Quality Followership

“Leadership is energizing a  community of people toward their own transformation in order to accomplish a shared mission in the face of a changing world.” Tod Bolsinger. 

There is no single important asset as the people who belong to an organization. They include the lead and the leading. In one way or another everyone is being led and everyone is leading. In fact, they say that people and not programs matter most. However, everyone has their orientation or leaning towards either programmes or people. 

Bad followers result in poor leadership and ultimately a failed organization that cannot realize her objectives. Therefore, it is important that we engage ourselves to ensure that the quality of stakeholders (volunteers, workers, staff, customers, board members, leadership team) is one that promotes the ideals of the organization. 

You see it is from members that we draw leaders. Generally, then, a poor leadership show is because the followership is also incapacitated and defective. Poor followership manifests in bad culture, poor attitude towards work, lethargic performance, negative attitude among others. 

Followership just like leadership is manifested in the quality of the thoughts, decisions, actions, behavior and responsibilities.  How important, then it is to have growth and progress not just for leadership but for followership as well. The investments put to enhance the quality of leadership should also be used to enhance followership. 

“Christian community is about gathering and forming a people, and spiritual transformation is about both the individual and corporate growth, so that they-together- participate in Christ’s mission to establish the kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven”. Tod Bolsinger

How do I respond when my leader is in crisis? Genesis 9:18-23

Ham, Noah’s son, fails to cover the father’s nakedness. Rather, he goes to share with his brothers before covering the nakedness. It always looks mouth watering to share negative information about others or talk about their weakness. Bad news about leaders spread so fast and many have itching ears and lips for it. We have to protect our leaders by avoiding exposure of their weakness. We cover that nakedness and deal with them rather than share in public. 

In a world where people have itching ears, many followers fall into the trap of always wanting to have “juicy” news about their leaders. Their interest is neither on the welfare of the leader nor of the organization. In Kenya today we have newspapers, magazines and social media handles that thrive on writing and selling news that exposes leaders negatively.  It is very unfortunate that we have fallen to such deceptions. 

What type of followers do you have as a leader? Genesis 12:14,15.

The story of Pharaoh’s servants in this scripture portion intrigues me. Look at what they pick to share with Pharaoh and the outcome. They meet a new family that has come to live among them. Maybe they were senior immigration officials based at the state house. What report do they send to Pharaoh?

“And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to the pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace.” Genesis 12:15

  As we walk with others, what manner of advice do we give them? These officials saw nothing else that could build the kingdom except to add pharaoh another wife. Their decision resulted in worse consequences for the kingdom. Have quality advisors in life. Have people who will see beyond the ordinary. They should have questioned their thoughts on this matter. 

We all must work at ensuring that the people who are close to us are quality advisors. Leaders must continue to challenge the membership to strengthen their ability to be led effectively. They should provide opportunities for such too. In order to have quality followership, an organization through its leadership should constantly focus on having membership that are focused on the goal rather than sideshows.

“The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture or systems. All those elements are important. But the core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of the people, and behavior change happens in highly successful situations mostly by speaking to people’s feelings.” John P. Kotter

Quality relationships

Leadership and followership is complimentary. A leader must be a Chief Energy Officer, exuding confidence by building relationships that make the followers feel appreciated, recognized and part of the team. It should not be a subordinate kind of relationship but one where there is mutualism. A followership uninterested in building friendship and bonds that withstand the pressures of a growing organization will most likely return the organization to the deathbed.

Honest feedback

A leader can only gain the confidence of members when there is openness to ideas and thoughts from members or followers. Some leaders are open to ideas but they will never implement any of the ideas. This discourages followers from sharing feedback in and for the future. Honest feedback entails both positive and negative. Some can be very painful but as a leader, learn to respond gently and take all the feedback as an opportunity for growth and improvement.  Good followers are always sharing feedback with their leaders on their performance, hits and misses, opportunities, possible innovations with a desire to take the organization and her people to the next level of growth.

“Only the mediocre die always at their best. Real leaders are always improving- and raising their bar on how superbly they can perform and how quickly they can move.” Jean Giraudoux. 

Eye on the goal and ball

Winning is not an easy venture. It involves pursuit where at times some get tired. However, when others get tired, the rest continue the pursuit without demanding that everyone be in. Good members will not become lax or withhold the pursuit just because others are not supporting. Rather, like the armour bearer, they run with their leader in pursuit till the goal is reached. 

The battle is tough and fierce. Every leader requires a never give up men and women who will lift her or his hands up as the battle rages on till the victory is delivered. Probably, this could be the reason why the Scripture has very good words for the thirty three men of David. 

Executors

It is in doing that we actually deliver results. Good ideas and plans are not enough. They only make sense if implemented. Followership must not only be keen implementors but also ones who put their leaders on toes to ensure they not only deliver on their mandate but also deliver it with excellence and quality.

