The leader worth following

Your talent and giftedness as a leader have the potential to take you farther than your character and moral fiber can sustain you. And your talent and giftedness can equally open for you some doors that your character and make up cannot handle. This is scary. Am I right? This is why you’d need to take the issue of character formation and configuration very seriously—on the condition that you want to endure as a cutting-edge leader. Without rock-solid character, you’d be a leader today, but tomorrow, you would be nowhere to be found, though you could be merely occupying a leadership position.

The fact that people choose to follow you, is not necessarily and automatically an indicator that you deserve to be followed as a leader. There is a significant and momentous difference between having a following and being worth following. The truth is that talented, charismatic, visionary people will almost always have a following. Whether they are worth following is a different question, predicated upon a different set of values. Are you still with me?

There is always the temptation to look at someone and judge the amount of God’s blessing upon his life based upon the number of people who have chosen to follow him. But if numbers tell the whole story, we would have to assume that God removed His blessing from the man Jesus toward the end of His earthly ministry. In the weeks prior to His crucifixion, the crowds began to wane and vanish. In the end, there were only a handful of authentic men and women—who dared to be associated with Him. For the umpteenth time, ‘follow-ship’ is not an accurate and precise indicator of one’s worthiness to be followed.

To become a leader worth following, you must give time and attention to the crucial issue I am addressing today. To leave a legacy that goes beyond accomplishment alone, a leader must devote himself to matters of the heart. In Nigeria and across planet earth today, there are too many folks with massive number of followers, but only a few are worth following. To be among the few who are worth following, you’d need to pay serious attention to your moral fiber. The moral fiber is everything in leadership!

There is no necessary correlation and correspondence between talent and mellowness. Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood have taught us all that. For that matter, there is no correlation and correspondence between talent and common sense either. We have all seen parents give their children gifts that were beyond their ability to handle. Cars, pocketknives, and cell phones all come with instruction manuals, but not maturity manuals. There is no correlation and link between what we can own and what we can responsibly operate.

On the condition that you have been blessed with the gift of leadership, remember it is just that—a gift. But owning the gift and operating the gift responsibility are two different things. One requires nothing on your part. The other requires a lifetime of learning. The gift is recognized over time. The maturity to use it responsibly is developed over time too. Recognizing your giftedness is unavoidable, but taking the quality time to develop and build up the maturity to handle it responsibly requires initiative and discipline. Please, pause and think on this.

Leaders get themselves into trouble when the momentum of their giftedness propels them beyond their ability to sustain the pace and handle the pressures of accomplishment. Your eventual success will introduce you to new temptations, new options, and new opportunities. Your response to these depends entirely upon the condition of your heart.

As a leader, it is incumbent upon you to do all you can now to prepare yourself for your eventual success. Your gifts will open doors. Your character will determine what you do once those doors have opened. You will need to prepare before success comes. It is not after you have become successful that you are going to start preparing for it. Your gifts, well honed and skillfully deployed, with time, will make you successful, but you will need to prepare for it before it happens. If you do not do this, success has a way of wrecking unprepared leaders.

Odds are that you are giving proper attention to the task at hand. You are counting the things that need to be counted and organizing the things that need to be organized. No doubt you have a mission statement and a set of values to support it. In time, those elements, combined with your God-given abilities, will take you far. People will surely follow.

But your natural talent will eventually outstrip and outpace your character if you do not develop a parallel track upon which to run. To become a leader worth following, you must be intentional about developing your character. You must invest in it. Nobody plans to fail, especially leaders. But to ignore the consistent development of your character is the equivalent of planning to fail.

The day will come when the wannabe kings in your world will whisper in your ear, and you will be tempted to abandon what’s right for the sake of progress, profit, or expediency. If you have neglected your character, you will go to draw upon the depth of your convictions but find little there to sustain you. You may retain your position as leader but you will have abandoned your opportunity to finish as a leader worth following. This has played out in every administration since the birth of Nigeria.

Lastly, the time to begin preparing for that eventuality is right now. You can perhaps wait until the night before your real estate final test to sit down and prepare, but there is no cramming for a test of character. It always comes as a pop quiz. You are either ready or you are not. It is the law of the harvest at work.  In the moment of testing, you will reap what you have been sowing. The question is: as a leader, are you getting ready for your own moment of testing? Remember, it will surely come. See you where great leaders are found!