People need, want and aspire for good leaders to lead them into a good future.
Democracy is all about the nation electing its best leaders to manage national affairs, to create a nice future.
And when a society lacks good leaders, the entire body politic suffers a grave handicap. The future sees the people become despondent as the society spirals downward instead of rising to its potential and glory.
Good leaders inspire their people to great aspirations. We saw this with great leaders like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill.
While these leaders shaped and designed a future for humanity that sees us today live for the dignity of the human being, with their grand visions, tireless faith and imaginative brilliance, we do not expect such leadership to be a common occurrence. Humanity experiences such greatness but once in a lifetime.
In fact, many great leaders are shaping and designing our 21st century global village. These work across the global landscape to make a difference for health care, poverty eradication, literacy and human rights.
Yet, on so many local fronts we see our global village suffer from a devastating drought of good leaders. Here in our country we face the effects of what can only be described as foolish leadership, every day. Our society seems riddled with poor leadership skills – in politics, economic affairs, including business, culture and especially management of national institutions.
We’ve had close to two decades to prepare for rising sea levels. We’ve had ample warning that the coastal regions, where our main agriculture sector resides, would suffer from heavy flooding.
Yet, every time there is unusual heavy rainfall, we are caught napping at the wheel. These massive floods always seem to catch us completely by surprise. We have done very little to plan for floods.
The government seems absolutely at a loss where flood management is concerned. Leadership to manage our farmlands, national drainage system and to deal with the effects of the worsening global environmental catastrophe seems desperately lacking in this land.
We have been unable to provide leadership in securing local government management and governance. For well over a decade we have absolutely failed to deal with this fundamental necessity of a democratic society. Our lack of leadership foists a dictatorial local government system on citizens, and it has become a severe burden on people.
We see the effects of this in Georgetown, our capital city, which has plunged from a world famous Garden City to a scorned, neglected, grossly mismanaged, garbage-strewn mess.
Who is providing the leadership at City Hall to inspire City workers to live daily, to work, with the aspiration of managing a capital city that sparkles?
Who is providing the leadership we need to see our Georgetown glow with greatness, as a city lying on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean?
We suffer as a people from poor leadership. And so we cannot create the kind of future that is our aspiration. We become handicapped, stumbling into the default future of failure, of abject dejection, of continuing poverty, with shantytowns on the edge of town and a marginalized urban youth population that resorts to pillage and petty robbery to escape hunger and need.
If we cannot develop a structure to nurture great leadership in this country, we would not be able to design a future Guyanese nation that wows the world with our national character.
We see lack of leadership even within our family structure, where abuse of children continues to escalate alarmingly.
Our society lacks the kind of role model that we could emulate as the kind of character to cultivate.
We lack leaders who, using words and language, inspire us to dream and work hard to create a future Guyanese nation that plays a dynamic, fruitful role on the world stage.
The astounding thinker, Peter Drucker, noted for his ground-breaking work in Management Theory, re-shaped for us the human nature map.
Whereas 18th century thinker Adam Smith ushered in the Industrial Age of specialization with his theory of Mankind being driven by needs and wants, Drucker found that human nature desires to be given tools to achieve our aspirations.
Leadership is about inspiring us to aspire as a people, especially as individuals.
We dream. We imagine. We create in our mind’s eye a future that we call our aspiration.
Great leaders not only use language to sharpen such future landscapes for us, but they strive to inspire us to make such aspirations become reality.
Instead, with escalating internal nation wars, ethnic and tribal conflicts and political strife, our world today suffers from a debilitating lack of good local leaders.
Good leaders know human nature. Good leaders strive to reach the people at their heart, to build societal relationships that cultivate and nurture harmony, peace, sharing of resources. Good leaders shape a society that embraces every person, and causes each to live vibrant, dreaming, striving for a fulfilled life.
Good leaders inspire us to believe that we can live for our aspirations, we can strive and reach for a dream that lies in the future, that we can believe in ourselves.
How do good leaders achieve this amazing result in their communities?
Their language paints for the people their vision of a particular future.
These leaders know human nature. They know what people want, and they with passion and zeal articulate that inner aspiration of people.
When great, or even good, leaders speak to us, we feel that they know us, that they have connected with us. We feel as if they understand our deepest thoughts.
People want these kinds of leaders caring for their welfare and their future.
It is what this nation lacks. And so we have got to strive to transform how we develop our leaders. The future generations are counting on us to make this kind of difference in preparing for tomorrow.
