By Kodwo BRUMPON
‘The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.’ – Ashanti proverb
One of the things that gets us scandalised is to hear a leader express the beauty of justice, opportunities, humility, positive change and all the wonderfulness of life, when in their everyday lives, they contradict their words in whatever they do. Situations like that make us very skeptical and cynical about future rhetoric from people who put themselves up to serve.
Many are the individuals who are very pessimistic about life, not because optimism does not abound, but from the disappointments of leaders not walking their talk. There are just too many individuals in leadership positions who do not understand the damage they do to humanity because of their selfishness.
This grim reality of poor leadership needs nothing less than an attitude of morality and ethics to overturn. It is a call for us to be selectively serious in choosing individuals and groups to lead us. The vast majority of people in the history of humanity, as well as in the world today pick leaders because of their expertise, skills, relationships, and or the need to fill a position.
Very often, we conveniently forget that the kind of leader we choose mostly determine the kind of person and society we become. And yet we often make our choices without thinking about the impact the decisions of the leaders we choose will have on our lives in the present and on our lives in the future.
Our lack of seriousness in making leadership choices has contributed in a large way to the present crisis in our society. Our history shows that, often, our choices by their very nature, have been about vindictiveness – to the spirit as well as to the body. We have made choices aimed at humiliating people without thinking about the psychic as well as physical scars we will imprint.
We have suppressed good people just for laughs, forgetting that the echoes of the laughter will malignantly touch the soul of our society. We have shoved out wisdom and the passion for truth, goodness and beauty, and welcomed mercenary attitudes decorated with ‘trending laurels’ of professional eminence and affluence.
And we have ignored those who have made sacrifices for those who have successfully pursued personal ambitions. Our choices have above all, or beneath all, lead to our present dilemmas, spoken and unspoken.
Too often, we have excused our poor choices with the rhetoric of non-availability of good people contesting for leadership positions. The “no-good-people-available” is a cultural phenomenon that have been used over and over again by individuals and groups, for reasons other than what they state. Let us be realistic. We all know “good and brilliant” individuals. And there are quite a number of them filled with enough passion and vision to lead us out of our woes.
They are all around us, but how many of us have encouraged or persuaded such good people to take up leadership mantles? If more and more ‘good’ people got into leadership positions, the values in our society will revert to ethicality, compassion, imagination, the pursuit of mastery, helpfulness, among others and we will have a lot more thriving communities and a prosperous society.
Leadership has to do with shepherding people to pastures that are not only green but are nutritious for their well-being. It is about time we factor this into our thought processes when selecting individuals to lead us. A bad shepherd can make even strong-willed individuals, weak and disillusioned.
That is why we must be intelligent in our leadership choices. It is about time we did away with the standard criteria that have been centred on fame, influence, knowledge, wealth and power. We must replace it with them individuals who respond to our needs, are full of faith, doctrinally well founded and have a deep love for the good of humanity. They need to possess ‘people’ qualities, like humility, generosity, integrity, and the virtues of inter-being and dynamic interactions.
Leadership is a source of hope, dignity, pride, and integrity. It is a beauty that invigorates ‘life.’ The grand scheme of it all is about choosing and choosing the ‘right’ individual. Every leader is the result of our choices, whether we make it consciously or unconsciously.
And their efforts are also determined by their knowledge of the choices we will make when the time comes. If they believe we are going to make choices based on our personal relationships with them, all they need to do is to please us. On the other hand, if they know our choices are based on the quality of life for the whole society, they will work harder, smarter and more imaginatively.
We all agree that the preferential task of leadership is to enliven, energise and enrich the present state of any group of people. They must work towards and purposefully uplift society onto a higher pedestal. Not all of us can do that, but all of us have a say in choosing someone who can. For the majority of us, our choices are all that we have when it comes to leadership. They are all we have ever had; and they are all we can ever have.
Thus, our choices should be used to select those who can create a just society. This means that before we choose leaders to work for us and with us, we need to devote ourselves to understanding the dynamics of the candidate’s personality. And we need to choose people who are discerning and believe in the fullness of life; otherwise they would end up serving themselves and impoverishing us.
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Kodwo Brumpon is an executive coach at Polygon Oval, a forward-thinking Pan African management consultancy and social impact firm driven by data analytics, with a focus on understanding the extraordinary potential and needs of organisations and businesses to help them cultivate synergies, that catapults into their strategic growth, and certifies their sustainability.
Comments, suggestions, and requests for talks and training should be sent to him at [email protected]
