Pastor Clive Dottin

We need quality leadership

We need quality leadership to improve the crime detection rate, the discovery of kidnapping dens, the functions of parliamentarians in their constituencies, the performance of police officers, the impact of churches in the community and the ability of banks to respond to the cries of the oppressed.

Therefore, we must focus on proactive leadership.

Let us focus on vision and passion as we turn the spotlight on proactive leadership.

No leader can empower a worker unless he has been empowered. You cannot pass on what you do not have; you cannot be a catalyst for change unless you have experienced change.

In their noteworthy book, Now, Discover Your Strength, Gallup researchers Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton emphasise the importance of an organisation leading with its strengths.

“You can’t lead a strengths revolution if you don’t know how to find, name and develop your own.”

That is why nepotism hurts an organisation.

As we talk about empowerment for a higher altitude, may I state that there must be no room in the organisation for political nepotism, romantic nepotism or ecclesiastical nepotism. This entity called nepotism freezes an organisation which eventually suffers from an intellectual bankruptcy.

It leads to what managerial expert Dr Lyn Behrens calls “the pandemic of leadership duplicity.”

Therefore, to avoid nepotism you must move into the realm of competencies: technical, conceptual, interdependent and spiritual.

Leaders who wish to be catalysts for empowerment must have vision and passion. But they must also have another skill—communication.

May I suggest to you that integrity is the high-octane fuel that enables and empowers you to fly at a higher altitude.

Peter Urs Bender in his book, Leadership From Within states that “throughout history, outstanding leaders have been ordinary people with extraordinary vision and the skills to communicate it.”

Arnold Toynbee talks about “having an ideal that takes the imagination by storm and a plan of action to achieve that ideal.”

Helen Keller said that “the greatest blindness occurs with those who have perfect eyes but no vision.”

She would know; by the age of five she was blind and deaf. She made an additional comment as she operated at a higher altitude: “Some people look so long at the closed door, that they never see the open doors.” She would tell you that she had “faith in God and a commitment to excellence.”

Where are you looking?

What are you hoping for?

But what is vision?

I love the definition that says, “vision is a mental picture of the future, an idea of what is possible, but has not yet happened.”

Bender states that there are at least three types of vision:

Probable future: what we can expect to happen if we continue as we are now.

Desired future: what we would most like to have happened.

Catastrophic future: what could happen if things get worse or something bad really occurs.

As we talk about vision, we must be prepared to invest in that vision if we wish to achieve “empowerment for a higher altitude.”

We must be prepared to invest in our employees, but leaders must be prepared to die for the implementation of the vision. There must be commitment and investment.

At this point I would like to introduce you to the ten P’s.

This is a major challenge for any organisation—converting the five negative p’s to the five positive p’s.

The negative p’s: the paranoid, the pretenders, the parasites, the parkers and the poisoners.

The positive p’s: the positive, the profound, the productive, the progressive, the proactive.

Empowerment must not be a philosophical cliché. It must involve transformation:

The paranoid must become the positive;

The pretenders must become profound;

The parasites must become productive;

The parkers must become progressive;

The prisoners must become proactive.

As we move through this turbulent period in our nation’s history, we must examine the different styles of leadership.

There are several styles each with its own motivational quotient—the democratic, autocratic, the laissez faire, the paternalistic, the bureaucratic and the charismatic.

The charismatic says: if you like me, do it.

The paternalistic says: because you like me, do it.

The bureaucratic says: because it’s in the book and we have always done it that way, do it.

The laissez faire says: if you feel like it, do it.

The autocratic commands: do it, ask for no reason.

The democratic says: let us do it.

In this hi-tech, low-touch world, we need democratic leaders who have an extraordinary vision, touch the hearts of people, are effective role models, understand what it means to be on the cutting edge and give a sense of ownership.

We need quality leadership to improve our food security. We need quality leadership to give courage to victims of crime. We need quality leadership to reform the Police Service. We need quality leadership to challenge our youth. We need quality leadership to destroy corruption.

We need quality leadership to stop the brain drain and capital flight.