You can win people’s confidence and become an admired leader

A confident leader. You’re expected to accommodate all those selfish people looking for personal benefit. PHOTO/FOTOSEARCH 

By SERAPHINE RULIGIRWA-KAMARA

To lead others, you’ve got to deeply comprehend the rules of the game and visualise your goals. You then have to audit your productivity to ensure that every minute of your day is filled only with result-oriented engagements.

If that proves difficult, you have to evaluate your mindset about the changes you need to make to make your time fully productive. That comes from understanding why you do certain things the way you do them — your default mechanism.

Once you gain mastery over that, it is time to look at the end-game and develop a laser focus of your every waking moment on it.

Ah, but that’s not all, you’ve got to orchestrate how you’re viewed by others because it does make a difference in the reception you get and how much cooperation you receive.

And then there’s that little voice in you that keeps pulling you back to maintain the status quo whenever you attempt to soar. You’ve got to silence it and turn up the volume of your vision so no other noise fills your ears.

And you’ve got to do this while remaining true to yourself and to all because if you don’t walk your talk, you compromise trust in yourself.

There’s also the all important matter of entertaining positive thoughts which, combined with your feelings and actions or inactions, form the attitude that everyone experiences in you. It’s not too easy because that’s not all.

You’re expected to accommodate all those selfish people looking for personal benefit around you — that is every single person you will meet.

You’re not just to be accommodating, you should influence them to work with you and ultimately position and launch yourself as their opinion leader.

Few people get to do this — it is too much work but the few who do become wildly successful. They become superior performers, they rise up the ladder and inevitably gain control of everyone else.

This is the reason why most people do not like them. Most people prod the lives of these few successful ones with commendable vigour.

They constantly look to find their shortcomings, mistakes and wayward tendencies. This is the reason why we are taught about the virtues of humility, especially when we experience success — so that no one feels a need to scrutinise us too much. They may just find that which is wrong with us and bring us down.

It unfortunately is not that simple. The humility training goes so deep that we learn that there is safety in playing down our skills, abilities and accomplishments in a bid to ensure that others do not feel inadequate.

And this here is the reason why we have masses of people walking about looking to be motivated, encouraged and helped by other people. Oh Dear!

And this is the reason why it becomes so easy to control these very masses sitting back waiting for someone else to build them up.

Fact: No one is coming to build you. Education will not do it for you. Your family will not do it for you. And your friends and colleagues certainly will not. You have to do it yourself. It is done by strategically building yourself from the ground up.

There really is no secret that anyone has that you don’t. All you need to do is consistently demonstrate yourself as a superior performer until it becomes your default way of being.

When this happens, your superior performance becomes your leverage because others realise that the only person who can deliver as you do is you and for them to receive that benefit, they must come to you.

You become a one of a kind individual and professional. It makes you the most attractive candidate, team member and a natural leader.

If you don’t already have such a system in place I urge you to get a good coach’s help and start on this right away.

Ruligirwa-Kamara is an expert on Attitude and Human Potential. seraphine@egbrandhouse.com | Sera@iuponline.com