John N. N. Ng'ang'a

A Leader's Source of Influence

In this book, we look at various sources of influence, including:
1.Your Personal Beliefs
2.Your Character
3.Your Youth
4.Your Ability to Handle Peer Pressure
5.Your Clarity of Purpose: Vision/Mission
6.Your Clarity of Purpose: Self Management
7.Your World-view
8.Your Commitment

I suggest that through a right combination and use of these eight factors, the world will not resist your influence. It will, instead, willingly follow you. You will be the leader.

I argue that leadership is influence. You have no business calling yourself a leader if you do not have influence over anyone. A leader must have a following.

You could be a manager that has employees who defy orders. The truth is, you are a manager but not necessarily a leader. One of your subordinates could easily be the leader of your organization. None of your people is likely to do anything they believe that particular subordinate has not approved. They will want to know his position before they act on any major issue in your organization.

Like John Maxwell advises, you need influence before position. Position does not necessarily give you influence. Your ability to influence your team is what get things done.

What makes people who do not have a title or position of authority have influence? You could be leading people because you were born into royalty, or you have extraordinary competences for an issue at hand, or you have extraordinary charisma, personality or physique. However, some people have none of these and yet have influence. Incidentally, people like Adolf Hitler, the German dictator did not have the physique necessary to have influenced the world to such a disastrous magnitude – yet they did.
This is the subject of this book.

We will begin with a discussion about beliefs, because if you do not believe in what you are doing, I doubt that anyone will want to follow you. We will then go on to discuss character, which I define as your ability to walk your talk. Character is what you are in the dark. When people discover you are what you claim to be, they are likely to want to follow you.

The other chapters pick specific items, which will help you influence your generation. Chief among them is the ability to start working on your mission early in life. We see examples of many heroes who influenced their generation from their youth, to show that late starters have difficulty having as much influence as those who started early. Nevertheless, it is true that people – whatever their age – are only able to influence others if they know how to manage ‘peer pressure.’ Wrongly handled, peer pressure can make one end up far away from the originally desired destination.

But who can influence others when he himself seems lost? This implies that a person of influence must be a man or woman of purpose in order to influence anyone. I cover this in two chapters because of the weight of its importance.

The final chapters deal with the way your worldview and your commitment will affect everything else about you. You use worldview to interpret life. If your world-view is faulty, your entire vision will also be faulty.
Suffice it to say that all the above will be useless if you are the type of person who gives up pursuits when you come up against resistance. Do you have ‘staying power’ to fulfill your mission irrespective of the challenges that come your way? If you are not willing to die for your mission, you are unlikely to have influence. People of influence have something to live for, which keeps them motivated. They are so committed to it that they are ready to die for it. Anyone with that kind of commitment tends to attract others to his cause.

My prayer in writing this book is that every reader will be helped to be what God created him/her to be. My prayer for you is to realize your full potential. That way, you will fulfill your God given mission, which will obviously influence and affect the world.