Merriam Webster dictionary says that arrogance is an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from believing that you are better, smarter or more important than others.

It is an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner.

Dictionary.reference.com says arrogance is an offensive display of superiority or self importance, overbearing pride.

While confidence is a state of being certain that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Self confidence is having confidence in oneself.

En.wikipedia.org says confidence is about self assurance in one’s ability.

Therefore Confidence is not arrogance and it is not rudeness.

It entails being sure of your decisions or actions in different situations.

Confidence helps to manage things better even in the face of risks.

A confident leader can accept criticism and ride on that for better performance.

Confidence is not being pompous even though you hold the power in your organization.

Differences between Confident Leaders and Arrogant leaders are listed below but not limited to these:

As Leaders we can be confident without being arrogant or rude.

Puffing up, or feeling unnecessarily big in your own eyes while despising others as not a match for you will lead to low productivity and high staff turnover.

Again, Confidence is not arrogance. It is not rudeness. Let us lead right.

The following points or character traits can help to discern when we are Herodic in our leadership style:

1. Do you use to abandon and get new people to continue with?
2. Abuses power instead of delegating it.
3. Uses anger to get things done as he or she wants.
4. Not truthful. Can say something and do the opposite. For instance, he or she can tell someone to resign from another company to come work with him or her, then, advertises the post and employs another. Largely lacking in integrity.
5. Superiority complex.
6. Doing right things for wrong motives. Doing his or her own agenda and not the peoples interests, but says he or she has their interests at heart.
7. Gives to humiliate the receiver later. Gives you a gift to have you at his or her mercy.
8. Caring more about image, preferring to be a celebrity at all costs. Forcing followers to worship or celebrate you. When you need to tell your followers to appreciate you for the world to see, then you harass the ones that fail to do so, that is Herodic.
9. Ego driven with false humility. Projecting false humility before the people that matter to him or her.
10. Builds empire on fear driven excellence. There is an excellence driven by fear and there is an excellence driven by truth, efficiency and love.
11. Destroys the future of innocent people. Can do anything to retain power or remain relevant. Herod executed innocent children in order to prevent another king from coming in.
12. Toys with peoples emotional and physical well being. Gyrating about at the expense of follower’s welfare. Skinning your followers alive to remain relevant.
13. Pretends to involve you in decision making but at the end of the day, only his or her decision will stand. Grand waste of time!
14. Attacks those that are bold enough to correct wrong doings.

Now, who is the Herod in your life? Or are you a Herod in someone’s life?

You can discern this and work towards correction. It is difficult but possible.

Also the followers can help such leaders by avoiding flattering them unnecessarily and come to a point where the help you expect is not from that leader.

A leader can improve when followers can point out wrong doings politely or constructively. This takes a lot of courage but it is possible.

BOSS

1. Has cute office that followers approach with caution.
2. Is power drunk and can be rigid.
3. Boastful.
4. Leads from the head, thereby tending towards wickedness.
5. Exhibits wickedness in place of discipline.
6. Gains supports through harassments.
7. Gains power by intimidation or coercion.
8. Surrounded by sycophants.
9. Makes followers to labour for what they earn.
10. Feels high and mighty.
11. Is arrogant but exhibits false humility that can deceive some followers.
12. Is not easy to correct, thus, mainly surrounded by “yes men”. Can be insultive when corrected.
13. Attains excellence by instilling fear in followers.
14. Can set a meeting for 9am but come at 10am. Disobeys his own rules.
15. Will offer help mainly to oppress or dominate.
16. Does not care if you are not feeling well and does not care if you don’t like him or her as long as you get the work done.

LEADERS

1. Can sit with followers and share office with them to get things done if necessary even though has a cute office.
2. Reasons with followers instead of dishing out orders every time.
3. Has good human relation. Gets along with team members.
4. Leads from the heart, therefore can be firm as well as flexible in administering discipline.
5. Attains excellence by relating or getting along with followers.
6. Gains support through loyalty.
7. Ready to help when work is hectic and actually helps out.
8. Gains power by being interested in people.
9. Surrounded mainly by loyalists.
10. Is humble.
11. Has integrity.
12. Can be corrected.
13. Imparts team with good virtues.
14. Helps followers or team to be more productive.

