By Darasimi Oshodi
I saw a movie sometime last year. The movie was released in 2009 but I saw it for the first time last year. The title of the movie is Invictus. The movie is about Nelson Mandela’s handling of post-apartheid South Africa. He is portrayed in the movie as a leader whose major desire for his nation is to see his nation recover from the evil inflicted by apartheid. He preaches and exemplifies the need for forgiveness and reconciliation, and he is keen to keep the nascent nation from being polarised along ethnic/colour lines. The movie is also about the rise of South Africa’s Rugby Team, The Springboks, from obscurity to prominence and this is largely due to the personal efforts of Nelson Mandela. Madiba – as Nelson Mandela is fondly called in South Africa – recently celebrated his 95th birthday. During his 94th birthday celebration last year, his influence on sports in his country was brought to the fore.
What had the most profound effect on me in the movie was Nelson Mandela’s remarkable ability to connect with the people around him. He knows them by their first name – this is one laudable attribute of great leaders. At a point in the film, Morgan Freeman, who acted as Nelson Mandela in the film, is seen asking one of his security agents about the agent’s child who is sick. Mandela is portrayed as a thoughtful and caring leader. He is a leader who connects with the people around him. He is touched by the condition of those working with him. I do not know how you see this: a country’s president is not only aware that the child of one of his security aides (security aide not personal secretary or cabinet member!) is sick, he even has the presence of mind to inquire about the child’s condition. This for me is an extraordinary act of leadership.
One reason the film struck a chord with me was because shortly before the time I watched the movie, I listened to John Maxwell on the Law of Connection and everything he talked about in the tape was exemplified in the movie by Nelson Mandela. This post is thus an attempt to share the profound lessons I gleaned from John Maxwell’s Law of Connection and the movie, Invictus. I sincerely hope these lessons also resonate with you.
Connecting with people means they see you as their friends. It means developing credibility with people. For people to follow you, they must trust you and believe you are their friend. This is what positional leaders do not understand. They usually think the position they occupy automatically bestows on them the right to lead people. They fail to realise that leadership is basically influence. And if this is so, everyone who aspires to be a leader must strive to build influence with the people they intend to lead. This means your followers are willing to follow wherever you go. Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela, Indira Ghandi, Martin Luther King (Jnr.) are perfect examples of people who connected with their followers. They earned the trust of their followers by showing them they truly cared for them. You must have heard the saying: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
To connect with people means to touch their hearts. You must realize that that the heart comes before the head. Maxwell sums this up with the statement, leaders touch your heart before they ask for a hand. Influential and effective leaders have come to understand that followers will do a thing if it feels right and not necessarily because it is right. Humans are emotional beings. Thus leaders have to realize that you cannot move people to action unless you move their emotions. Followers need to feel good about a particular course of action before they can carry it out with enthusiasm. They need to feel good about their leader before they can wholly commit themselves to them. And the way to make them feel good about you is to connect with them, identify with them. They should see you as approachable and someone who can relate with them. Leaders who value the importance of connecting with others must realize that they have to make the first move at times – they are initiators. They do not wait for their followers to come to them before a relationship can ensue. They do not believe connecting is the sole responsibility of followers.
The impact of connection on an organization or group is tremendous. Followers develop extreme loyalty. The vision of the leader becomes the aspiration of the followers. So I want to urge you today to learn to connect with people whether you are a leader with a title or without a title. If you understand the fact that a true leader is a leader who has influence, then you will understand that you do not need a title to become a leader.
