Sometimes we fail to understand why our country still remains poorest among all. Different leaders have come and gone without fulfilling their promises they made to the nation. Malawians have been cheated and fooled on different developments. Don’t say that people who choose these ‘so called’ leaders make a mistake since they are sweet talkers – what lacks much among people is the ability of realizing the leadership potentials in these liars.
The good news though is that every person in this world can be a leader but that is only after unleashing their leadership potential. However, not all can realize their leadership potentials until they find someone to help them unleash that leadership capabilities and equip them with necessary skills on how they can become great leaders.
This is why Marshall Dyton and Lombola Lombola who are both 2015 and 2014 Mandela Washington Fellows respectively organized a workshop which took at American Corner in Blantyre under a theme “Unleashing Your leadership Potentials” aiming at mentoring the youths on leadership skills.
About 15 out of 20 targeted youth from different organizations and government sector came with one mission – getting to know their leadership potential and how they can become great leaders.
Everyone was able to contribute, debate on different subjects presented which proved that participants were paying great attention during the facilitation. It was very interesting since participants had a chance to know if Kamuzu Banda, Bakili Muluzi, Bingu Mutharika, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Adolf Hitler and many more if indeed they were leaders and if not why. This came after given a definition of leadership.
Upon mentoring the youths on leadership skills, the first facilitator Lombola Lombola blamed leaders in African nations for taking their people permanently that’s why they fail to fulfill their promises.
Lombola said the African countries including Malawi will only develop if they develop good leadership skills.
“Leadership is about serving people, putting the needs of people before your needs that is what we want even here in Malawi to have leadership that puts the needs of its citizens before their needs. As you aware that great leaders are scarce to source these days but every person can be a leader there is this leadership potential within them, what remains is just to harness, work on them and develop them. So that is the main aim of this workshop; to help the youths harness, unleash and develop their leadership potential.”
It is very important for the youths in the country being inspired by other great leaders across the world to at least transform Malawi as the second facilitator Marshall Dyton who is also t2015 Mandela Washington Fellow concurred with Lombola in his statement.
“Basically the meeting was part of our community service, that’s giving back to our community by working with the youths after being trained by the Young African Leaders. We are trying to train the young leaders, trying to unleash their leadership potential as well as sharing with them few things that can make them become great leaders. We just wanted the knowledge and skills we acquired from US with other future great leaders who had no chance go and attend that program,” said Dyton.
When asked how the youths are going to benefit after unleashing their leadership potential Dyton said:
“From the session that we had today through the debate, comments and contributions from the young leaders, it really showed that there is potential in them and the benefit is that, when they realize that they are not just mere managers or bosses in their work places, it will help them grow personally and professionally. Now when these people grow personally and professionally, automatically this country will have great leaders who can take it to the highest level, leaders who can sacrifice for others, leaders who have the convictions, leaders who have the purpose and we can have the leaders who can inspire and transform others.” he said.
Speaking after the workshop one of the participants Phoebe Tambala Jamieson who works at Queen Elizabeth Central hospital Tambala as a Senior Nursing Officer said facilitators met her expectations and asked them to keep on monitoring them on everything they delivered.
“They have met my expectations as you remember it was about unleashing my leadership potential and a lot of things have been presented here which has moved me from level one to level two or nine. They have told us to do more for us to be great leaders and also to include a team when doing things and my other request to them is that they should follow us up since it’s not good just to teach us a lot and leave it like but continuing in encouraging us and see how we are progressing,” she said.
