John N N Nganga Meditation Of 24th June John N N Nganga Meditation Of 24th June 2024 …. Preparing For Old Age … .be more authentic
Day 1
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So, you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.
Authentic leadership is a leadership style exhibited by individuals who have high standards of integrity, take responsibility for their actions, and make decisions based on principle rather than short-term success. Thus Authenticity is related to a life of integrity. People expect that by the time you are old, you have given up on pretending to be someone else.
I have written called Integrity the Litmus Test of Good Leadership. And it is a book that describes what we see in the business community in Kenya. If you ask the average young person about Kenya's business, he will tell you it is not difficult to do business ethically, it is impossible. And do not quote me on it. The Aga Khan University did research, which later appeared in our newsletters. It was asking young people about us, older people. Their message implied, that if you ever see somebody driving a Mercedes, do not need to research him. You will know he is corrupt.
And so, for them it is obvious. They are not looking forward to leaving university to then work hard. They are looking for corrupt deals. They think people who work hard are foolish, the clever ones are the ones who do deals. That is what my generation has bequeathed to the younger generation. I am over seventy So maybe I am not exactly the younger generation. And I am very sorry about that background. Our discussion today is on authentic leaders.
The young people are telling us we are not authentic. We are actually thieves minus opportunity. All you require is to get an opportunity to steal. And we know that looking at our country they are not wrong. Unfortunately they want to copy us. We have an opposition political party, and they are very critical of the ruling one. They are corrupt, until they get an opportunity to lead, and they become equally corrupt. What does that tell you? They were always corrupt minus opportunity. That is what we are learning from young people.
Day 2
I do not sit with the deceitful, nor do I associate with hypocrites.
And our discussion here is to say, if you are not an authentic leader, you will be assumed to be corrupt minus opportunity. And because they take you as corrupt, what happens is that they do not trust you. And remember, I have written many books on leadership, and my definition of leadership is influence. In other words, leading is influencing. The difference between a manager and a leader, is simply this; a manager uses authority to get things done, a leader uses influence to get the same things done. Being a manager is different. and that is not my topic for now, so I will not spend a lot of time on it. If you choose to be a manager you will still get things done but by the time you get them done, both you and your staff will be tired out. If you choose to get things done as a leader, both of you will enjoy the end and will have enjoyed the journey. Are you getting the big difference?And so, it is a choice of every one of us as to how we choose to be involved in our work. Unfortunately to be authentic will require integrity. And that is in short supply. In 1977 I was working for a Development Bank. And as a young graduate, one day I arrived in the office. I was in the accounting department, and we were required in the accounting department to write down our names indicating whatever time we arrive. So, you just write your name and the time you have arrived.
One day I was late and indicated it. I went to my desk, and I continued working. But the same morning I started seeing a lot of people looking at me in a strange way, and they were talking about the young graduate, the young man who joined us. And I did not know exactly what they are saying because nobody was confronting me. They were just talking and pointing fingers at me. And I wondered; did I dress badly? What is my problem? And as a young person, we were quite self-conscious. It was only around eleven somebody confronted me and said, young man, what is wrong with you? I said I do not know. Why did you report that we came late? I said, I am a young person, I am not the boss. How could I have reported you? You cannot understand? I genuinely did not understand. They explained to me that, when I wrote that I arrived at eight fifteen, it meant everybody else arriving later arrived at eight fifteen, whereas the culture of the place is nobody came later than 8:05. The latest person, even the one who came at nine wrote eight o’clock. But for me I wrote exactly when I arrived. He said, you must behave better. Learn! I said, unfortunately even tomorrow if I come at eight-thirty I will write eight-thirty. Pray I will always arrive on time .
They replied that, you are a terrible! You are not a team player! What is wrong with you? And I realized that living a life of integrity makes you to be confronted. Can you then see why so many of us are fake? Because when you are fake you are easily accepted, when you are fake you are easily liked. And who does not like to be liked? So that is why our topic on authentic leadership is a rare thing. When you find an authentic leader, my friend you will never want to leave the place.
Day 3
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
The next employer may offering you ten thousand shillings extra and you are only earning eighty thousand. And you say, aaa, to be under another boss? I would rather stay here with less money because of the type of leader I have. That is really what our discussion is. It is a very, very important subject that we need to deal with. We are talking about envisaging your life as an authentic leader. By old age, you should have found it easier to be authentic.
