Hello people. We are veering off the Branding course for now. However, you can still check up the archives for all posts, discussions and tips on branding.
Today’s post is about another important and rather pressing subject.
Last weekend I had the opportunity to speak to a crop of future leaders, young people just about rounding off their stay in a secondary school and looking forward to life with greater freedom as well as responsibility.
While I was there, I realized from conversations with these young people that somehow, they are apprehensive of what they might find once they step out into higher institutions and have to rely on themselves for decisions that they were hitherto assisted in making. I saw how if they had the right tools, it will be a lot easier for them to be able to make the right decisions and be their own persons.
Incidentally, this weekend also marked the inauguration of the fourth republic in Nigeria; it was the swearing in of President Goodluck Jonathan and his team into office. And as I watched these young ones it occurred to me that we have come such a long way, chronologically, yet it seems like we have not moved from where we started as a nation.
I went on a thinking spree and wondered why it seemed like we have been recycling our leaders with no respite, why all the ones who just couldn’t keep their word still found a way to come back? I realized that more than any reason, it was because as a nation, we never bothered to invest in an on going training of leaders.
Most people start to pursue leadership when their skills and personalities are already set, and it is difficult to break into their mold. And I started to realize that if we will make the effort to empower our children this early as this particular school has done and is doing with the tools to be able to speak up, engage in valuable relationships and with the mindset that their lives will only count by the change they bring into the world, there is no telling how ready we will be in another ten or twenty years to pick leaders who know why they are leaders and whose leadership traits have been deliberately developed for the general good.
The point of my rambling today is that the future is on my mind, we all need to find a systematic and strategic way of growing leaders, who understand leadership for change. And I am lending my voice to that of every one else’s who have asked, can we catch them young?
Let us raise our glasses to the future of our land, because in these young ones, if we make the right investments, will our nation rest. In not too long a time from now, we will begin to see that we can still bring the desired change upon the face of our nation.
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