Who is in your leadership Journey?

“One is too small a number of people to achieve greatness!” John C. Maxwell

In his letters to various churches, apostle Paul was consistent in mentioning some people who were his companions. Some were constant others would leave either for good or for bad. 

Constant names include: Silas and Timothy who seemed to have been in his inner circle. They knew his thoughts and plans. They shaped one another’s ideas and philosophy. They prayed for each other, cared for one another and extended the burden to the churches. 

Paul says this about Timothy: I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know that Timothy has proved himself because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the Gospel. Philippians 2:20-22. 

In Acts 16:1-3, the scripture details the first encounter of Paul and Timothy. 

Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. Paul wanted to take him along on the journey…

Paul’s missionary journey had began with Barnabas and John Mark. Along the way, Paul and Barnabas split and Paul went with Silas. It is at this point that he felt he needed Timothy. Fortunately, the community at Lystra, Derbe and Iconium approved this because of Timothy’s good standing. 

It is a fact that every leader cannot lead alone. You need a team. The team consists of companions who believe in you and in one another. The companions lead alongside not behind you. They water the vision. They stand as guards against attacks. They propel the vision. 

When you look at King David you find him surrounded by companions who had been with him not just when he became king but many had been with him earlier. There is no room for lone rangers in leadership. One must have true and trusted companions to not only enjoy the journey but also endure the setbacks that come along the journey. 

The first companion any serious leader needs is God. He is the first leader. He inspires growth and character development. Much more, walking with God instills values and belief system that allows one to lead the way God wants one to lead. I believe that people who walk with God intimately are better leaders. Develop a closer walk with God. Great leaders in the bible were consistently committed to a closer walk with God.

“And David became more and more powerful, because the Lord Almighty was with him.” 1 Chronicles 11:9

Do you aspire to be a great leader? Whether in the family, community, church, organization or chama you must start with God. A few people think they can lead greatly without God. However, observe any great leader in history and you will discover their complete trust in God for guidance and strength. 

Godward Focus

Throughout the book of Nehemiah we are challenged by the kind of focus he had- Godward. It is a reminder of God’s constant presence, provision and protection. Nehemiah himself was so much conscious and vigilant to keep a Godward focus. 

“The good hand of my God was upon me.”(2:8); “The God of heaven will make us prosper”( 2:20); “Remember the Lord who is great and awesome (4:14); “Remember for my good, O my God, all that I have done for this people”(5:19; “Remember me, O my God, for good” (13:31). 

Any great success must focus on the true north- God Himself. Whether you are overwhelmed by joy or pain; whether you are facing moments of success or failures the only sure focus is being Godward. 

King David’s company

These were the men who came to David at Ziklag while he was banished from the presence of Saul son of Kish (they were among the warriors who helped him in battle, they were armed with bows and were able to shoot arrows or to sling stones right handed or left handed; they were relatives of Saul from the tribe of Benjamin)…… They were brave soldiers, ready for battle and able to handle the shield and the spear. Their faces were the faces of lions, and they were as swift as gazelles in the mountains….the least was a match for a hundred and the greatest for a thousand. 1 Chronicles 12:1-2, 8b

“We are yours, David!

We are with you, son of Jesse!

Success, success to you,

and success to those who help you, 

for your God will help you.” 1 Chronicles 12:18.

David had started building a team of companions very early in life. He never waited till he was a leader. Some people struggle with leadership because they are not able to add value to others. They assume that only leaders can. With such an attitude it is difficult to deliver. Leadership only grows out of an environment where a potential leader adds value to the people all the time. 

People who add value to others attract strong leaders and as a result they grow too to become very strong leaders. 

Who should you attract?

Leadership guru John C. Maxwell says you only attract who you are. If you are a lazy leader who is poor at connecting then you attract such fellows. Hence, your company is determined by your character, values and beliefs. David attracted men who were warriors, swift in battle and able to handle the weapons from any side because he was one. 

Reliability: A companion in leadership must be highly reliable. They should be readily available for the assignment irrespective of the risks and will always be trusted to deliver on the expected outcome. That sense of dependability enables the leader to delegate with ease. 

Loyalty: Though not an important aspect for companions  to have, leadership is much easier when you have trusted lieutenants who can walk with you through thick and thin of the jungle thickets in the leadership journey. Loyalty is not just about saying yes but also, I believe, about having people who can tell you when you are heading in the wrong direction. They are your watchmen to check if you are on track. They are your panel beaters to shape your thoughts, words and actions. Loyalists see you naked, cover you and tell you why or how you got there so that next time you avoid it.

Faithful: One outstanding characteristic among Paul’s companions in his missionary journey was faithfulness. The people he entrusted with special assignments had proved faithful. 