We can lead right. It is a matter of choice.

Leaders need to take note of the Sanballats and the Tobiaths of their progress.

The Sanballats and the Tobiaths are:

• Your deadly opposers or competitors.
• Enemies of progress.
• They are angry at your progress and are incensed.
• They mock or ridicule you.
• They want to put an end to your good work.
• They plot to fight and bring you down.
• They humiliate you in front of others.
• They call you weak or feeble.
• They do not value your qualities.

But if you focus the gate you are building which is your project, your results will silence their mockery.

As a leader expect that wherever you turn to, there will be some sort of opposition. So be on guard. Be aware of the plottings of your opposers. Do not ignore their plans but plan to frustrate them.

Sometimes you can ride on their plans and mockery or criticism to greater heights.

#Nehemiah3and4

#MindYourOpposition

#BeFocused

#PlanToMoveForward

#WorkHard

Family as defined by Merriam Webster dictionary, is a group of people who are related to each other.

This can mean a group consisting of husband and wife, with a child or children living together in a household. And they may also be living in different parts of the nation or world but remain a family.

It can also mean people who are important to you or parents with adopted children.

Leadership determines what you make of the health of your family. This means that the health or the well being of your family depends on the Leadership of that family. You can have heaven on earth depending on your leadership. It is also possible to have hell on earth depending on your leadership.

Leadership is very crucial to the overall state of the mind or body. The state or condition of your body includes physical, spiritual, emotional, financial, material, educational needs.

The authority figure in the home must be careful to lead meekness or humility but firmly. Firmness does not mean wickedness. You can disagree to agree in humility and submission to another for the general good of the home. Submission to one another for good deeds genders great peace. The leader in the home should address issues in love and meekness.

Honour in the home is very important. Honour each other. A father should honour his wife, children as well as the domestic staff. Don’t just expect honour from everybody while giving honour to nobody because of your STATUS as the head. Inculcate the culture of honour in your home. Honouring someone is different from worshipping someone. Shouting on your wife is not honouring her and may not provoke submission. If you are the head and your wife is the neck, then why are you shouting at your own neck?  Likewise shouting on your husband is not honouring him. If he is your head, the why are you shouting at your own head?

Apply gentle talks to every member of your family especially the children. This helps to bring the best out of them.

Love on your family, nourish, nurture, protect and provide for them. Give or create time to spend together. When you give love, you become their superhero. Sarah got a lot of love Abraham to the point of calling him lord. This is what happens when the leader leads well. When you care, the family members will make you feel like a king. When you show love, they see GOD in you. So imagine what they see when you can’t or you don’t show love. What is your family seeing when they see you or think of you, or hear about you? It is difficult to lead out of love. Shepherds show a lot of love to the flock.

Financial status of each family member should be familiar to the leader of the family. The leader needs to be sensitive to every member’s needs, spiritual growth, and educational requirements. The family should pray together and for each other.

Delegation in the home requires balance. Delegate duties that can build them up, but be careful what you delegate. Fatherhood should not be delegated and motherhood should not be delegated. If you delegate everything you can become obsolete. The results of e-fathers and e-mothers are not the same as the physical ones. You are to shepherd the family as your own flock. You will know a good shepherd when you look at the flock.

Freedom is good, so allow some healthy freedom but bear in mind that freedom cannot be total. There is freedom that can lead to destruction. There is need for checks and boundaries. The leader of the home should monitor the friends that hang around the family members to be sure that are good ones. Not complainers who walk after flesh with no regard for spiritual values. Such people can cause divisions in the homes.

Practice hospitality with your family with occasional treats of what you know that they love. The leaders in the home should act like the host or hostess.

What are you impacting to your wife and children? What are you impacting to that family? What are your family values? Give high moral standards to your family. Family leaders are to mentor their families. They are to raise future leaders by being examples of great and responsible leaders. When everyone is raised to be a good leader, it has a ripple effect on where they school, work, their societies and the world as a whole.

