Great leaders are not afraid to stand alone

Leadership is like an iceberg. The bulk of what makes the leader cannot be seen. It is this unseen virtue that determines the success of what can be seen.

One of the attributes of great leaders is that they are not afraid to stand alone. The future belongs to people who dream and who can act on the dream even if no one else sees what they are saying. That is the quality that differentiates the visionaries from the run of the mill.

Beware of numbers. If 100 million people say something foolish, it is still foolish. Numbers do not convert foolishness to intelligence. Visionaries are able to stand out from the 100 million and hold on to their gut.

Why is this important? A society cannot develop beyond its visionaries. Any society that has made advances in this world has done so because there were visionaries who were ready to stand alone. There were visionaries who were ready to change how they think and how they operate.

Stagnant societies are merely expressions of stagnation of thought. When thinking is a mere recycling of old ideas, societies cannot advance.

Thinking that transforms society is thinking that is ready to break out of the comfort of the known. Innovation is indeed an index of leadership because progress is a function of innovation and creativity.

Africa is endowed with so much but ever since I was a child we have been hearing talks, talks and more talks about the potential of Africa.

We all however know that we cannot take potential to the shops to buy anything. We need to convert the potential into another form and to do this, thinking must be more than the recycling of old ideas.

Thinking must be bold and adventurous. It must be ready to turn its back on 100 million opinions. It must be ready to create. It must be ready to see what does not exist and hear what has not yet been said. With that said, how many real leaders do we have on our continent?

When did we see the last big innovation in the African space? There is no grey area in this discussion. If there is no innovation, there is no progress and if there is no progress, there is no leadership.

The big challenge however is that because of our love of the known, when occasionally a voice emerges for a new Africa, we kill it off.

When Kwame Nkrumah, the former Ghanaian leader and advocate of pan-Africanism became the voice for a united Africa, he was shut down.

When Congolese politician and independence leader Patrice Lumumba became the voice of progress, he was also shut down. When the revolutionary and former president of Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara became the picture of what African leadership could become and the voice of what Africa could be, again he was shut down.

Remember that no nation or entity can progress beyond its leadership. If its leadership are thieves and endorsers of thieves, then what is the future?

Such stupidity however exists because we do not have the voices who are bold to stand up alone against the status quo. What you do not challenge you tolerate, and what you tolerate you permit. What you permit grows on you and soon a time will come when mediocrity will be the celebrated and accepted norm.

Kudos to a comrade, friend and brother, the late Prof Pius Adesanmi, a true voice for the new and a bold voice against mediocrity and stupidity.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 of March 10, took down this great voice, but the beauty of it is that the voice lives on. The only hope for a people in the midst of echoes are true voices who dare to be different.

Wale Akinyemi is the chief transformation officer at Power Talks.