When I was growing up in my small village on an island, while waiting for our evening meals, senior members of the village would assemble us at the house of the oldest member of the clan to squeeze into our small heads what they called timeless wisdom. Yes, the vintage wisdom was usually passed on to us through folktales or parables. That was a long time ago. How time flies. But one folktale that stuck with me and stands out most in my mind is one about ‘becoming a leader.’ Allow me to share it with you.
Thousands of years ago, an African king sent his only son, the heir to the throne, to study under the tutelage of the tribe’s wise spiritual leader. The spiritual master was charged with teaching the prince basics of leadership. When the young man arrived at the sage’s temple, the mentor sent him at once deep into the nearby forest. Alone. He stayed in the forest for two months carrying out rituals and reflecting on the meaning of his life. Having satisfied himself that he had performed all the rituals as instructed by the teacher, he returned to the temple. He was expected to describe to the teacher everything that he had heard in the forest.
Longing to receive a detailed account of the sojourn, the sage approached the young man and asked him cheerfully, “. . . my son, tell me, what did you hear in the forest?” Animated with eagerness and wanting to impress the master, the young man replied, “O, wise one, I could hear birds chirping in the trees, bees buzzing in their nests, wild dogs howling at night, branches of trees swooshing noisily to the battering of strong wind, frogs squawking in swampy ponds.”
When the young lad had finished narrating his story, the spiritual leader was visibly upset for not receiving the answer he was looking for. Immediately, he instructed him to visit the forest again with the following instructions, “Go back. This time, listen more intently to all the sounds within the forest.” The young man was puzzled by the old man’s petition. Had he not discerned every sound already? He found it strange. All the same, he retook the assignment. He left for the forest.
For days and nights, the young fella would motionlessly sit on the ground. In the depth of the forest. Unable to detect any sounds other than the ones he already reported to the master. Then, one evening, something happened. As he sat silently, he began to discern a faint sound unlike those he had ever heard. The more deeply he listened, the clearer the sound became. At the same time, he felt different from the other times – he felt more enlightened. More judicious. More insightful. Developed more self-awareness. He found whispering to himself, “. . . these must be the sounds that the master wished me to discern.” He, immediately, returned to the temple. The old man inquired about what he had heard. “O, wise one,” the young man responded, “with your instructions, when I listened more closely, I could hear the unheard – the sound of beautiful flowers opening. The sound of the roots of trees sucking nutrients from the soil. The sound of the sun radiating the forest’s dark canopy.” The young man continued, “O master, I could hear the heartbeat of mother earth, the ground which I was sitting on, throbbing in pulses endlessly. What a feeling.”
The old man smiled, nodded in agreement, and remarked, “. . . to hear the unheard, is a necessary discipline for leadership. To see the unseen is the forte of great leaders. To smell the unsmelled is the realm for epic leadership. To feel the unfelt is the doorway to becoming a leader. To act on a feeling and verbalize it, is the nativity of leadership.” He paused. Then continued, “. . . it is only when one has learned to listen closely with one’s inner ear, learned to see the unseen with one’s inner eye, learned to visualize the future, to spiritually discern one’s feelings, purpose, and environment, to act on and exemplify all that is being felt and communicated, will one be able to lead.”
Moral of the story? Leadership is a personal internal resolve. A delivery from within. An approach. An inner feeling. A self-discovery. To lead, one does not need position, title, authority, academic qualification, privileged social status, or advanced age.
I know what you are thinking. “Monsieur,” you ask, “if leadership doesn’t call for titles, elite status, degrees, or adult age, then how does one become a leader?”
Last week, I accompanied a friend to a funeral. My friend is the CEO of the company the departed was working for. Protocol demanded that the employer should deliver a eulogy in honor of the deceased.
Speakers from different sectors of the society that the departed was associated with, in different ways, came forward and paid their homage. When the turn for the employer came to deliver the speech, I expected my CEO friend to stand up and take the podium. Alas. Guess who we see moving forward to deliver the eulogy? It wasn’t my friend – the CEO, not COO, not CFO, not Human Resources Manager. No, it wasn’t the CIO either. None of the C-suite executives came forward. They were all present at the funeral. So, who is this fellow who plucked the courage to deliver a eulogy on behalf of my friend’s organization? Will I surprise you if I disclosed that it was a filing clerk, who according to the pecking order of the company, occupied the bottom rung of the ladder? That’s leadership. You don’t need a title to lead. No need for superior social status. Leadership is non-hierarchical. Being a junior, the filing clerk had enough reasons to cow off - to shy away from responsibility, to verbalize that he was not fit to stand in front of a huge crowd and speak on behalf of his employer. His narrative could have been ‘who am I to represent and speak on behalf of my superiors.’ He could have looked at himself differently, - as a subordinate, as a victim. Does this sound familiar? To you? How many times have you run away from responsibility? At your workplace, at home, in your neighborhood, at your place of worship, and school.
Victims suffer from the Jonas syndrome – which originated from the Biblical Jonas, who ran away from responsibility when he was sent to preach in Nineveh. Victims live on excuses. Victims are about ‘can’t.’ “. . . I can’t enroll in a personal mastery and leadership course because I am in my sixties and about to retire; . . . I can’t go on a diet program to shade off excess weight because I fear I might starve myself to death; . . . I can’t afford vacation outside the country because I receive a meager salary.” Victims are impossibilitarians. Naysayers. “. . . I can’t buy a house in my dream location - I don’t have enough capital; . . . I can’t write a book; . . . The economy is really bad - our organization can’t lead in its market space; . . .. No member of our family has ever been to university – I don’t see myself being the first; . . . I can’t play basketball - I don’t have the right height; . . . Here is what you gave me and here is why I can’t do it.” Hmm. The language of victims.
