RIGHTEOUS LEADERSHIP – PART 1

 RIGHTEOUS LEADERSHIP – PART 1

Proverbs 29:2 “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn”.

From the scripture above, the Bible makes us to understand that when a righteous man is in power or authority, the people he exercises authority over or leads rejoice or become great; this is because Leadership determines all things. The position of Leadership is a very important one, in the sense that as Leaders, we are responsible for many lives attached to ours; we either shape ourselves and our fellow men right or it’s the other way round. As I said earlier, Leadership among many others, is a strong force and determinant. If wielded well, it yields good result, if not, “bad” becomes the case (as we see in the pilot verse). We must understand that as Leaders, your individual leadership determines if not 100%, a large percentage of the life of those that are following you. Therefore, we have to be cautious in all things we do, we say or we teach; because I have come to realize in these three things does a leader exercise His will and His control. You are either saying something, doing something or teaching something. Thus, in all things, it is expedient of us to be righteous in them. “Righteous” here means making sure you are upright in them-you uphold the right things. Remember the Bible in the book of Psalm 92:15paraphrased “our God is upright and there is no unrighteousness in him”. This just means in all things we do; we strive to do them RIGHT. 

You may start to say, at least I’m not a leader, these words are not meant for me. Hmmm… As I always like to say, every one of us has the leadership potential in us and to add, we must have all exercised these qualities one way or the other. If at some point, you have been responsible for certain decisions taken by certain people, be it in your family, that school of yours, that fellowship, that organization, that local government area, then you are a leader. And as such, these words in actual sense concern you. Most times, when we hear the word Leadership and as we have been wrongly taught growing up, we quickly tend to assume, it’s all about Politics; and also as we have been wrongly taught, though it may seem the case now “Politics is a dirty game”, There are no good qualities or characters in it. No, it is a lie; people in politics do not have good character or virtues in them, because they just do not want to possess them. Possessing the right virtues, attitudes and disposition, cuts across all leadership positions whether as a father, a C.E.O or even as a political leader.

A man once said and I quote “you cannot know the true character of a man until he is given power or authority”. And as someone who has worked with so many, I so much agree with this school of thought. Yes, Power has the capacity to

control or dominate a leader; but as Leaders, we also have the capacity to dominate or control power. However, it should be more of the latter than the former if as leaders, we want to be successful. To be “successful” here, I mean Real success. Most of us have wrongly tied success in leadership as being able to acquire certain things, possess certain things and control certain things. Though to a reasonable extent, we should have these things, but in full essence, as leaders your success should lie in your followers-their success.   As Leaders, our ability to dominate Power shows in us True leadership. If the other way, Power dominates us as leaders, we automatically lose true character; because that power is what we now represent. And as we have been taught from Beginner Learning; the antonym for “true” is “false”. If you are not true, the only thing you then can be is False.

Let us simply put thus; “a man of true character is a righteous man”. Character defines a man, that is the real you when no one is watching you. We must also understand that Leadership is the wise use of Power.

As have been earlier said, everyone is called to be a Leader; we have all exercised Leadership roles maybe knowingly or unknowingly; for an instance, parent to children, elder brother to younger brother or sister and senior to junior in schools. We must however change their ideology that “we are the leaders of tomorrow”. As a person, I so much think that this wrong phrase is one of the reasons, we have certain problems, even in our nation. Since the youths have been wrongly told we are the leaders of tomorrow; there has been a tendency to push the necessary things “today” to “tomorrow”. Truths that we are supposed to build on, qualities we ought to possess, as we won’t be needing them until tomorrow, we tend to not make the most of these things in our Today. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Men That Lead

Building Manhood