Leadership, position and effect
It is widely acknowledged that leadership is the cause and every other thing is effect. Inasmuch as there is a lot of truth in the statement, the challenge is that it is sometimes addressed to the wrong persons.
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We easily assume we know those who are the “leaders” and those who are “not”. And that is the very source of our problems.
A casual reader of any leadership text would acknowledge that leadership is not necessarily about positions. It is about influence. Leadership is usually contrasted with management which Peter Drucker sums up in the following words: “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
Nowhere in any definition of leadership is the term limited to individuals. Groups and corporate entities can equally play and take leadership roles. And it is a fluid concept to the extent that it does not reside permanently with a particular entity.
Depending on the issues, the decisions to be made and the personalities involved, the exercise of leadership may vacillate between the corridors of power and the streets of Ashaiman. Remember: It is not about positions but rather influence. The one who exercises the influence can be said to be the one who is leading the initiative.
So when we hear the expression: “leadership is cause and everything else is effect”, we have to bear in mind the fact that the statement is not limited only to governments, politicians, senior public servants and so on.
It perfectly includes the citizenry; civil society organisations and other forms of social and political pressure mobilisation. Leadership is not an ivory tower event. It is an everyday engagement with the challenges that confronts a nation and the quest to find a solution.
In the just-ended internal politicking process of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) which culminated in the overwhelming and convincing victory of Nana Akuffo Addo, the question may be posed: who was exercising the leadership role in the election? Was it the party executive? Was it the various candidates? Or were the delegates the ones who were indeed at the helm of affairs determining whose head is lifted up and whose head is pushed down?
This question may be further disaggregated into simpler and finer forms. But ultimately, it was the over 5000 delegates that had the leadership task of providing the party with a political candidate.
The same thinking can be applied in our broader national politics. Many usually resort to the media to complain about all the things that are not going on well in their lives. The complaints in and of themselves are not bad. But the substance of the complaint and the manner in which these complaints are carried across makes them as good as dead. There is no conscious effort by the citizenry to galvanise the support of persons in similar distresses and challenges in order to achieve a particular objective or relief. The complaints that get aired are sometimes poorly articulated and sometimes tinted with the political connotations- causing it to be dismissed easily. But the citizenry, contrary to conventional wisdom, can be a powerful leadership force and be the “cause” of some of the things that we so much desire to see around us.
Governance is a conversation. It ought to be a dialogue. And until something is said with clarity, persuasiveness and objectiveness, the citizenry would fail in their respective leadership roles.
The leadership role of the citizenry in nation building plays itself out both in the micro and the macro spheres of the life of the nation. Take the role of the citizen at the micro-level for instance. Imagine a state where the citizens at the home level or in their neighbourhood are determined to keep an eye on the question of sanitation and environmental cleanliness.
Imagine an instance where citizens are checks on themselves. There would be no need to declare grand clean up periods which usually fade away after short periods of time.
A community would be at least one step better in the struggle to fight the rather preventable cholera which needlessly eats away resources which could have been best channelled into other useful areas.
A quintessential example of groupings and citizenry taking a keen interest in the development of the leadership from below (i.e. at the level of the citizenry) is the Occupy Ghana Movement.
I am not too sure about how many miles this movement may be able to travel but one distinctive thing that separates it from the plethora of political movements in this country is the clarity with which it articulates it causes.
Leadership always approaches the one who walks towards it. It is no excuse to say that the nation is failed because of its leaders. The citizenry have a greater stake in the success and prosperity of the nation as much as the positional leaders.