Today, when I woke up, I said a prayer, woke up my laptop (I had clicked it to sleep) and wrote down the dream I had.
We came over to carry nippier grass, we exchanged pleasantries with the guys there. I opted not to carry the nippier grass as it does have some allergic hairy substances(I was the dreamer-cum-group leader). My group started carrying but I noticed they
were demotivated as some grass fell along the path, I picked it and took it to
the pickup. We agreed that the pickup was too far and we needed to bring it closer
to where the nappier was. That was tough, it took joint effort, we all helped
the driver navigate the reverse on a rough partly raised from the ground path
on one side and a wall of earth on the other side, the pickup almost drifted
twice before the last mishap and down it went rolling, hit another pick up that was
packed at the lower level before falling on its rear, the head facing the open
sky, exposing its belly.
My first response was to shout a hallelujah! The driver was
unharmed, the packed pickup received negligible damage and it would be easier
to pull down our pickup on its four.
The owner of the pickup approached our pickup driver, gave
him a helping of slaps and turned to walk away. His colleagues saw the gesture
and turned on us throwing stones and sticks at us. I noted that in our group,
we had one guy whom these guys could resonate with and respect; I rushed to him and lifted
his right hand with my left.
The next thing I saw was two still snaps; one, a picture of
the emotions on people’s faces as the sticks and stones were busy on air, the
other was a photo of the guy whose hand I had lifted, with a small portion of
my hand still visible, and a headline on the first page, ‘The miracle man.’
That’s when I woke up and really gave that dream some
thought before the alarm disturbed my line of meditation with a song, ‘ wake up
and try again.’ it is 5.00am
My thoughts rushed through the dream trying to learn
from it. The dream was so clear and memorable.
I picked some from the dream some lessons on
leadership.
A leader is not to sit back and expect the others to do the
dirty work. Be involved. It will be rare to hear someone say to their leader,
‘come down to my level sir’ but that’s the hope in the hearts of the lead. If
only he could include my point of view in his point of view!
A leader should be quick to get solutions for his people.
Listen to their cry. What is their wish? What is their opinion? There is a
great relief when the leadership allows their subjects to grow and expand their
capacity.
Things backfire. Solutions sometimes end up as unbalanced
equations that raise a lot of questions. A leader should bring balance to the
equation. Act decisively. I don’t know where the idea of lifting the hand of
one of my guys came from. It was not a pre thought. It was spontaneous. It
worked.
Being a leader does not always mean that you get the
limelight. I felt a twitch of jealousy when the guy whose hand I had lifted got all the marks and recognition when
he had no idea what it is that I was doing.
But then something crossed my mind. How many people know the manager, who saw
the talent in that popular musician, invested in it and catapulted the guy into
the celebrity arena? Most leaders are actually unknown. The teacher who taught
you is a leader who shaped the great person that you are today yet well, I most
likely don’t know who he or she is. Your parents are arguably the most
influential leaders to you yet only known to you, your siblings and maybe your
neighbors!
I hope you get what am saying, if not, well, am not a
certified dream interpreter.
