Call for African Leadership

Leadership is the capacity to influence others and everyone is born a leader but very few grow to become successful leaders. What happened to our inherent Leadership capacity? As we grew up, something came and devoured our leadership spirit, it told me that only a few people could do it. It told me that only a few people were chosen to lead, but today I have come to reclaim my position, I have come to challenge, that I still have what it takes to lead my life. You are the master of your own life, you lead your way to what you want. I believe that we all have what it takes, to lead our way into success since everyone is born a leader. I would like to quote myself where I always say, “Everyone is born a leader go your way, but be responsible.”

I remember as kid I could go my way, I could think of creating anything and I would go on and try it, though I failed many times with my explorations and I don’t even remember how many times I tried to create something but it could not work, but one think kept me trying and that is the leadership spirit. I was more than the word innovative, and every time I look at some of my artifacts, I always marvel at how my childhood was embodied with creativity. In fact it was all leadership as I did not need anyone to tell me when to light the switch during my experiments, I did not need someone to tell me how many batteries were needed to light up the bulb, but it still got it lit on the first attempt, but now I need someone to tell me how many to put to light it up. This was part of my childhood, but as I grew up something caught up with my capacity in the name of instilling discipline and order, they told me which paths to use at school when instead I could cut my shortest possible way to the gents.

 Any attempt to think on my own was met with a grip hand, where a firm punishment was put on me as I tried to exercise my thinking and creativity. Now here they now ask me to create and find innovative ways to our problems and to my amazement, they are asking me to use the skills they long killed for more than a decade. I don’t even remember when I was last called for creativity outside the English essay which would be guided by the number of words and worse still I am even told of words that will actually earn me marks rather than driving my point home. I don’t even remember when I was last asked to solve a scientific problem outside the provided procedure and apparatus and all I am simply told is to repeat an experiment that someone did centuries ago and they expect me to be amused, and call myself a scientist. No, I can’t be.

I believe my story is part of every African story, they have killed the core of our leadership, and that is creativity. Leadership is all about creativity, and all true leaders are creative. The call to Leadership in Africa lies in restoring that inherent leadership capacity that has been lying dormant deep within people though it has always tried to come out and reclaim its space, but it has been threatened by so called position, where those in positions think that they are the only ones that have what it takes for the success of a brand, company, school, organization, etc. The solution to Africa’s leadership problems, lies not within leadership seminars, countless leadership calls nor many leadership talk but deep down within every man’s creativity and innovation. Leadership is not about position but about action, it is not about which title you are entitled to, it does not matter you are the CEO, manager, supervisor, coordinator, minister etc. but we all judged by the actions that we have taken to creatively and innovatively find our way to the betterment of our lives.Can you call yourself a leader when you still conduct your meeting the same way you used to do a decade ago, when you still attend to your business the same way you did years ago? Can you  call yourself a good leader when your gate security still have to lift that heavy boom gate bar when instead they can now just press a button? Can you call yourself a good leader when your workers can still cheat their way in the log book, when instead you can just use biometric technology? Can you still call yourself a good leader when your workers can easily cheat you in the packing plant, when technology now enables you to remotely monitor their work on camera? Many companies got broke because they lacked creativity or they missed it when they failed to grow their innovation and they were outpaced by the innovative competitors and a story is told of Kodak, the once greatest camera film maker on how they watched as the digital era took over. They did not embrace the new innovation of digital camera and creatively position themselves up for the booming competition. You can’t call yourself a good company owner when you still think you can handle your workforce affairs, when you can assign or hire Human resources team to effectively manage your human resources affairs. You need to creatively find your space in this era, of stiff competition in every area or sphere of our own lives. If you want to stay afloat in this hustle and hectic modern life, I do not call for a leadership class first, but first deal with your creativity.

One thing for sure is that we all have what it takes to lead our own way, and in one of my posts, I mentioned something about the Best Leader, which I argued that the best leader was none other than being you, it was not in that so called manager, or supervisor but it all started within self and those position holders only worked in support with your Leadership. Improve your creativity and you automatically improve your Leadership, and you position holders, do not suppress their creativity and innovative zeal but rather synergy their energy and capacity to the betterment of all.

 United we Stand, Divided we fall.