Leadership is about providing solutions to society's challenges. It takes creativity and innovation to find these solutions. Today we are seeing a burst of creative ideas and innovations to solve Africa's challenges by our very own. It is not without hurdles, but we are churning the solutions nevertheless. There are young people that have broken the barrier of limited resources, by thinking differently and collaborating with those endowed with the resources they need to live out their purpose. They have chosen to be productive.
If you want to know the purpose of an iron box, you ask its manufacturer. When God created mankind, he commanded us to "… be fruitful and multiply, replenishing the earth and subdue it…" (Gen 1:26). Let's look more closely at being fruitful and multiplying (and no, I am not referring to child reproduction). You and I were created for a purpose - there is a talent or gift inside each one of us designed to enrich our lives by living our purpose. Productivity in our designed purpose requires us to be fruitful and multiply.
When you plant an orange seed, you have an expectation that in a few months you will enjoy its fruits. The seed has everything it needs to grow to maturity and produce fruit when nurtured within the right environment. Imagine if the orange tree from this seed grew to produce only one orange fruit in its lifetime and in that fruit was only one seed. It would be meaningless to go through the process of nurturing the tree to maturity if our expected harvest was only one orange fruit with one seed in it! When planting the seed, you have an expectation that it shall not only be fruitful, but the fruits shall be enough for many to enjoy. The fruit from the planted orange seed will not be consumed by the orange seed itself - it is for others to consume and enjoy its fruit.
Each of us has a seed inside us: a talent, a gift, an idea. The seed will only realize its full potential of bearing fruit if its nurtured. An idea has to be nurtured and refined to a status of providing a solution to humanity. A leader identifies this potential when still in its raw form and nurtures it to blossom. He has the ability to see the end product from the raw material. Nurturing will involve mentoring, correcting, supporting and challenging the seed bearer, while remaining focused on the desired end product.
Your talent, when nurtured to productivity, is meant for those around you to enjoy. You can profit from it, but only if you share it. If you are a musician, your talent is designed for others to enjoy your music. I am yet to meet a musician who goes through the grueling process of producing an album, just to be listening to the music alone. I am not ruling out that there could be such musician - this is the very reason we still haven't heard their music and I bet you they have made no profit out of it!
The first step to productivity is to identify the seed inside you. What is inside you that is designed to provide a solution to humanity? What's that idea you've been pushing aside? Do you have a talent or gift that you have allowed to remain dormant? The second step is to nurture and grow your seed. If you have an idea, at least try it out. Forget the critics, just try. If you fail, you'll just discover another way that the idea won't work. Working on your idea refines it to become better.
In the next article we'll look at the concept of multiplying - why it is important and how do you multiply?
No comments:
Post a Comment