“Tychicus will tell you all the news about me. He is a dear brother, a faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord.” Colossian 4:7

In the book of Revelation the Scripture talks of those who are faithful to the end will be rewarded. Leadership companions must be faithful. 

In my leadership journey I have learnt the significance of thinking about who is in my list for the assignment. A leader needs cheerleaders who are encouragers, thinkers, idea generators, vision carriers, implementers.

“The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.” John Wooden.

THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF SUCCESS

“The human comedy doesn’t attract me enough. I am not entirely of this world….I am from elsewhere. And it is worth finding this elsewhere beyond the walls. But where is it?  Eugene Ionesco

The world over we long for success, we actually want it so bad that we would do anything to have it, keep it, sustain it or propel it further to another level. A few years ago a research was undertaken and the results were shocking. Majority of the youth indicated they do not care how they get the money so long as they have it. 

Failure is not a good word for us. It denotes incompetence, inadaptability and poor attitude among others. Consequently, we loathe it and even loath those who fail. All our mentors are people we look up to. People we enjoy hanging around and gleaning wisdom from. Wisdom of success,growth and development. Wisdom of conquer and triumph. 

Does success brings only good tidings with it? Most if not all times it does. However, there are casualties along the way. The very things that enable us to reach the top also make us not progress. Going to the top usually involves determination, resilience, positive attitude, strong support system among others. Then we get there and find the honey jar, we begin to lick the honey and our fingers as we celebrate fame and other things that come with success.

The reality is that all the times our problems today are as a result of our yesterday’s progress. The world around us keep on changing with every success we have. Yet we cling to these past successes as if only the world should change but not the success. Successes take us to a new place where we would need a new strategy to advance further. 

However, we always celebrate the successes for too long then continue to enjoy their warmth. Soon we reach a point of contentment and lethargy. We build a strong status quo unintentionally. With these, walls that block our foresight are built. We see the current reality as our preferred future. 

“Our previous success often prevents us from achieving more success. What got you here won’t take you there.” Marshall Goldsmith.

Success comes with competition, pride, jealousy, hunger for being known, thirst for personal significance, insecurities, constant dissatisfaction among others. Worse is usually the feeling of contentment that sets in.  

Recently, Bishop J.B. Masinde gave a serious comment on influence of social media and ministry. Many religious organizations are busy looking for the numbers (likes, views, subscribers). Churches are trying to be like comedians. It is a matter of fact that in success we end up with more issues usually personal struggles that are incomparable to the very success the world see us having.

Success can also put us into another jail trap. A trap where we do not acknowledge others. A trap where we fail to realize that it is not about winning alone in life. There is much more. Many a times we hear of “self made”, a term used to describe the singular effort of an individual to reach the highest level where they are. This is a term that is misplaced and merely encourages self gratification rather than sharing the contribution of others. No one can make it on his or her own. You need others not only to scale the heights but also to sustain the tempo and keep remaining there. I consider the term “self made” as misplaced and one that can easily allow for pride to set in if unchecked.

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Most times our goal is to celebrate success. I do not mean to say that we should celebrate failure either. Rather, in this heat of celebration, we fail to celebrate God’s faithfulness irrespective of the outcome. We forget to highlight our need for grace and that Jesus is still our ultimate leader. We fail to acknowledge the fact that many were involved in this process both tangible and intangible, visible and invisible. 

Both failure and success have the ability of making us focus on what is seen rather than what is unseen. We fix our eyes on the temporal rather than the eternal. We assume that success is actually what we are seeing. 

In a documentary titled “The weight of Gold”, successful Olympic athletics share moments of difficulty and despair. Some describe how they have found themselves desperate for the “real me” because the “real me” left them long ago. The person they have is the one “the world knows as successful”. 

“We are unnecessary to what [people] insist that we must do and be; as the experts who help them stay ahead of the competition. Congregations want pastors who will lead them in the world of religious competition and provide safe alternative to the world’s ways….they want a pastor they can follow so they won’t have to bother with following Jesus anymore…[Don’t forget:] everything depends upon God, so we are unnecessary. Eugene Peterson, The Unnecessary Pastor. 

Each one of us have an assignment. It is an assignment to ensure that success does not take away the real you and give you another self. As you climb the ladder of your vacation or profession, are you able to remain the real you? Does fame drives you crazy and you abandon the very people that have been your ladder along the way? 

Fame is one of those things that has been too hot to handle among artists, journalists and politicians going by the trends. No sooner are they splashed in the media than they create or recreate another brand that is not them but that easily destroys them. Fame without character development will merely lead to shame. The reality is that the person successful probably never intended to be famous but along the way success brought this and because there was little effort put to manage it, only destruction becomes the outcome. 

The letter of Paul to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29 rings clearly reminding us of our position that we need to maintain:

Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things that the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things that are despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considered important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.

