TMCnet News

Leadership & Motivation [New Dawn, The (Liberia)]
[July 10, 2014]

Leadership & Motivation [New Dawn, The (Liberia)]


(New Dawn, The (Liberia) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The surest evidence of greatness is a humble spirit. Leaders need to be sensitive to the needs and feelings of the people they lead, and they need to as well know that the great paradox of life is that the more they give of themselves, the more they receive. Leaders need to build a reservoir of good will by placing the interest of the people they lead above their own and must accentuate the good decisions and find a way to reshape the bad. That in essence is the challenge of effective leadership.



Becoming a role model as a leader is an integral key to truly effective leadership. As a leader you will have to keep a clean sheet and do the right thing so that you are not used as a bad reference tomorrow - a reference that will hinder those that supported your ambition for leadership position and as well those that admire your leadership style and quality and having similar ambition. Know that their hopes and aspirations rest on your success story.

Listening shows that the leader has humility. It demonstrates that he or she is not too aloof or too busy or too self-opinionated to spent time listening to another idea or opinion. Problems can often be resolved before they have time to escalate. Listening to others on a first-hand level will enable you to take corrective action early. As a leader DO NOT allow problems to escalate. Successful leaders have the courage to take action where others hesitate. Your decision will always be better if you do what is right for your organization, not what is right for yourself, and as much as possible, keep the people in the decision making process. Ask for ideas, input, and thoughts before important actions are taken. Involvement leads to commitment.


Do not make unpopular decisions and seek to implement them. To do so will be setting a bad leadership example. Leaders must not lead their people with a whip but must give them a dream and help them reach their potentials. DO NOT give a wrong picture/impression to your followers that indeed you are hiding something.  Understand that confident, trusting leadership is no management fad; it is a way of life. It may take you a hundred days…or a thousand…but you must strive to make trust and confidence in others (and not necessarily your relations) an integral part of your personality before you can inspire or require it in someone else.

Too often we confused leadership with charisma, heroics, tough mindedness, eloquent speeches, skillful debate, etc. We see a person make an eloquent speech and we get carried away. Another person won titles in his academic or career life and we again are carried away and think he or she is a leader. These are some of the reasons we get all sorts of people elected in to offices and we get no better results. We can never have the wrong people in leadership and then expect better results.

I believe, without doubt, that electing the wrong people is unquestionably the most cause of the socio-economic crisis we have been faced with and that the lack of motivation or appropriate ideology on the part of our leaders is a major reason for the failure of Liberia to develop, and from where we have come it is important for us to know that our past is over and that Liberia is the only country we have. We must all endeavor to make Liberia a better place for our children and our children's children, and to make Liberia a better place we must elect leaders and not personalities or titles.

Therefore, who then is a leader? A Leader is one that helps people care about themselves, their work and their treatment of others. A Leader motivates people to discover themselves and their talents, to do their best, and to take responsibility and share recognition for achievement and failure. Take a look at Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, etc., you will see traits of leadership qualities in these leaders thus helping you understand who a leader is and what a leader does for himself and for the people he leads. These leaders didn't think of themselves as being important than their individual and organizational mission. They were team builders.

These are common characteristics of leaders in Liberia: 1. They failed to motivate others, 2. They fail to take responsibility and to share recognition for achievements and failures, and 3. When a leader in Liberia fails, he or she plays the blame game -blaming others and not wanting to take responsibility. Remember, people do what people see. People will not follow you as a leader if you are not showing them the way. Sadly, leaders in Liberia think they are leaders but the truth is they have no followers.

(Chealy Brown Dennis is a consultant and a much sought after motivational speaker and offers training in organizational leadership, and business development concept and planning, creative sales and marketing, strategic planning and team building. He also offers workbooks, on-location and train-the-trainer formats for leaders, managers, businesses and organizations. He can be contacted through email at: // // // // This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it // // or on phone at: 0886-264-611 or 0776545394) (c) 2014 The NewDawn Newspaper - Liberia - All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]