unchecked aggression gets to him sooner than later. This is the main reason good men pay the heavy price of being lead by bad men whose sense of morality is as refined as their wants, appetite and desires.

Different people have different kinds of leadership strength. If a leader has negotiation skills, he can approach the beater and try to negotiate him out of beating the other person, if he has pity, he can appeal to the conscience of the beater, if he has knowledge he can make the beater see that there are more refined way of settling  dispute than brute force. Whatever he does, the important thing is that he has intervened and tried to help the needy.

Every leaders audience is different, our audience is determined by our disposition, how empowered with us, how willing we are, and how strong we can whether the storms and loneliness associated of  leadership. For some of us our leadership ends in ourselves, for some our leadership ends in our family, for some its our state, for some its our nation, for some it’s the globe. Some of us are very kind but born into wicked families, some are very cool headed born into hot headed community, someare very knowledgable and are born into an ignorant society. All of these category of people are a kind of light in the darkness around them. They are light cos many people learn from them even without letting them (the leaders) know they are learning from them, another thing here is that once you are leader, you affect your environment wordlessly. I recall an event that happened one day in church. The pastor asked that we should write a prayer request, after that he asked us to stand up, we did, then he asked us to fold our paper and pray over it. There was a small boy close to me, he just folded his paper carelessly with unequal edges, after he had folded it twice and was about to fold the third time, he saw the way I was folding mine neatly, it was like someone poured cold water on a thirsty person, immediately he saw that, his countenance changed from a playful kid to a serious kid, he then unfolded his paper and folded it just like I did mine with equal edges……..one thing was I did not utter a word to him or even look directly at him, I was busy doing what I was doing and he had the wisdom to learn from me……………that’s the power of leadership. Kofi Anan was a world citizen, I know a great leader in my village Mr. Chibuike (the community has learned a lot from him, he is responsible for many great positive changes in the community). Dora Akunyili was a national person, my former Boss of blessed memory Mr. Anderson was a great leader as he was not just our employer but was a father to all of us his staff, during my school days my lecturer Dr Onwu is one of the greatest teachers I have ever met. Chinedu is a the best leader in the class of 23 pupils……….we are all leaders, leaders in different capacities. Some are destined for the stars while some are for the moon, some still are for the ground.

Another task here may be finding our true niche and influencing that niche to the best of our ability.

To some are given 10 talents, to some 5, to other 2……………all fingers are not equal.

iii- BLOSSOMING THE LEADERSHIP RESPONSIBILITY

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded”. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Leadership is a responsibility we bestow on ourselves when we gain enough maturity/wisdom in the school of life. Many in the past have said that knowledge is power, this saying may have been very constructive in the dim past when it was promulgated but today we can see the effect of power in our modern world where to be gentle is a crime, where the powerful subject the humble or weak to inhuman treatment, where those with hefty weapon can bounce on the gentle anytime and cook up a crime which he (the gentle one) committed should be punished for  and that powerful one is the best person to mate out the punishment to the offender. At least history has shown us where one God told a group of people not to kill anybody and at another time he asked those same people to go and kill everybody in another land and take the land because they(the powerful) are the righteous one and the other are the sinful one.

Power breeds arrogance but when one understands he has a responsibility to others then he is apt to behave in a way that will benefit the community of people for great is he who controls his temper than he that conquers a city. The enthusiasm generated by understanding our core leadership strength

iv DEDICATION TO EXCELLENCY

“Excellency is a art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellency, then is not an act but a habit.”- Aristotle

Dedicate yourself to a course in the society, stand for something, be something and let the world rock its way to your library