This should really humble us to walk without pride of the achievements. To avoid some kind of self entitlement to our success. We must realize that we are because He is and not just to ourselves but to many others in the crowd who are either still struggling to be where we are or were part of the invisible or visible cheering squad that kept us scaling the walls or holding hands when our blood was oozing due to the bristles along the path. 

Prophet Jeremiah makes a similar assertion:

 This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me…” Jeremiah 9:23-24.

May every success and failure take us back to the cross. To tarry there awaiting His powerful arms to continue enabling us to sail, soar or even struggle through. Anything that takes us away from realizing that we are nothing even with our succceses or failures is a trap that wants to eat our flesh. Be careful. 

The Discipline of Execution

Over the last few months I have been reflecting over execution as a leadership and management discipline and its critical role in delivering outcomes. Generally, we tend to concentrate on planning and leadership and lay little emphasis if any on execution.

How do you define a leader who develops plans and have them well laid out however, at the end of the planning period, over 40% of the activities are not yet accomplished? When a team agrees to do certain tasks and each member is allocated the tasks then at the point of review, more than 20% of the members assigned the tasks are yet to finish them? Have you taken time to reflect on your minutes of meetings for the last year and checked whether all the planned activities were implemented? What was the outcome? At a personal level, do you accomplish all your new year resolutions or towards the end of the year, there are more resolutions left than the year? 

If we are to be successful in realizing positive outcomes then we must build a strong culture of execution. What is execution? The discipline of ensuring things are done excellently and on time.  Execution is the bridge between promises made to stakeholders of the organization and the ultimate outcome. When decisions are being made but there is no follow through to ensure implementation or when actions that need to be taken are not taken then we can only land in a chaotic environment which have more ambitions and desired results than the results themselves.

I believe even the term Chief Executive Officer is not about a position of grandeur and pomp but a position of execution. An executioner is not discouraged by the complexity of a matter rather they are inspired by it. Initially in my leadership assignments especially where am in the board, I thought my work is strategy formulation, thinking from the mountain top then this bomb hit me hard. I realised that my hands must be soiled. I must take keen interest in execution otherwise the outcome may not give me the results I longed for and set out to realise.

Major and serious corporations now realise that execution is a critical discipline that every organization must focus on. It bridges the gap between expectations and management performance. In 2001, the National Association of  Corporate Directors added “execution” to the list of items that an organizational leadership must focus on in evaluating their performance. 

Kenya as a nation is well known that over the years we have had many commissions and task forces which have produced wonderful results and recommendations.  Nevertheless, most of these reports and recommendations therein are lying in shelves gathering dust because there is no execution goodwill. In many organisations,  staff come up with various business plans presented in PowerPoint and other presentation tools. People sitting in those business meetings clap and applaud the presentation. However,  because most people seated in such meetings are also going to present, they avoid asking questions, debating the presentation and as a result they do not get much outcome. I have been to many of these meetings and I just feel wasted because ultimately because those presentations are merely rituals and compliance business. They are not tested through robust dialogue to determine their executability. There is no accountability for results because little discussion has taken place by those responsible to get things done.  

In his book, How Toyota changed the World, Dennis Chambers writes the following about one of the executive founders: 

“Sometime during this period, Kiichiro established a kind of semiformal policy he had learned from his father- a policy that all Toyota managers would practice from then on. The fledging car company would practise a “hands- on” style. The principle is simple: Few things are to be learned in one’s office. Managers roll up their sleeves and get to work out where the real work is. One finds and corrects problems by seeing them up close with one’s own eyes. Theory is fine for the classroom at the university; successful business people get their hands dirty. Two generations later, when Toyota was banging heads with Detroit’s leading carmakers for world supremacy, this policy came into stark reality. 

Detroit executives sailed to work in chauffeur driven limousines. They bypassed the noisy factory floor to catch elevators that whisked them up to skyscraper offices where people spoke in whispers and there was not even the hint of the smell of motor oil. They frequently left early for lunch and just as frequently talked business with each other between putts at the country club.

Toyota executives,  in contrast, walked the factory floor every day and surprised no one when they dropped onto their backs and pushed under a car on the line with a flashlight light to search for the source of an annoying rattle caused by a loose screw.  They enjoyed few rounds of golf. And lunch was routinely a tuna sandwich eaten while hunched over schematic drawings.”

Success is possible when managers and executives get down to work by doing what they have been thinking. It is not micro managing. It is not inability to delegate. It is not disempowerment.  It is bringing reality to work. If a leader does not get to execute the whole of one’s efforts may just be in vain. Execution is making plans to happen. It is a process that demands we ask questions for in those questions we discover we have more answers than  when just answers are given. Questions like: ls the plan ambitious? Is the plan sharp or scattered? Are we pursuing more ideas than we can handle? Why this idea and not the others? How strong are we to execute?