And we are also going to spend a bit of time talking about authenticity itself. Let me start by asking, what is to envisage? To be an authentic leader will require you to have clarity of what it is you are trying to become, and who you are. So, there is nobody who is an authentic leader who does not know themselves to be, number one. Number two, who does not accept himself or herself as he/she is. And so, it will be important to understand when we talk about envisage, we are talking about the picture of yourself you want to become.
We may be talking about conceiving, conjuring up, dreaming, envisaging … of who you want to be. And I am suggesting to you if you want to be an authentic leader, envisage yourself as such, because what you imagine becoming is likely what you will become. And so, the first step in becoming an authentic leader is envisaging yourself in the right way. See yourself as in the right way. And several of the people so far are writing about it… that every one of us should not just be involved but be that on the inside.
I discussed this subject at a women's accountant conference. I was talking to CPAs. These are a rare breed. To be in a hall full of women CPAs is not a joke. I studied commerce in the 1970s, and in a class of a hundred, you could hardly find ten girls. And look at you now almost fifty years later!! There is a proper difference between those of us who went to university just after independence and the kind of place women have today. So, to be a CPA is not a small matter.
However,, many of you are also experts in preparing strategic plans for organizations, but you have done one about yourself. When you do not know what you want to become, you become what everybody wants you to become. So, it is important that everyone reading this should, within the next few months, write a strategic plan for your life. In the strategic plan you will give us your personal vision. In the strategic plan you will give us your mission also. And in your strategic plan you are going to give us your core values.
Day 4
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.
When we talk about vision, we are talking about a clarity of what you want to accomplish by the time you die. My suggestion is you write a birthday speech to be read by people you have impacted By the time you are eighty years old. And if you are in your thirties now, you still have another fifty years. Not quite a good time frame for me. But imagine yourself on your eightieth birthday.If you are on your eightieth birthday, it will be important to understand who you hope your life will have impacted by then That is vision. You are not saying what you have achieved now, you are talking about what you will have achieved by that time.
One of the people you are likely to impact is your spouse, isn’t it? So, write her speech or his speech now, on the kind of impact you want to make on him, and assuming both of you are alive, on the eightieth birthday, on your birthday tell him,’ darling you do not have to write a birthday speech . I wrote this thirty years ago. See whether I have accomplished what I planned. And give him to see. Of course, If you have written trash, he will not read it. So, whatever you write now must determine how you live the rest of your life. That is why it is a vision.
That is why I told you to be authentic will mean there is something you are trying to achieve. So, if you can hear him saying our birthday girl is what I want to describe. She has been a loving wife. You must be loving it now. Because otherwise, it could be trash. And do not write more than a page. Just one page of the kind of impact you will make on the man by the time you are the age of eighty. You know at the age of eighty you are not talking about the things to yet achieved; you are talking about the things you have already achieved. That is what vision is all about.
To be authentic in dealing with your spouse, it will mean there is something you are trying to achieve, long term. and you are clear about what it is you are trying to achieve.
Another birthday speech is by one of your siblings. Remember your parents are long dead. Remember at the age of eighty, even your son is a grandfather. You are only a great-grandfather yourself. So, let us start with your siblings, assuming one of them is alive by then. What kind of impact do you want to make on your parent’s family? What do you hear them saying thirty years from now? If you are clear in your vision, it will mean you start living your life as you relate with them, in a way that will make your speech true. because you must relate to them for impact. They are your relatives. Their children are your children’s cousins. So, you want to do something about the way they are going to live with your children. What do you hear them saying has impacted them? Write it down.
Then of course I am talking about your own children. Your own children, if you have them already. Even if you are not yet married assume you get them. What do you hear them saying? Will they be saying that my mother could not sacrifice her professional life, so she put me in a boarding school at the age of eight? Or are they going to be saying, my mother affected her career for my sake? I am who I am because of the sacrifice of my mother. You write it down but then it is dangerous to write because once you write it determines how you live the rest of your life. A lot of us do wrong things because we have no vision of the impact we want to make on our children. If you had an impact in mind, then you cannot do what others are doing. They may be sending their children to boarding but you cannot send yours because in the written document of your vision, you have already formed an opinion what you want to produce.
