And There was a Leader

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. ­– Warren Bennis

In every society the people seen as the source of “all” the problems are the leaders. Be it in Greece, Iran, Turkey, or Nigeria, the leaders are the ones to take the first blows of every economic downturn, political turmoil, insecurity, and sometimes even natural disasters. This is so not because the people rallying on the streets consider leaders as some super humans with a magic wand but because leaders are expected to be ahead of the people in every aspect of life. Indeed, nothing moves in a society without leaders.

Leadership begins with vision. A visionless leader will not lead his followers any better than a guy on an evening stroll with his dog. Vision is of utmost importance because people only go as far as their leadership can see. “For want of vision countries perish,” a proverb teaches. Every progressive society has leaders with progressive visions and every unprogressive one has the opposite. The rate of progress is always commensurate with the vision of leadership.

Interestingly, leaders are scarcely aliens to any society. The quality of leaders produced in any society reflects the quality of the people in the society because leaders are always a sample of the people. It was Mike Murdock that once said, “Every country deserves its leaders.” Since I come from a country that has suffered decades of tremendously poor leadership, I initially felt his statement was overtly without empathy for people like me. As I grew to understand that leadership is a nations mirror I thought otherwise.

        You can be a leader. It does not matter where you are or what you do. In fact, your level on the stairway of your company’s organogram is of little significance. All these do not matter because leadership has nothing to do with your portfolio. You don’t need an office to be a leader. If you build yourself on the five pillars of leadership; Vision, Positive Influence, Personal Growth, Taking Initiative, Learning to Follow, you can be sure that you are indeed a leader already. [For more on the pillars of leadership click here]