So, how does one become a leader? . . . by doing one’s part; . . . by taking responsibility for things that are not working in one’s environment; . . . by discovering one’s distinctive gift and deploying it for public service. The greatest mistake that we make is that we think it’s people that makes us leaders. Utter delusion. It’s our native gift, the specialty that make us a leader. One other area that many people slip up is thinking that one becomes a leader after a certain age or during a certain age window. The truth is that you become a leader at any age. All you need is service in the area of your gifting. Jesus became a leader at the age of 12. Colonel Harland Sanders was 65 years old when he came into the cuisine limelight. Wolfgang Mozart showed the first signs of genius in symphonies at the age of 5. Mother Teresa was 79 years old when she resigned as head of order to serve the destitute of Calcutta. Stop waiting until you are of a certain age to start exercising your gift. Do not put it off until you are 40 years, 50 years, or 90 years old to start serving. Do not wait until you get promoted, married, graduated with an MBA, or relocated to your dream location to start administering your craft.
You can’t influence and lead a team if you are unwilling to serve them. Unless you are clear about your area of gifting and are doing something about it, it will be difficult for you to become a leader. Ted Turner, founder of CNN, perhaps put it better than I can when he remarked, “the one who serves the best prospers the most.” My advice is: don’t lord over people (please!). Instead, serve them. This reminds me of a story in the Bible – Jesus’ disciples were arguing about who was the greatest among them. The verdict was that he who served others the most was the greatest. This principle was relevant two thousand years ago. It’s still relevant today. It hasn’t changed. And I expect it not to change in the years to come.
Being given an organizational title, such as CEO, Human Resource manager, General Manager et cetera, does give you hierarchical authority, but it does not make you a leader. Leadership has nothing to do with ruling people. Leadership entails one’s personal operating system. It’s an internal delivery. For you to lead, you must first find and be yourself. This is where it becomes dangerous - in any social set-up, followers want to be led not ruled. People long to be led by a leader, not a position-filler. Leadership is situational. It happens in a certain context, not in a vacuum. Great leaders are those that can pick cues or concerns of a situation and present themselves to serve and deal with the situation. Nelson Mandela, for example, became South Africa’s symbol of hope and a beacon of democracy when he presented himself to end apartheid and bring equality to people in the rainbow nation. In 1941, Robert Woodruff, president of Coca-Cola, having discerned a gap in the distribution and consumption of beverages in the US, directed that Coca Cola should be in the hands of every American soldier for five cents regardless of geographical limitation or cost. Today, Coca-Cola is not only available to American soldiers, but it is the leading beverage brand in the world. The iconic Steve Jobs was so obsessed with the innovation of the iPhone that he made the buttons on the screen of the phone look so good that you would want to lick them. Leadership is about understanding one’s inherent mastery and applying it usefully and purposefully for the benefit of other people. Think about Adolf Hitler. He had an organizational title - Fuhrer. He had a special gift – a charismatic orator. He had millions of followers. He had a cause. Sorry to say, history does not deem Hitler as a leader because the outcome of his mission did not promote human dignity.
It is reported that every need in the world would be met if each one of us had discovered, deployed, and used our innate gift or unique craftmanship assertively. Wars, hunger, runaway inflation, corruption, envy, trauma, poverty, suicide, theft, hatred, and other socioeconomic misfortunes can be prevented and avoided if every soul walking the planet would use their gifts dutifully. If everyone was operating in their sweet spot.
Have you ever tried to do something that you are not good at? How did you feel? Life becomes boring. A struggle. A conundrum. A torture. Unproductive. Not so? What happens when you are working on something that you are passionate about and skilled in? Life becomes a bliss. You lose yourself in the project. You even get surprised that people pay you for doing it. The larger point is to take charge of your sweet spot. That’s where your leadership mark slumbers. Just like the young man in the opening story above, when you discover your leadership spot and exercise it consciously, you begin to develop ‘strange’ behavior. You are filled with a positive attitude. Your spirituality sours. Your mindset escalates beyond measure. Your physicality radiates. You hear the unheard. You see the unseen. You feel the unfelt. You become a changed and charged person. You embody behavior different from what others call normal life. When you become known for your craft, two things happen. One part of the world builds a path to your doorway to tap into your gift for human advancement. The other part loathes you. Sees you as a misfit. Dissident. Insurgent. Workaholic. Nonconformist. The latter will try as much as possible to alienate you. To pull you down. To disown you. To prosecute you (Rosa Parks). To disassociate from you (Yousafzai Malala). In extreme cases, they’ll plot to take your life (Jesus, JF Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas More). They will call you eccentric, and weird. Take comfort in the words of Robin Sharma, “every great leader was initially ridiculed before they were revered.”
Views from the top are that if each one of us was to release their personal mastery into our societies, the world would be clean of socioeconomic ills. We would have improved our families, neighborhoods, organizations, tribes, and nations. Our tiny planet would have been a better place to live in. Was John Maxwell not right when he asserted that everything rises and falls on leadership? Rebel against victimhood (please!). Carry the words of Mother Teresa on your sleeve, “. . . let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” Never miss an opportunity to serve or encourage another human being. Don’t worry about making mistakes – all the mistakes that we will make in life have already been made by those who traveled this journey called life before us. Life is a very short ride. We tour this route only once. Before we know it, we are a pile of dust - six feet underground - or a heap of cremated ashes in an urn.
Lester Chinyang’anya ǀ General Manager - Operations ǀ Minet Malawi
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