Inspirational Leadership

Inspirational Leadership

With so much negativity going around free of charge a lot of people are left wondering if they will ever make it. They have dreams and great aspirations but the conditions that are prevailing sometimes make it look like their dreams will never become tangible realities. As I speak to people from different parts of the continent one word that I keep hearing is that people want to be inspired.

A lot of people are in a place where they really do not know how they are going to get to the next form of their lives. As I pondered over it I realized that for every generation there are leaders who emerge to give inspiration to others. The blacks in America had people like Martin Luther King Jr. Pre Independence Africa had the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Patrice Lumumba among others. These were the voices of inspiration that painted a picture of hope amidst the despair of colonial and racial slavery. Where are the voices of inspiration that will paint the picture of hope against the backdrop of economic meltdowns, terrorism, corporate failures and other shapers of the twenty first century?

What does it mean to inspire? To get a proper understanding of this word we need to look at the other side of the coin – the word expire. When we say something has expired it means it has run its course. An expiry date means the final date of use and cannot be used beyond that date. It sets a limit. It sets a boundary. A lot of people are living with the notion that they have run their course and there is nothing more they can do. They have tried all they know to do. Inspiration therefore being the other side of the coin means to renew its course and give a new lease of life. To inspire means to re-fire. It means to remove the boundaries and the limits.

Inspirational leaders are therefore those leaders who are able to help others to remove the boundaries and limits they have set in their lives. They are able to take people who were looking at expiry dates or even those who had already expired in their effectiveness and significance and then giving them a new lease of life by re-firing them.

What are the characteristics of inspirational leaders? First, they live their talk. What they say reflects what they are doing. In fact their lives are such testimonials of their message that they epitomize what St Francis of Assisi meant when he said, ‘Preach the gospel and if necessary, use words’.
Imagine a river that separates dreams from achievements.

The inspirational leader gets to this river and sees people congregated around it. When he asks what they are doing, he discovers that they are all talking about the challenges the river has posed and the difficulty in getting across the river. They lament about the implications for their lives and families if they are not able to get across. The inspirational leader then looks around and realizes that there are trees on the river bank. The inspirational leader sees the challenges of all but also sees the way out. He gets branches from the trees and builds a raft and uses the raft to take himself and others across. He then teaches the art of raft making and not only does the river stop being a challenge but because of the human traffic that now sees opportunities where there were once obstacles, a lot of people wait in turn for the raft service every day. People then begin to sell sodas and finger foods by the raft jetty. Others get into the raft business and soon it is a booming trade. Suddenly a whole economy has been created. From having a congregation of people who gather to talk about the challenges of the river, we now have a vibrant group of people who realize that the river was never a challenge to begin with. The challenge was the limitation and expiry date they had put on their minds that set boundaries. What the inspirational leader came to do was to remove the limits and show the possibilities.

Remember, to be an inspirational leader, you must first remove the limits in your mind. The expiry details that you have convinced yourself to believe about yourself must be totally removed. You must dare failure in the face. You must know that it is better to fail at something than to succeed at nothing. You must remember that the bold may not live forever but the cautious will never have a life. Inspirational leaders are people who by the sheer audacity of their actions are able to remove the limitations from the minds of multitudes – even generations unborn. While others read the map and wait for maps to be drawn, inspirational leaders are those who draw their own map and make roads where roads did not exist. They like Winston Churchill are able to say, ‘ History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

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