By SERAPHINE RULIGIRWA-KAMARA
It is a very dynamic world that we live in. Only
individuals who are ready to embrace the ever-changing environment
emerge as leaders.
Individuals who understand that to fully appreciate and
align themselves with any organisation’s goals, they must raise their
self-awareness to establish own personal goals.
The people who master the power of habit for
effective, consistent, relevant and timely execution of their
aspirations. These are the people who take it upon themselves to raise
the bar of organisational mindsets and overall culture by personifying
the leadership traits that they would like to experience.
We all know people like these. We see them scale
corporate ladders and increase their spheres of influence within and
outside their organisations.
They establish themselves as unrivaled “go-to”
people in their industries. We admire them because they continually
attract greater responsibilities, gain recognition and command higher
remuneration with every move they make.
This is because they make the uncommon effort to
develop, internalise and embody their distinct professional edge. These
are not people who scour the classifieds looking for job adverts.
The chosen few
No, these are the chosen few who have exciting
careers seeking them out. They develop new and additional income
streams. Seemingly without effort, they bolster their reputation and
spread their personal and professional brands into new untapped
territories, creating legacies that the rest only dream of. Wow.
Unfortunately, most of us do not do this. We
secretly entertain great big ideas which sound ridiculous even to
ourselves. The more unfortunate situation is that we do not know what
the steps are to bring our ideas to life. So we suffer in silence. Our
careers stagnate.
We struggle to manage ourselves on a day-to-day
basis. The teams we manage become burdens. We can hardly carry out
projects without pulling our hair out. We grow older and more set in our
ways.
The companies we work for begin to feel less like
the exciting opportunities we sought a while back and more like mazes of
unending bureaucratic systems that serve more to handcuff our
creativity than empower us to give our best output.
How stifling life can be! We slide into
frustration. Lethargy sets in and before we know it, we are no longer
the star performers we once were. We are no longer the energetic, driven
professionals that our employers signed the dotted line for.
Our employers are busy people with little or no
time to baby-sit us, especially because there is no shortage of younger,
cheaper, eager and energetic entrants into the workplace to pick from.
Opportunities inevitably start to skip us more than
we can bear. We dream of transitioning into new roles or take the
plunge into entrepreneurship for years but do nothing.
We convince ourselves that we are being realistic; we are tied up in loans, school fees and mortgages, you know.
So we stay put — feeding our minds on the unfortunate
notion that it is better to be safe than sorry. Most of those around us
subscribe to the same school of thought. This is what life is, right?
All the while, the clock’s hands tick away diligently. Soon,
retirement stares right at us, the children grow up, leave home and we
wonder what we are supposed to do with ourselves in our empty nests.
We finally realise that we have spent most of our
lives digging a hard place and now find ourselves at the rock. We are
literally and metaphorically stuck right between a rock and a hard
place. We are brilliant people! How on earth did this happen?
What about all the vibrant dreams we had? How
could life have passed us by? Here is how it happened; we stopped
developing ourselves the minute we got jobs.
In a nutshell, we remained normal. We did the
expected, the accepted and remained on the tried and tested paths.
That’s wonderful because it means that we sailed smoothly.
We didn’t ruffle any feathers or rock any boats.
Unfortunately, that means we did nothing outstanding however high up the
ladder we got.
The people who truly realise their performance and
achievement potential are the few who choose to do the unusual,
uncomfortable, unpopular and even abnormal things that the average ones
are unwilling or unable to consider.
You know that you are tired of playing in the
junior leagues at the back-end of things. The question is whether you
are ready to muster the courage to move forward to centre-stage with all
of it’s glaring spotlights.
Yes, you risk making some mistakes and suffering
ridicule and embarrassment in the process but this is the only place
from where opportunity will inevitably spot your talent.
The question is whether you are ready to roll up
your sleeves and do the heavy lifting that will take you the full
distance to the leadership line. You are here to lead. Are you ready?
Ruligirwa-Kamara is an expert on attitude and human potential. Sera@iuponline.com | @SRuligirwa
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