“Nigeria has a leadership problem”
That is a fact.
But the day we realise we have a deeper problem, the problem of follower,that day,we have taken the first step in building ourselves as individuals and as a nation.
Before we can lead,we must become good followers,but,
? what exactly is following.
There are 2 kinds of followers, the following follower and the leader follower.
Lets briefly describe the two.
Following follower
This is the ignorant person who has not yet discovered himself. His ignorance is mainly a lack of knowledge about his inner capabilities,potentials and talents. Lacking this inner knowing,he cannot create a personal leadership goal or futuristic plan. He is carried by the winds of life,anything that life offers,he takes without having a clue as to why he is unfulfilled. This type of followers cannot obey the rules and regulations of the system they are a part of not because they are stubborn rather they cannot keep it because they lack a sense of responsibility and lack the mental discipline needed to live a life of integrity. Also these type are almost incapable of any form of initiative,if given a task to do,he will do only what he is told to do,even doing it below standard or expectation. This type of followers are full of trouble,if this type is in the office,the only thing he understands is his salary and the next thing he knows is why his salary has not been increased even if he performs abysmally, whenever he is sent to do even basic task.
We will illustrate this type of followers with an example as we go further down.
The second type of followers is the leader follower.
He is called a leader follower because before becoming a follower,he is a leader. This is very crucial to leadership.
? How
We need to define leadership so as to understand this type of follower.
Leadership i define as a collective process that involves creating a vision and building oneself and or developing the required discipline needed to achieve set vision/goal
[as at the time of writing this piece,(june 25th 2018) this definition is still in the formative stage,so future articles on leadership will be more elaborate].
In a short form,leadership basically deals with creating a goal/vision for achievement. Leadership being so,the leader follower has already created a vision for himself and is working towards achieving this vision. In the process of achieving this vision,he can become a follower.
Lets use an illustration. If someone wants to be a good teacher. He can get the academic education needed,then he will look for job in a school(lets keep in mind that by his action,he is a leader trying to achieve his goal),when he gets a job in a school(owned by another leader who is also working to achieve his goals), he, the teacher becomes a follower and at the same time,he is a leader. While a teacher he will gain the necessary experience needed to own a school then if his goals improve over time and he wants to own his own school then using his gained knowledge,he can go ahead and will run the school efficiently.
Lets now use the teacher example to examine our following follower friend.
If our following follower becomes a teacher in a school not because it was his goal but because of circumstance or just to keep his body and soul together. You will see that he will not make a good teacher,he will lack job satisfaction,this will make him discharge his duty with low efficiency. His low efficiency will not be a concern to him because in his heart,teaching is not his thing,he does not want to be a teacher. By this attitude,he is actually a bad teacher and no amount of HR training will improve him,it is a knowledge in HR circles that if you employ the right staff,without management training they can give you 60% efficiency and when you add training,they improve to 90% or even 100% but if you employ the wrong staff even with all the management training in the world,they may give you 50% efficiency.
Let us buttress the difference and the lack of initiative associated with the following follower with a story i read a long time ago about an employer whose staff complained that he has been working in the company for long without promotion.
So the boss wanted to show him why he has not been promoted,his boss sent him to the market to go check the price of a particular product. Off the guy went and came back later with the exact amount of the product and nothing more.
The boss sent the other staff a similar errand and later the guy came back with different prices from different shops in the market,he also got information on similar product,calculated what the company will gain if they went for a similar product from the original one he was sent to go make inquiry,he even advised the boss that they can stand a better chance if they start buying the product directly from the producers,calculated the the amount the company will gain in 1 year if they bought the product directly from the producer since they will be using large amount of the product.
The difference between these two people is ‘initiative’ the following follower lacks initiative to make things better while the leader follower has the initiative to go further than he was instructed.
The sucex of a nation is a sumtotal of the sucex of the individuals within that nation,if we must grow as a nation then each of us has to start at the personal level,we have to develop personal goals,goals whose achievement will impact positively on the general society. We need to see true sucex as something beyond personal comfort or personal aggrandizement. True sucex is collective,this implies each persons sucex aught to add value to the totality of us all as a society and as specie. We need to start thinking sucex from a leadership perspective rather than a ‘me myself and I’ attitude.
Nigeria, today,suffers a deep leadership crisis not caused but maintained and nurtured by the political class. True leadership is a national responsibility which we all have roles to play. In the real world,each of us is a leader,leaders in our own capacity as elder siblings,colleagues,friends,associate or any other. We all have a role to play in building our nation and the world at large.
If we must succeed as individuals and as a nation then we need to become true followers and leaders at the personal level.
When we become good followers,we will automatically have good leaders to guide our activities at all levels.
A good people cannot tolerate a bad government and a bad people cannot tolerate a good government. The leadership a people get is a perfect replica of the people, the leadership exemplifies the cherished ideals of the people.
The leadership is chosen from among the people,they do not change when they become leaders,rather their innate vices is taken to a level.
If for a pot of soup,you bea scams you of N500,you may know this but its not a problem to you cos there is much then tommoro that bea becomes a minister of finance or is placed where large sums of money channels through,what will happen to the money……devil go thief am na.
Bea did not start stealing when she became a public office holder,it was a thing she did as a bea or wife. This is where the consent of the followers play a role in maintaining the activity of the leader. In the preamble to the american constitution, it was stated that the leadership of a people derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Back home,if we as followers have the consent “na my time to chop” then the man in power is not worse than the one in the street.
We all have the capacity to become good leaders,lets refine ourselves and build our personal goals so as to achieve greatness in this school we call life.
Cheers
