Leadership is not an accident; it is the by-product of consistent results. You can not divorce a leader from the results that he or she consistently produces. Ultimately, the only thing that establishes the credibility of a leader is results, results and results alone.
This often sounds cruel to many who struggle with the generation of results but a tree is known exclusively by the fruit it bears, not by the ground it is standing on. The identity of a tree is determined by the fruit it bears. This is why a leader must never explain away results or the lack of it.
I am yet to see a struggler who doesn’t explain away results as a mere outcome of luck or misadventure of some sort. I am yet to see a leader who doesn’t celebrate and intentionally pursue results. Ultimately your disposition to results is a revelation of your leadership capacity.
Tasks Are More Important That Titles
Most true leaders don’t really care about what they are called, as much as they care for the work that they are called to do. In many cases, the greatest leaders on the earth have outgrown their titles by the quality of impact that they have made in the world. Their names alone, owing to their contributions, carry more weight than any title that can be attached to it. This is why an obsession with titles is often a sign that a person’s contribution is still at the pediatric level of leadership. If you need a title to validate your contribution, you haven’t made any.
If you need a title to validate your contribution, you haven't made any. Click To TweetCredentials Are Not Necessarily Credibility
No sane person can downplay the crucial role education plays in the actualization of our individual potential. However, the accumulation of degrees isn’t necessarily the aggregation of impact. The essence of a degree should be the contribution that it makes to your quality of life and society at large. In my view, every degree that doesn’t culminate in effective societal impact was just an exercise in academic frustration.
Knowledge shouldn't just be acquired for knowledge’s sake. It should be acquired for impact sake. Click To TweetKnowledge shouldn’t just be acquired for knowledge’s sake. It should be acquired for impact sake. My recommendation to the coming generation is to determine the impact they want to make in the world and shop for the education that will help them maximize that impact. Anything other than that is a waste of time.
Office Not as Important as Service
The global rush for political office is something I don’t just get. Does it really take an office to render service? In most cases, the reason why we of a necessity need to campaign vigorously for office is that, in reality, the quality of our services are in question. Except we view our offices as a platform for service, we are simply beside the point.
When the focus of a leader’s developmental initiatives is inward – towards himself and his family, and not outward, he becomes a nuisance to society. The office you hold is not as important as the service you perform. Should we then have to aspire to public offices, it should be to enact policies and practices for the common good of respective societies.
Awards and Rewards Don’t Necessarily Mean You Have Won Any Wars
We live in a recognition-crazy world. For every single person who gets an award, there are thousands who are making an equal or greater impact on the planet that weren’t even recognised. This knowledge should foster humility among all award recipients because of the proverbial 7000 or more individuals whose knees haven’t bowed to Baal, whose mouths haven’t kissed him and who are equally making an impact in their respective climes. The fact that you were singled out doesn’t mean you are the only one out there.
Lastly, I must highlight a critical flaw in what our celebrity culture seems to be rewarding these days. Corporate organisations are also complicit in this error. Our world now rewards vice rather than virtue. When we shower millions upon societal vice peddlers like musicians, comedians and so-called celebrities without reference to the long term implications of the vices they promote on society and give peanuts to honest and hardworking citizens like teachers of even academically successful students. We distort the very sense and essence of significance and success in the consciousness of the young generation.
Ultimately, a society gets more of what it rewards and less of what it disdains. I fear for the long term impact of these self-seeking agenda in most of our modern institutions. The leadership of these current institutions must realise that once you fail to pass to the younger generations the virtues that made you great, you have ultimately destroyed them, as well as the fabric of society at large.
Results! Results! Results!
Almost nothing establishes the authority of a leader like the results they are able to consistently generate. I am not here to address the ethical dimensions of those results. No, not just yet. But I am saying that without results your credibility as a leader will be stunted. By all ethical means necessary, produce results and don’t explain away the lack of it.
Please get to work.
