By WALE AKINYEMI

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Every entity rises and falls based on the capacity and choices of its leaders. This is true in every sphere of life. This is why who you follow and who you allow to lead you is important in shaping your life. A leader cannot lead you beyond their mental comprehension and capacity. The fact that a person has a desire to do certain things is no proof that they have the capacity to do it.

Strong leadership in public always starts with leadership of self. If you cannot lead yourself, why should anyone follow you? This is the place of integrity. Leadership of self is the training ground for leadership of people. When you can lead yourself along the path of objectivity regardless of emotional bias, then you make it easier for people to follow you.

Organisations don’t fail. Nations don’t fail. It is always leadership that fails because leaders led the organisation or nation down the wrong path. One of the ironies of leadership as we have seen in many corporate failures and even national failures is that those that led the entities into failure often get away with it while the followers become victims.

Nigeria’s President Muhammad Buhari has spent more time abroad in private hospitals than any other Nigerian leader in the history of Nigeria. No one takes him to task.

He is has to do this is because he has not developed the healthcare systems at home. Many have died because of poor healthcare but the leaders get to use the taxes of the people to go for treatment anywhere in the world. It can be recalled that former President Umaru Yar Adua also died in a foreign hospital.

Riding wave of adversity

Leadership failure never happens overnight. It is the result of ignoring facts and distorting truth. A crisis happens when changes are not managed.

One characteristic of leaders that lead into victory is that they keep abreast of facts and trends and are able to ride above the waves of adversity intelligently. They are hopeful but their hope is engaged only after they have done what needs to be done by putting the right mechanisms in place.

Failure is never an event. It is a process. After spending all his money on testing SPaceX rockets in a bid to convince NASA that SpaceX was ready to continue the US space program, Elon Musk could have given up but, he called his team and told them to pool together all they learnt from the failures into one last attempt. They did and won. Failure became the school of greatness. From Edison to Michael Jordan and others worldwide, many literally failed their way to success.

Strong leadership must temper emotions with reason. Weigh their emotions and feelings against a greater good and bigger picture and then make, with grace, decisions that may go against everything their emotions would have wanted to do. There is no room for emotions in the process. When relating to people, yes, emotional intelligence is great but when dealing with facts, emotions have to seat at the table.

Your gifts can open doors for you and get you to the top but at the end of the day your legacy will be defined not by your gift but by your character. Yes, it is character that sustains gifts. The character to sustain your success is developed through the process of becoming successful. The process is what builds character and the process includes oscillating periods of highs and lows.

Those who compromise themselves out of the lows will never be able to handle the grace and dignity that should come with the highs. Whatever you compromise to get, you will ultimately lose. Short term compromise is the factory where long term failure is manufactured. Those who compromise values for ambition will lose both. Once people in leadership esteem position over values, failure is the imminent end result. Every entity rises and falls on its leadership.

Wale Akinyemi is the convenor of the Street University (www.thestreetuniversity.com)and chief transformation officer, PowerTalks; [email protected]