LEADERSHIP LESSON INSIDE PUBLIC BUS.

It was just yesterday when i was coming from church heading home. I took a public transport, but in the bus i found a huge fight between passengers and conductor. They throw words at each other back and forth, some of them were even cursing. For sure it was long ride home, i was so tired mentally and physically and wish  could jump out of the bus and take another one but no choice i had. I was praying for the bus to reach at my destination and drop me off quickly cause it was tense in there.

The good thing i love about life is that lessons are available anywhere. Life gets you in class any moment it's only you who is supposed to stay open minded and capture the experience.One occasion in a bus caught my attention and got me into deep meditation. As a driver was stopping in different stage to drop off passengers, we reached at certain stage where is stopped and asked who was dropping but no one answered, so he moved the bus. Suprisingly someone started complaining to the driver why he passed him off at previous stage where he was supposed to drop. A driver became very angry because he announced it already and people kept quite.

Other people joined the other passenger and started blaming the driver and told him to stop the bus. The driver could not stop the bus because he was on the highway speed and other vehicles where behind and infront of us. If he could have stopped as people demanded it would have led us into serious accident to extent of death. But the driver didn't listen to them, and went until next stage where he dropped that angry passenger.

All the time in the bus i was just silent looking at situation and in my mind i was searching for a lesson to learn  from that . So i built a metaphor to learn about leadership, since the driver was controlling the bus, i thought of him as a LEADER, passengers as FOLLOWERS, conductor as ASSISTANT, the last stage stop as VISION.

From those models i learnt the major 4 lessons about leadership,

i)Leadership is about vision.
When you decide that you want to lead people in any situation, first thing  you need to have is the vision. Vision is the picture you see in the future, is the end destination of where you will reach with those people you want to lead.Many people want to lead people but don't have a vision. A leader without vision is like a car without fuel, it won't go anywhere. Vision is what,
-Changes peoples lives from where they are to where they are supposed to be
-Makes your activities meaningful
-Makes people follow you
-Makes great people with great achievements in life.

That's why the driver couldn't  be bothered by the passenger's complains because he had a vision of where he was coming and where he was going to take us to safety and avoid a terrible accident.

ii)Leadership is about followership.
A true leader must have people following behind him because you can't lead without people and what makes a leader is people. One other things will make people follow you as a leader is your influence. Your influence is so important if you want people to follow you. You have to do your due dilligence before convincing people to follow that what impact will you make in their lives as their leader?, because every person wants to be led by a leader who will make his/her life meaningful.

iii)Leadership is about communication.
When people in the bus were demanding a driver to stop the bus at highway speed, one thing very brave he did which is calming down and explained that it was not a problem if they wanted him to stop but he also showed the danger of accident we were about to face if he did has people requested. He went ahead explaining why he was wanted to drop that passenger at next stop though it was wrong but it was a safe place which could save all of our lives. It was great presentation from the driver and all people understood and agreed. As a leader you have to develop communication skills toward the people you lead, because not each one of them will quickly grab your vision because people have different understanding on things. You have to be clear with yourself first about your vision then you will be clear when communicating it to people. Communication makes people,
- Throw away their differences and join forces together to work towards the common goal.
-Brings about win/win situation for everyone
-Maintain focus in a vision
Without communication there is no leadership rather than confusion and misunderstandings.

iv)Leadership is about team work.
 Any good leader will understand that his vision is much bigger than him so he can't depend on himself to accomplish it. He needs others to work with them as a team. Your vision will have many segmental procedures in order to move it forward, but in those steps you will need different expartise to work on them. So has a leader you are not able to cover all areas of your vision,you need right people in the right places of the vision. Team work is very essential to leadership since it brings wide spectrum of knowledge,solution and resources on how you can fully manage to take people to the destination of your vision.

                           You wish to be a leader?....follow the steps above.