GOVERNMENT, GOVERNANCE, AND LEADERSHIP: leadership is a dispensation - Part One

Leadership represents the organization of people into manageable groups and influencing them to a specific direction for the purposes of harnessing available resources (spiritual, mental, and physical) for the general good of all. Leadership is not just an art of leading people towards a goal but governance (management, control, rule, etcetera.). The significance of any government is to enforce order wherever it is located and to establish positive institutions that regulate and direct the actions of persons as well as the management of other resources for the general good of all. But, the enforcement of these necessities requires authentic and divinely empowered leadership, which will lead people in attaining their destinies in God, their destinies in that particular time, season, generation, and history. That is why every leadership is a dispensation. Every season in history, a generation, in a particular period, and the leaders that emerge and when their time fades others take over.

Founders of organizations, whether religious or political, must understand this reality. They need to recognize that though their positions as founders remain unshakable, there are seasons that requires that they lead from behind and allow members of their respective organizations whose seasons are due to take up leadership from the front.

I believe that, leadership has three major expressions that swallow up all the other components that constitute it. And these are the expressions people like Mr. Jerry Rawlings and others who are like him need to understand so that the movements or groups God birthed through them can stand and influence positively societies in Africa without unnecessary interferences, which breed insecurity or create an atmosphere of disunity among members. The thing is, there is a difference between management and leadership. There can be good managers but poor leaders but every leader is supposed to be a good manager. Managers organizes people, satisfies their needs, and encourages them to work harder to attain a common goal for the general success of the organization but many leaders with bad managerial skills rather uses people to get the things they want. Leaders must know when to allow their followers whose seasons are due for leadership to take over the management of the group without interfering with their operations. A leader must be able to set goals together with his team and divide this team into different sub-teams or groups and appoint heads over them. These sub-teams must be given specific targets to fulfill and must be left alone together with their leaders to hit those targets on their own which ever positive means possible, reporting back to the main authority for accountability. But, these sub-teams or groups must be guided by principles from the general constitution of the organization that controls their actions and commands the complete adherence of the groups to the work ethics of the organization. This form of strategy enables leaders to identify potentials and extra-ordinary gifts among members and, moreover, it enables leadership to manage the mental (ideas) resources of followers or workers for the general good of all in the society.

It is not being at the front that makes you a leader. A leader is able to recognize when he must retreat to oblivion and allow a follower or disciple who has shown readiness and the intellectual fitness to lead the group towards the attainment of a specific goal for that season to do so without any interference. The leader at this point delegates, suggests, advices, guides, and so on. He does the leading from the back where as his promising and mature trainees lead from the front. When a leader fail to recognize this dispensation he may breed rebellion or might force potentially powerful influencers within his organization to appropriately, may be, resign from membership when they chance upon opportunities elsewhere that allows them to give out to society what they have accumulate for years. Mr. Rawlings of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and his cohorts have flouted this principle and that is why the NDC is divided between the Rawlings' and the Mills' factions. The season of Mr. Rawlings is gone though he is the founder of the NDC. He must believe in both the spiritual and the intellectual capacity of the new leader of the party and the team he is working with to the achievement of the party's objectives for the nation instead arrogantly criticizing him together with his team of ineptitude and slowness, using foul languages and force. He must be the example for the new generation of leaders of the party and not a nuisance; he must lead and influence decisions positively from behind and not the front. Leading from the front instead of the back gives people the impression that the current leader of the nation is a puppet heeding to the pulls and presses of the one who controls it. Where as he is man of his own and full of the ability to lead this nation in the right direction. In this dispensation, President Mills is the leader of the nation and so all who believe they know best must suggest their opinions to him in humility and respect or for ever remain shushed until their dispensation envelopes them

The second expression, leading from the center, shall be discussed soon.

Fidel Y. Tetteh