SERVING IS LEADING – LEADING IS SERVING - By Matthew Ujah-Peter

 I have five definitions of leadership and all five imply serving. They are as follow:

1.  Leadership means doing the right things at all times: “all times” means all the times that the right thing is needed. This demands that the right thing must be done both when it is convenient and when it is not convenience. It means doing things not just because it is easy but because it is the right thing to do. The two major challenges or questions this throws up are:

 

1)     What is the right thing? Or how do I do the right thing?

2)     Why should or must I do the right thing when it is not convenient?

 

The answer to the first question takes us to my second definition of leadership.

 

2.      Leadership is an ability to differentiate between good things and the right thing. Good things usually bring temporal benefits. Right things, however, often brings lasting benefits. Good things are usually beneficial to self alone or to a section of the population but the right things are usually beneficial to one and all. It is usually for the good of all even if it is targeted at a few or a single individual at a particular time. Again, good thing make the doer popular, but of course, only for a time. The right thing makes the doer unpopular, but usually for a time. Again, good thing is more convenient. The right thing is not always convenience.

 

This leads us to the second question, “why should I do the right thing when it is not convenient?” The answer to this question is found in my third definition of leadership. But before we go into that let me conclude on this second definition by saying two things. First, I do not mean that doing good things is bad. I am only saying that it takes the spirit and the mindset of leadership to do for others what you could have done only for yourself and maybe for your family alone. In my understanding, a good man takes care of himself and also of his own family. And we should all be good men. We should all do good things. At this primary level this good thing is the right thing. but when and where the power and opportunity lie within us to do beyond these things, doing just these may not be the right thing anymore.

 

Secondly, in the quest to do the right thing, good things may or may not be sacrificed. For example, it is good thing to feed yourself and your family. But if someone’s hearth is hanging between life and death, the money meant for feeding can go to save such life. Feeding is the good thing, saving a life is the right thing, unless the feeding is as critical and urgent as the treatment of the other person’s health.

 

3.      Leadership is sacrifice: from the two foregoing definitions, we have seen leadership from a perspective of doing something because it is the right thing and not because it is the easy thing to do. And anybody can do something when it is convenient. Only leaders do it when it is not. Doing just the inconvenience is not what makes leaders per se. but doing it because it is right is what does. Service means solving problems for people and doing so will require sacrifice most of the times. Pleasure, treasures, time, energy and even personal goals may be sacrificed sometimes in the quest to serve.

 

4.      Leadership is service: it is unfortunate that we generally equate service with servitude. The belief is that the servant is an inferior human being. This may be true on one-on-one master-servant arrangement. But not true in an individual-to-group service. Your freedom may be curtailed or limited when you serve just one person indefinitely. Your influence and potentials are hindered if one person is your object of service. In such situation enslavement can result if the “master” does not understand what it means to have someone serving him. This is why serving terrifies people in our part of the world. The persons been served abuse the privilege and the one serving is dishonored.

 

By design every human being is designed and wired to with capacity to serve (the needs of) fellow human beings. I believe that when the Creator created streams, rivers and the seas, He knew that men will need to cross them some days. He left how that would happen to the power of creativity and imagination He wired into man. Those powers are meant to solve problems such as building bridges across streams, rivers and the seas as well as building canoes, ferries and ships to move people and their things across those water bodies. Thus those things in life that ought to be but not created by the Creator are meant for man to create in service to his fellow men. So the capacity wired into us is to enormous for us to server just one person with them. If we are to serve one person with our God-given potential, it is either for a while or per time or else so we could serve more people through that single individual. And the Creator Himself design that we serve Him through people and people through Him.

 

5.      Leadership is follower-ship: I believe that everyone is a leader. The question then is, if everyone is a leader, who then is the follower? The answer is simple. Everyone will not lead in everything. There is a place of leadership for everyone. Even the president of this country is not a leader in everything. In the hospital before his doctor, if he needs medical attention, he is a follower while his doctor is the leader there and then. If he refuses to follow his doctor simply because he believes that as the president he cannot follow anyone, he is on his own. He disobeys his doctor at his own peril.  The same doctor is a follower in the mechanic’s workshop. Granted that he is more educated than the mechanic, but if he disobeys his mechanic’s warning simply because he thinks he cannot be a follower of the mechanic, he disobey the mechanic’s instructions at his own risk. If we all understand service (in reality, leadership) in this way, there will be harmony and progress. Leadership is follower-ship. Even the Holy Scripture admonishes us to “submit one to another.”¹ To what end? Submission here does not mean subservience. It simply means to listen to and follow the expert in his field of expertise. Thus the business mogul under rates the lawyer’s expert advice at his own peril. No matter how important and wealthy and highly placed he is, he must submit to expert’s advice, even if the expert is an unknown and economically challenged person.

 

Submission means allowing others to do their duties. It means to respect the duties, offices and roles of others and also follow them as the needs arise.  I have heard of a former Lagos state governor who normally stopped at the traffic light just like other road users even though he was in an official convoy. Not a normal thing in this country. But that is leadership per excellence. Although he was the governor yet he followed the instructions and orders of the police whom others of his class would term “ordinary police.”  

 

Whoever you are, it is by letting others  be themselves and letting them play their roles as they should that your own leadership roles are truly played. The engineer should know that the prestige attached to his profession is due to the importance of his profession to humanity and not that he as a person is a superior human being. The professionals who understand this principle will tell you they are highly honored for the privilege to serve mankind as whatever it is that they are. One of the professions I respect a lot as a person is medical profession. This field deals with human life. And no wonder more time is invested to the process of becoming a medical doctor or a pharmacist than the time required to become other professionals.

 

But here is the point: whatever professional you practice, it is only a privilege to serve and the prestige attached to it is due to the level of its importance to humanity. Other professions that have less prestige are also importance. The person with profession of more prestige is not a superior human being to the one with less prestige.

 

Apart from convectional education, there is also the “school of hard knocks” – the school of life, if you want. It is called experience. Whatever is your profession, experience is still required to bake you for the real world of service. If you are not baked in the forge of experience you will not understand leadership, vis-à-vis service. You will abuse power.- the power given you for service. This is the bane of leadership in our part of the world.