Leadership Is About Who You Are

Officially finished my third book of the year and this one is on Leadership.

Not a book precisely, but research into the history of some of the world’s renowned leaders who brought their seat to the table, rather than inherit it.

Firstly, let me say that It burns my heart when I see corporate organizations, in an attempt to groom leaders, bombard everyone with 10hours of leadership principles and tactics that do nothing but get almost everyone bored and uninterested. I feel we could have invested in documenting the history of African leaders who would inspire each and everyone to do better, think better and act better as a leader in every right.

I want to believe some people are somewhere grieved by this pain and are working on making it possible for future Africans to become world leaders by living through African history. Not the one filled with embezzlements and political ineptitude but the ones filled with hope, aspiration, and even martyrdom.

So far, I’m most taken aback by the life between the birth and death of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln was born a no one. Lost his mother at a very tender age and was constantly maltreated by his own father.

He rose to become the most decorated president in the history of the united state after several midlife crises. He was often emotionally dis-oriented yet, attempted suicide on a number of occasions but those key moments of his life made him a psychologically mature person he was to have kept the north together, lead the movement against slavery in the 1960s civil war through the emancipation proclamation, and eventually his movement for black voting right.

Lincoln wasn’t afraid of death. The ordeal of his life makes death a mere event to him rather than a pain. throughout the civil war, he would say “if somebody was going to assassinate him, there’s nothing we can do to stop it” He’ll get notes and notes about his assassination and will just file them away in a drawer labeled Assassination”

After his first tenure, he was approached by the Republican, being label as a failure and losing ground of the war, asked to step aside for one of the most experienced Republican leaders; but he said “No, I’m here to do what do what needs to be done and when I”m done, I will be consumed and you may go looking for your better man”.

During the Cold War, Lincoln would occasionally go to the war front, unguided, visiting each army's station, sharing the pain of death with them, and in doing so, earning their respect.

Lincoln was a true leader who had given his life before it was finally taken by John Wilkes Booth in the middle of his second tenure which he himself had predicted. He’d told his wife that he’ll be re-elected the second time but I won’t survive it.

Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a great leader because he was a president, he was a great president because he was a great leader. They say mediocre leaders hide from faults and bad news, while great leaders encourage it, embrace it, reach out for it and learn from it.

Lincoln's experience of life made him the leader of ages. For all he’s been through, he lived the rest of his life liberating people from it.

No one cares about black slavery in his time but he did. He perpetually sees himself in the position of the slaves because of the maltreatment he got from his own father.

So, Lincoln laid his life for Black lives to matter. On April 11th, 1865, Abraham Lincoln called for black voting rights and was killed for it. He wasn’t killed because of the emancipation proclamation, he wasn’t killed because of the war ratification of the 13th amendments which abolish slavery everywhere, he wasn’t killed because he presided over the successful war against the Confederacy. He was killed because he urges the right of Black to vote. He was a martyr to Black civil rights.

If leadership is about who we are, who we are can be changed by learning from history not by reading plain principles developed by some professors who never lived their writings.