Leadership the social media way

Leadership is a very critical part of the human race. Everywhere you go you must find a kind of leadership structure that governs an organization or a group or even a society in achieving its short term or long term goals. Starting with a basic and most trivial definition, a leader is someone who knows the way, follows the way and shows others the way. On the other hand, leadership is the art of knowing the way, following the way and of course showing others the way. By ‘others’ here I mean those who you lead and those that follow you {with or without your consent}.

When the word leadership is mentioned, I don’t know what exactly comes to your mind but as for me some specific social media networks run across my intellect. Just to mention them, they include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and LinkedIn. I know you are wondering what does social media have to do with leadership. Relax because I am going to tell you about the relationship between the two. One common thing about these social media networks is that they all have the aspect of followers and following or subscribers. Ideally, people will always follow other people on these networks based on what they have seen in them (from their profiles and posts) or what they want from them. Indeed the same case applies to leadership. People will follow or subscribe to leaders based on what they have seen and admired from them. This may end up giving birth to and growth of mentorship.

So as a leader you sometimes got quite an infinite number of questions which you ask yourself may be on a daily basis and not able to get answers to them. Just to mention a finite of them; What kind of a leader am I? Am I a good example to my followers and subscribers? What are my values? Who are my followers? What kind of profile do I have? Do I walk my talk? Do I do what I encourage others to do? Do I lead people in the right direction? Do I have a vision as a leader? Do I know my purpose in this life and do I live in accordance with it? What and who is my motivator? How best do I represent God who has given me this gift of leadership?… I know these are tough questions that you may not be in a position to get the answers to as at now. {<I will soon post an article to answer some of these questions if not all. So you ought to worry NOT>}.

Disclaimer: As a leader, it is important to note that not everyone will support what you say and even do regardless of whether it is correct or wrong. Therefore you ought to be prepared to face even rejection among the team that you lead. A wise leader will take in what will make him a better leader to be able to offer better services and ignore the rest that doesn’t add value.

Leadership as a network just like in social media is all about influencing your followers and subscribers with what is in you but not controlling or manipulating them. A manipulative leader will focus on satisfying his or her own personal interests and imposing them on people without even minding about his or her followers. On the other hand, an influential leader never imposes decisions or rules on people instead will give them an opportunity to voice out their thoughts and have their well-analyzed contributions being considered for the final output.

As a leader, this qualifies you for trust and confidence not forgetting love among your followers and subscribers. You will note and agree with me that influencing is a social skill. To improve on your social skill you need to be strong in your character attributes such as self-confidence and self-esteem. If you struggle with self-esteem and self-confidence then it will be hard for you to showcase a strong social skill to those around you. This calls for you to work on your inner self first before you set out to work for the public and more especially those around you. In the Bible, Paul writes a letter to Timothy who is a leader in the church at Ephesus to encourage him and give him advice about organizing the church there. He goes ahead to ask a question in 1 Timothy 3:15, “If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?” Paul here meant that one had first to settle his issues out which is inclusive of his own family before being a leader in the church. This not only applies to church leadership but also to other forms of leadership.

The success of a nation,country, state, society or even an organization is dependent on its leadership. If the leadership which is the head falls then also the whole body automatically falls from a vertical orientation to a horizontal orientation. When a nation or state falls it is not the leadership only that will suffer but the entire state. Therefore, leadership is a collective responsibility for both the ‘head’ and the ‘body.’ The Bible is actually very clear in Proverbs 27:17 – “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

In conclusion, I would love to say that it is healthy and very essential that as a leader you evaluate yourself regularly to ensure that there is an exponential growth in how you lead, interact and influence people. It is not easy to be that leader you have ever wished to be but it is very possible. You only need to take your time to develop yourself on a daily basis. I wish you all the best as you look forward to be among the most influential leader the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela and so on and so forth.