And I am not suggesting that your children necessarily will turn out exactly the way you wrote it down. But whether they turn out or they do not, they will be willing to read the speech because they know it was not your contribution for them to become bad. And this is a very serious issue.
Day 5
The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?
I used to be the manager for Shell in the 1980s in Western Kenya. And when you are far away from your home area you make new friends. And I made friends with somebody older than me. I used to live in Milimani in Kisumu. And one of my neighbours was somebody from another culture. And we were talking, and the mother, the wife of this man told us something very interesting. She said, along the way I got a scholarship to go to Britain. I went to Britain when my baby was small. And after two or three years, I came back. At the airport, I was keen on every one of my children but especially the small one. When the small one saw me; he ran away from me. I tried all I could but did not accept me.By the time we were together in Kisumu, it was maybe fifteen years later, so the boy was in high school, but the boy never accepted the mother. And he became a drug addict. Now, the mother kept saying, my degree cost me my son. Now, my wife and I tried to tell her, even people who stayed with children and have looked after them well, still have become drug addicts. It is not your doing. Her reply would be you do not understand Mr. Ng’ang’a. That boy just does not like me and it has something to do with my going.
Now, what I am trying to get you to understand is that whether your children turn right or bad, you will enjoy your old age only if you do your best. If you do not invest in them right, what they become will become your debt before your eightieth birthday. So, it does not matter, do not be too worried about the outcome, be worried about what you did. What matters is not what people say, it is between you and God, did I do what I should have done? That is why you need to be authentic. If you do live by what people say. You are not authentic. You have written down your vision, then you live by it.
One more speech written by your workplace colleagues. By that time, you are all long retired. But another fellow professional will write, our birthday girl, has changed the industry. How? One, two, three. What do you see doing that will change the industry for the better? Write it down on one page. And you have not arrived there yet, but you intend to be there.
You need another one from the church, a religious angle. How will you affect other spiritually. What are you doing that is helping to create values for the nation? What are you doing? What do you hear somebody saying about your efforts in terms of passing good values or somebody from the community or a national leader, or even international?If you intend to impact internationally, maybe somebody from the UN will come to your birthday to say, this girl did not just make an impact in Kenya, she made an impact in Papua New Guinea also. Now, when you hear somebody is authentic, it is because they have a journey to go and are not too worried about small things. Now, if you know where you are going, a dog barking along the way does not bother you. But if you are just taking a leisure walk, then you look at every dog that barks. Now, so it is important to have clarity of long-term vision. Where am I going and how am I going to get there? That will be a very, very important thing to ask yourself and spend time on it.
Day 6
He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
So, my suggestion is, as I finish this section, that you also have clear core values. What are core values? Core values are non-negotiable convictions. Convictions give you a boundary within which you want to achieve something by the age of eighty. Mission talks about how you will achieve it. That is the difference between vision mission and core values. Vision is a noun; mission is a verb. And you need both because we can have the same vision but how we arrive at it will depend on our gifts. So, our missions will be different.
But then in addition to that you have core values. Core values are the boundaries within which you will travel. That means a core value means you are willing to not achieve your vision if the only way of achieving it is to break your values. What are those values which you are willing to become a failure rather than break them? Normally you do not require more than five or six of them. Most consultants will tell you more than six is a joke because every core value is a barrier to success. It stops you going because you cannot go outside that boundary. You can have a value, for example, I will never get emotionally, or sexually involved with my boss. So, the moment he says promotion is determined by how you relate with him sexually, you are willing to be fired. Because if you succeed that way, you cannot enjoy your promotion because it is broken… a core value. Core value is an inner non-negotiable conviction that makes it uncomfortable to break it. Psychologists say breaking it causes cognitive dissonance when what you are doing and what you believe are not congruent. Everybody is saying, what a success, what a success! But you are dying inside. And that is what core values are.
