Have you seen the movie Invictus? It is a movie about Nelson Mandela’s handling of post-apartheid South Africa. He is portrayed in the movie as a leader whose major desire for his nation is to see his nation recover from the evil inflicted by apartheid. He preaches and exemplifies the need for forgiveness and reconciliation, and he is keen to keep the nascent nation from being polarised along ethnic/colour lines. The movie is also about the rise of South Africa’s Rugby Team, The Springboks, from obscurity to prominence and this is largely due to the personal efforts of Nelson Mandela.
What had the most profound effect on me in the movie was Nelson Mandela’s remarkable ability to connect with the people around him. He knows them by their first name – this is one laudable attribute of great leaders. At a point in the film, Morgan Freeman, who acted as Nelson Mandela in the film, is seen asking one of his security agents about the agent’s child who is sick. Mandela is portrayed as a thoughtful and caring leader. He is a leader who connects with the people around him. He is touched by the condition of those working with him. I do not know how you see this: a country’s president is not only aware that the child of one of his security aides (security aide not personal secretary or cabinet member!) is sick, he even has the presence of mind to inquire about the child’s condition. This for me is an extraordinary act of leadership.
One reason the film struck a chord with me was because shortly before the time I watched the movie, I listened to John Maxwell on the Law of Connection and everything he talked about in the tape was exemplified in the movie by Nelson Mandela. This post is thus an attempt to share the profound lessons I gleaned from John Maxwell’s Law of Connection and the movie, Invictus.
Connecting with people means they see you as their friends. It means developing credibility with people. For people to follow you, they must trust you and believe you are their friend. This is what positional leaders do not understand. They usually think the position they occupy automatically bestows on them the right to lead people. They fail to realise that leadership is basically influence. And if this is so, everyone who aspires to be a leader must strive to build influence with the people they intend to lead. This means your followers are willing to follow wherever you go. Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela, Indira Ghandi, Martin Luther King (Jnr.) are perfect examples of people who connected with their followers. They earned the trust of their followers by showing them they truly cared for them. You must have heard the saying: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
My opinion is that only a few Nigerian leaders have learned how to connect with the citizenry. Most of these leaders see those they are leading as instruments/tools to achieving their personal desires. They come down to the level of the people when they are seeking votes and after that, they forget them. They do not understand what it means to connect with followers. That is why our views do not count. That is why our feelings do not count. And that is also why they misappropriate our resources. They just don’t care! How can ORDINARY Nigerians expect to benefit from the common wealth? Only a privileged few have the licence to enjoy it. And when they are sated, they prefer to waste the leftover so that the masses will not share in their enjoyment. And who can blame them? Is it not when the masses taste what the lucky few are enjoying that they will start to ask questions?
But what I want our leaders to understand is that a lot of huge benefits accrue to a nation when leaders connect with followers. Followers develop extreme loyalty for their leaders. The vision of the leader becomes the aspiration of the followers. To connect with people means to touch their hearts. Our leaders must realise that that the heart comes before the head. Maxwell expresses this with the statement: leaders touch your heart before they ask for a hand. SO, IT IS HIGH TIME OUR LEADERS LEARNT TO EARN OUR CONFIDENCE.
Darasimi Oshodi is a blogger. Read his blogs at darasimioshodi.blogspot.com
Twitter handle: @Aristotle274
The views expressed above are solely that of the writer and not of Omojuwa.com or its associates.
