{"id":20392,"date":"2018-11-15T19:16:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T03:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=20392"},"modified":"2018-11-15T19:16:52","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T03:16:52","slug":"the-absence-of-good-leadership-can-be-very-costly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-absence-of-good-leadership-can-be-very-costly\/","title":{"rendered":"The Absence of Good Leadership Can Be Very Costly."},"content":{"rendered":"

The African Continent is highly endowed with resources, from natural mineral resources, big water bodies and rivers traversing the continent, wild life and great geographical diversity and beauty that present great opportunities for tourism, vast stretches of land with good climate that favors agriculture, opportunities for harnessing renewable energy, and more. The African continent also is the second biggest continent both in land mass of 11.7 million square miles, and population size of more 1.2 billion[1]<\/a>, with 54 United Nations recognized countries[2]<\/a>. All these factors easily put Africa at a very big advantage if the countries were governed well and united as an economic block but this is hardly the case. Reading the book, Handbook for Leadership Theory and Practice<\/em>, and the overarching theme of the need for more research in the discipline of Leadership, reignited my passion for the development of high caliber of leaders in Africa.<\/p>\n

While there are many historical, cultural, economic and other reasons attributed to the poor general economic performance of the African continent as a whole and particularly for the individual countries, poor governance structures and leadership are key to this sorry state of the continent. Africa has been looted by western powers in exchange for arms at the hands of corrupt leaders; while many resources remain unexploited and great potential remain untapped, all because of poor leadership. Walter Rodney[3]<\/a> points out how European imperialism and neo-colonialism led to the transfer of wealth from Africa to Europe but he aptly points to the fact that the time for Africans to take responsibility to reverse the situation is now, we cannot continue the blame game while doing nothing after decades of independence. Africa must own up to the fact that poor leadership is responsible for continued poor performance of African countries. The results and the cost of continued poor leadership in the form human suffering and financial losses is just too high for comfort. This is not unique to Africa only but it\u2019s repeated across the globe, across organizations and even within the family units. The cost of poor leadership across the globe has been costly in human fatalities and other humanly caused suffering. If we are to draw from the recent history, there are examples to quote and learn from: Hitler was a despotic leader who literary oversaw the killing of millions of Jews and causing untold suffering to many more; Genocide in Rwanda resulted in a million deaths and untold suffering of survivors, all because of poor leadership.<\/p>\n

A contrast in history has been documented in the family legacies of two individuals namely: Jonathan Edward, a godly man whose good family values and commitment resulted in such a remarkable family legacy of success and blessings in his family; while the ungodly character of Max Jukes and his neglect of his family responsibilities led to failure and suffering in his family. In a study that was done in 1900[4]<\/a>, Jonathan Edwards\u2019 recorded descendants included: 1 vice president; 3 US senators; 3 governors; 3 mayors; 13 college presidents; 30 judges; 65 professors; 80 public office holders; 100 lawyers and 100 missionaries. In the same study, Max Jukes\u2019 recorded descendants over the same period included: 7 murderers; 60 thieves; 50 women of debauchery; 130 other convicts; 310 paupers, who, combined spent 2,300 years in poorhouses, and 400 physically wrecked by indulgent living. The \u201cJukes\u201d descendants cost the state more than $1,250,000. This contrast of these multi-generational family legacies is simply between good leadership and poor leadership at the family level and the cost of poor leadership, both humanly and financially is simply too much to be ignored. If for no other reasons, the sheer cost of poor leadership should be reason for more scholarly research in the leadership to improve on leadership theory and practice. While research on the contribution of leadership to performance is varied and would seem to suggest that the leader has limited impact on performance depending on the constraints[5]<\/a> prevailing in respective context, the negative effect of lack of good leadership is enough reason for more research to be done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> www.ThoughtCo.com<\/a><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> www.Worldometers.info<\/a><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Walter Rodney. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. 1981. Howard University Press, Washington DC.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> A. E. Winship. A Study in Education and Hereditary. 1900.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Norlia, Nitin & Rhurana, Rhakesh. Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice. January 26, 2010. Harvard Business Review Press, Boston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The African Continent is highly endowed with resources, from natural mineral resources, big water bodies and rivers traversing the continent, wild life and great geographical diversity and beauty that present great opportunities for tourism, vast stretches of land with good climate that favors agriculture, opportunities for harnessing renewable energy, and more. The African continent also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1321,1404,410],"class_list":["post-20392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp9","tag-handbook-of-leadership-theory-and-practice","tag-nohria-and-khurana","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20393,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20392\/revisions\/20393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}