WHO IS A LEADER?

Definition

I define leadership in one word, “Influence”. A leader is somebody who is capable of influencing another person (Full Stop). Now, I know it sounds kind of strange and very radical right? Perhaps you have never heard it being put this way. That’s the more reason why I said that new wine is not put into old wine skins if not it will rent it. So if you are a traditionalist and therefore only accept new ideas provided they are the same old ones then you could as well say to yourself that, “This guy is trying to destroy what I had always known” and stop right here. But if you are ready to take off the lid, if you are ready to dive out daringly into the deep blue sea in search of new islands then you are in the right place at the right time and reading the right post. So come on and read on. What then do I mean when I define leadership this way?

What do I mean?

Everybody created by God and presently living on the face of this planet earth has been endowed with unique gifts and talents. Those innate abilities that God has placed in you have a propensity to create a sphere of influence around you and over at least one person making you already a leader of that one. If at least one out of the 7 billion people we find in this world can be influenced by you, then you are a leader of that one. These innate abilities in you tend to create an invisible field around you like the magnetic (or force) field around a magnet but which I choose to call an “influential field”. It is this field that attracts people into your life with your same or complementary gifts and talents. For a magnet, its size determines the strength of its field but for us the strength of this influential field is determined by how sharpened your gift is. Those who recognize that they have a gift and go a step ahead to work on that gift in order to bring it to fruition are those who develop a stronger influential field. Everybody has this field be you poor or rich, tall or short because God deemed it so. The major difference now comes with the number of people a person can influence with his gift determined by the strength of his influential field. This accounts for why we have leaders of hundreds, thousands, millions, billions and so on. But the bottom line is that everyone is a leader in his own domain. 

The Magnet

For a magnet we know that as the object is further moved away from the magnetic field, the influence of the field on the object decreases. For us the influential field around a person is independent of the geographical location. That’s why somebody could be in the United States and have a great influence over somebody in Cameroon without even knowing the person. Don’t you see that every day? I remember when David Beckham did the famous “Mohawk” hair style, many children everywhere around the world copied it until people pleaded with him to take it off. The children saw him as their role model and therefore copied all that he did-negative or positive. That’s the kind of influence he had on them and some people could see it as negative while others positive. We live in a free world and hence our unique worldviews but the point I want to drive home is this- His talent of playing football which he had sharpened by continuous practice on the pitch, had given him a greater influential field which made him a leader to these ones. You may ask that, “But how is he their leader?” Of course it is very clear-He led them in doing that hair style and they followed, so he automatically and perhaps unconsciously became their leader and they his followers. That’s quite simple to understand when compared to solving quadratic equations for x and y. Whether that gift is used to influence people positively or negatively is really another thing in itself. That is why we have good and bad leaders both in the Christian as well as secular folds but the bottom line is that everyone is a leader because of the ability to exert a certain level of influence on others. 

Your Gift, Your Influential Field

Let’s take another scenario that I believe will shed more light on this, imagine you are a gifted artist and have these little friends in your neighborhood who love your works of art. Now you may or may not be aware of this because the presence of the field around you doesn’t make you feel any different. Same as a magnet does not feel any different because of the magnetic field around it. Have you ever felt any different ever since you knew that you have two hands? Or do your legs look strange on you as if you borrowed them from somebody? Of course not but they do play an important role in your life. The truth about the matter is that these friends are attracted to you because of your gift as result of the invisible influential field that gift has created around you. They will begin to look up to, and admire you because of your ability to draw well. Your influential field has attracted them to you. They will talk about you in your absence and even develop this desire of wanting to keep company with you all the time. Just being around and listening to you speak elevates their spirits. Can you connect to this? I am talking out of experience and that makes it more concrete even though I am not an artist. Remember the saying that, He who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn no other way. These little friends of yours would believe everything you tell them about arts because you have become a role model to them in that domain. As you continue to relate with them and especially if you are a faithful friend, they will begin to copy everything you do. They will watch the kind of movies you watch, they will listen to the kind of music you listen to, and they will say the kind of things you say; BE IT GOOD OR BAD. What has happened? You have begun to INFLUENCE them and like I said earlier, it may be positive or negative based on how you live. If you live right and do right then it will be positive influence, otherwise it will be negative influence. You haven’t applied black magic on them like some people will think. It was power of influence at work in their lives created by the gift you had been endowed with by the Creator of the Universe. So never minimize anything that God has given to you. You might be surprised at the number of people you would be influencing with it and leading to Christ or the Devil.