One Saturday morning, 12 November 2011, owners of houses in Syokimau got up to a rude shock. There was heavy machinery in their neighbourhood brought there courtesy of Kenya Airports Authority (KAA). The excavators were for the purpose of bringing down the houses. The reason was; the land belonged to KAA and they wanted it back. You and I know or suspect that there is a lawful way of going about it, there has to be an eviction notice and a court order and other legal mambo jambo. The story goes that the eviction notice was served but the conjectured encroachers of the land had contested it and the matter was yet to be decided. The decision was to be made known on the following Tuesday. How convenient that they went to carry out the demolition on a weekend so that they couldn’t be challenged with a court order to stop like it would have been done on a weekday. The supposed land grabbers who built on their plots had their documentation from the relevant authorities so they thought. When the Mavoko County Council was interviewed he said that if the Ministry of Land gave the title deeds to the settlers then they don’t have power to do otherwise hence the blame is on the Lands ministry.
How convenient to say “I am not the one, It is that department”, or in the famous words of the former mayor of Geoffrey Majiwa, “They told me to sign so I signed”. If you are a leader, supervisor, manager and this is the nonsense you are pelting, then you aren’t worth your salt or that position and you are a fraud. In true Kenyan fashion a commission of enquiry should be formed to investigate how you got there. It is an insult not to take responsibility of what you are in charge of and instead taking the easy way out of throwing the blame to someone else. The same people of such an appalling character are the bed rock of system failure in our country, organizations, even departments. They hold such positions which should translate to overseeing everything, being on the top of each and every aspect of the activities you are in charge of. Hypocrites these people are, they wouldn’t take any blame but open their arms wide to receive the acclaim even when it isn’t their efforts that brought the achievements.
As a boss, manager, supervisor one should lead with among others; integrity, applying due diligence, fairness, and most of all striving to be in control even after delegating. A leader is able to influence others to accomplish an objective and directs the team, group, or organization in a way that makes it more solid and comprehensible. This is because what you do as a leader is transmitted to even the lowest of ranked workers under you. If you are poor time keeper your whole team will follow your lead. If you try to cheat the system such as rules governing employee conduct e.g. leaving office stationery for office use and not for your post-graduate studies or for your kids, your team will do the same. They will have the mentality, ‘If the top boss is doing it then it must be ok’. You shall lose credibility when you warn them against doing something but yet you do it. The famous phrase goes like, ‘Preaching water while drinking wine.’ As the head you should have the decency to be answerable to whatever your charges do, their failures and achievement. How you deal with them individually is up to you but you shall sound lazy and out of your depth if you tell your superior that it wasn’t you but a particular person who is under your authority. When you observe that something isn’t right either one of your subordinates isn’t pulling his weight in the team due to lack of competency you have to look for ways to remedy that be it training or other means. If one of your charges aren’t conducting themselves in a way that is helping the rest of the team then he needs to get a talking to from you as the head so that it is clear to everyone that such conduct won’t be tolerated. In such an instance of where you decide to go moaning to some of your team members it will show a sign of weakness and translates to being viewed as lacking authority to rein in those who are going against the grain. Your juniors will assess your leadership qualities as lacking.
To be successful in your leadership you have to be able to face problems head on. Wanting to cover your ass from blame will only turn the team to be made up of people looking out for themselves and not for the team objectives thereby destroying the chemistry, moral, and focus that a compact team should have to succeed. You should direct and take charge of your teams every aspect
So will you be Majiwa, or the Mavoko Ministry of Lands representative or even Shaggy who gave us the song ‘...Wasn’t me…’? As for me and I hope you too, I should stand for what is right as per the team’s decided stand and not conduct yourself as someone without a backbone who can’t stand up to wrong actions yet you have the position of authority reducing yourself to a weakling of a manager looking at skipping responsibility of all wrong actions but ready to jump at the chance to grab the glory for yourself. It is better to own up and say ‘I was wrong’ than say it wasn’t me. You retain your dignity and credibility. That is excelling in your leadership
WAZZAM
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