An unsual portrait of leadership

Peak Performance makes leaders. Peak performers are people who because of integrity with themselves, always function from strength and are always in possession of a vision that others find difficult to comprehend. Because of this, they are often leaders—they chart a new course that others must follow. There appears to be a huge misunderstanding about what leadership really is. Papa Oyedepo described it in the most interesting way and I paraphrase;

most people think leadership is about being promoted or elected into a position.  The answer is more complex than that. It is about doing something more than others in a particular field so that others don’t have a choice but to follow your example. They must fight to catch up with you. You must lead the way by taking humanity to its next level of evolution.

It is not surprising that the proponent of this idea built the largest Church auditorium in the world in a so-called third world country. He epitomizes leadership and he is certainly a peak performer. In this regard, men like Steve jobs can clearly be described as leaders not because he headed an organization, but more because of the nature of the things that came into existence because of him and how people did not have a choice but to emulate. He led the way with the ipod, the ipad and a host of other products. In effect, he had a leadership/Peak Performance mindset because there was nothing he touched that didn’t become the new standard and this appeared to happen by default. Whiles a lot have been said by experts about his leadership style and how others will fail if they followed his pattern; little has been said about his advantage as performance conscious individual. If you always lead, people do not really have a choice but to follow. Creating leading products made him a magnet of people. Everyone is attracted to success, greatness and the visions that make them possible. So much so, that even “Hitler and Stalin” had followers.

I submit to you that; if you lead the way with everything you do, people will not have a choice but to follow. The biggest thing about Steve Jobs may not be his people management skills. Yet those who worked with him are always inspired by his need to break new grounds. For that they are driven enough to follow him and he never failed to bring them to the promise land as long as they accept the challenge of the journey. If Steve is building something, you know you want to see it. Things are not that different for Papa Oyedepo as he has had his fair share of criticism regarding his people management skills. I had the privilege of sitting in a leadership class handled by the Apostle General of Royal House Chapel Rev. Sam Korankye Ankrah recently. Those traits were clearly present as his very words left all participants in a challenged frame of mind. He demands everyone to be the best—you have to be stupid to not want to be your best.  The crux of the matter is simple, true leaders by their very need to break new grounds will cause a useful discomfort somehow. But those uncomfortable moments are moments of impartation and those who survive it become leaders in their own right.

So that we can easily see what can be described as an effective leader and efficient leader. There is a difference between a person who got into a position and a person who actually lead the way with something they did. When a person is appointed or elected into a position, we are able to tell whether they maintained the status quo or brought us to a new level of development.

In the case of Africa, we cannot afford any more efficient leaders. We need true leaders as we seem to be stuck in one place barely even meeting the standard.  The nature of any group is a reflection of its leadership. Being stuck in one place in a matter of time transmogrifies into retrogression because nature doesn’t have the space for it. It is the reason why you will soon find snakes in your lawn when you abandon it for too long and find spiders and all kinds of co-inhabitants in your house when you leave it unattended for too long. #spidup #hopemanexhortations