Beware of friends of office

I am sharing this for the benefit of those who will one day have the fortune or misfortune to lead. 

leadership is a fortune when you operate in a stable and established system, with people who understand their responsibility to the system. If you lead in a system where leadership is personalized and the followers are scrambling for pickings, you have your end narrated before you begin. 

Long ago, I was a Director. I was appointed on the 1st of December. By the 20th, I had 12 bags of rice in my store. More were landing and I needed space for hampers. I don't get excited by such material things. I grew up in abundance in a family where we had most of our needs. Most of what thrills people as progress and achievements don't move me. I also witnessed great hardship and poverty and I understand the difference. Back to the story. I took my children to the store, asked them to count the bags of rice. I asked if they knew who own the rice and who gifted them. They said, you daddy; and your friends gave you. I corrected them. I told them that the commodities were given to the director by friends of office. I promised to take them back to the store after I leave office. I left office 3 weeks before Christmas. There was barely a bag and a half. My children remembered 6 years earlier. The lesson had been learnt. 

I see many young people declaring everyone in office as their mentors. I have seen people laugh at dry jokes from witless officials. I have also witnessed people make philosophers of ordinary people in power, making ideology of inanities. I have seen words such as"doyen", "erudite", "distinguished", misused and abused. Please beware of friends of office, those who are ready to lay down their lives for you while you are in office. They vanish once you leave. The same energy they used to praise-sing you, they transfer to those who succeed you. They are the first to condemn you, provide evidence against you as a way to testify to their loyalty to the new friends in office. I see leaders shrink in size, frame and popularity once out of office because they built their lives to fit the office. Many never recover once they discover that they were defined by the office, not the other way around. There is a great falling away after office. Group by group, one by one, those circles pine away and the friendships dissipate. If you were nobody, you shrink to your true size.

Learn to decipher the difference between yourself, your office/position and humble yourself to embrace who you'll be after leaving the office.

*Be your very best always.*