You cannot become an authentic leader when you do not have personal boundaries, and everybody knows what those boundaries are, and they know that you are willing to suffer rather than cross your boundaries. I still remember when I used to be the distribution manager for Shell, and one of my contractors was asking my friend, I wanted a contract from Shell. What can I give to the distribution manager? What is his price? He replied that guy is the type that cannot accept anything. He said, no, no, no. he insisted that everybody has a price. The guy came and told me what he was being asked and that he told him, Ng’ang’a has no price.So, you need to come to where even your friends know your boundaries. Now, can you see it protected me from being bothered by corrupt contractors because everybody knew who I was. Why do you think a lot of men keep running in your direction? It is because you look like you are open. Now, you need to understand clearly there are women where men ask each other, that girl is beautiful, but Can I try her? Do not bother, others tell the novice. It is a waste of time.
This is because of the way you carry yourself the values are clear to others. Now, others call you, darling. Now, darling is somebody you met yesterday. You need to understand clearly you have no values. And others can see you have no values. I still remember another time taking my colleagues and contractors for lunch, and we were having lunch, and I ordered my sodas and they ordered alcoholic drinks. In the 1970s, Fanta had a nickname. Those of you who are older will remember. Fanta stood for, Foolish Africans Never Take Alcohol. So, when they wanted to say you are foolish, when you do not take alcohol, you are called Fanta. So, I was taking Fanta. And I ordered. When the waiter came, he brought me the tusker. My workmates said, no, no, no. They were fighting for me. I realized even if I wanted to backslide and try alcohol, they would not allow me. When you have clear core values, your non-Christians who are taking the alcohol will not allow you to take it.That is why everybody will be protesting, do not bother with that girl. You are wasting your time on her. She has strong purity values. So, it is important to understand if you are going to be an authentic leader, it will be very important for your stand to be clear.
Day 7
Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor.
Let me just quote what Mother Teresa said about authenticity. She said,
honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.
I have just said in my introduction that there will be a price to it. Are we together? So, we are owning up that it is not impossible but it is not easy. Let’s not try to pretend it will be easy. When you are authentic you will be both honest and transparent, but it will make you vulnerable. Vulnerable does not mean you are in problems; it means you could lose yourself into problems. That is what it means to be vulnerable. It is this vulnerability, Mama Teresa says, that makes a leader more human and so attractive. People say, haiya, that is a real man. That is a real woman. More approachable. Haiya! She cannot beat you. Just ask her the question. She is real. She is like a mother. Therefore, the leader is more in touch with the real challenges facing your organization or your leadership. Only then can quick and successful remedies be achieved for your organization.
It is very, very important to understand what Mother Teresa is saying. That it is actually something very important to be real. Real? Let me just mention that the more senior you are, the more authenticity pays, and the more difficult it is to be authentic. Few transitions test one’s character, like moving to a senior leadership role. You have been just a small person, like when I was working for the Development Bank. I was writing my own board papers and presenting them. Then I joined Shell in a supervisory role. And all of a sudden I discovered that whenever you want to achieve anything you do so via others. you know earlier I made it myself. I brought the paper, I researched it. Now, in this other place when my junior fails, who has failed? Me. And you are not allowed to go telling your bosses that it is not me, it is my subordinate. That is irresponsibility. So, I realized I am being blamed for things my subordinates fail. And I was uncomfortable with that.
So, you need to realize authenticity becomes more difficult the more senior you become. It is one thing to gain mastery over a particular function or skill set, like when I was in the bank. It is quite another to take responsibility for and earn the respect of employees from different backgrounds, functions, and cultures. And that is what happens when you go up the ladder. When you are a management accountant, you are only looking after money. When you become a finance manager, and in the finance manager’s role, only doing management account, and financial account is strange to you. Am I right? What happens? You become very unsure, isn’t it? And if you want to pretend to know, you must lose authenticity, because authenticity is being real to the people, then knowing what you know and what you do not know. You admit your inadequacies.
Audio Preachings
Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for Audio Preachings
Get access to my books on Amazon:
Marketplace Leadership - The Nehemiah Style
Christianity and Culture
Discover your Life's Purpose
A Leader's Work Ethics
The Secret of Contentment
A Leader's Source of Influence
Christian Professionals - Leading in the Marketplace
The Character of an Influential Leader
Leadership King David's Style
Integrity - The Litmus Test of Good Leadership
The Leader as a Steward
Finding a Life Partner
Friendship
Check out previous devotions on www.johnnganga.org