It is the responsibility of the leader in the home to teach integrity, character, showing respect and care for others. Model what you want to see in your family to members of your family. What does your presence in the home generate? Is it harshness, fear and depression? Or is it life, goodness and love?

Communication in the home is of great importance. Are you listening when they talk? Do you talk to them to transform them, or do you just shout on them? When your opinion is too loud, you can’t hear what others are saying in the family.

Your family health depends largely on your leadership, so home leaders should lead right and lead well. For when you do well, your joy will be full.

Remember that when you are old, these members of your family are going to take the mantle of leadership and lead you. So you might want to take it easy with them but not spoil them. Only deal with them in love and wisdom.

This is not an easy task. It requires the help of GOD and a lot of determination.

Corruption as defined by Merriam Webster dictionary is to be dishonest, illegal behaviour especially by powerful people, act of corrupting someone or something, something that has been changed from its original form, impairment of integrity, virtue or moral principle.

If you are not ready to relate with people, then you are not ready for leadership, because a shepherd must smell of the sheep sometimes. A leader that does not hurt when the team hurts is not a shepherd. A good leader should shepherd the followers to a large extent.

A shepherd will never eat what belongs to the sheep. Thus, leader should not take what belongs to the followers – that is corruption.

If you take your followers time unduly while retaining the allowances that go with that, is corruption. Paying less than you have been given for a job, then keeping the extra is corruption. Taking part of your driver’s night allowance when you travel is corruption. If people need to bribe you in order to get things done, that is corruption. If you order for certain things needed by your organization at the cost of 70 million instead of 7 million, you have taken what belongs to your sheep and that is corruption.

A leader that is enriching self with what belongs to all cannot instruct the secretary not to take bribe to book appointments for people to see the leader and the gate man may demand bribe to open the gate for people to enter the premises – then the corruption runs down. This is doing injustice to the organization. It is also called wickedness.

HOW TO AVOID CORRUPTION

1. Fear GOD. Jeremiah 5:26-29 talks about punishment for wicked leaders. It says, ‘my people are wicked men full of deceit, they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek, their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the cause of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor. Should I not punish them for this? Declares the LORD. Jeremiah 17:11, Jeremiah 22:1-6, Jeremiah 21:11-14 is about judgement for evil leaders.
2. Have character. Do what is just and right, rescue from oppressors, the one who has been robed.
3. Do not wrong widows and orphans.
4. Integrity will not allow you to take what belongs to the sheep as a shepherd.
5. Know that the LEADER of leaders is watching always.

Therefore, to avoid punishment from GOD, a leader should lead with integrity, speaking out against what is wrong. A good leader should be a provider to a large extent, but when you now take what belongs to your followers after you have over burdened them with work, then, your followers will begin to talk or complain against the oppression.

We can lead sensibly, responsibly and with equity.

A leader that is not corrupt will not be lonely when the leadership tenure is over.

6. Serve as stewards. Leaders come to serve.
7. Keep high morals. Do not seduce or ensnare your followers with your money, house, power or your beauty. If a leader cannot be trusted morally, then it will be difficult for such a leader to breed morally correct followers. A morally corrupt leader is a danger to the followers. A leader who wants to sleep with a lady before helping her or before giving her what is due to her is corrupt. When you sleep with a lady in order to give her a post in your workforce, you are corrupt. And if as a big lady you ensnare with your money or beauty or post, you are corrupt. Ezekiel 13:17-23 has a lot to say about this that can serve as a check. When you give gifts in order to shut the mouth of your followers, you are corrupt. A leader that steals cannot correct the followers that do the same. This leader will have to remove the log that is in his/her eyes before trying to remove the speck in the followers’ eyes. When the prophet came to David with the story of the man who had plenty sheep but took the only one the neighbour had to entertain his visitor, David was quick to pass judgement, only to realise that he had no power to pass judgement, because he was the person the prophet was talking about. Seeing the log in your own eyes minimizes corruption. Some can even kill in order to enlarge their coast. e. g David and Uriah. To get Uriah’s wife, David had to kill Uriah – this is an abuse of power. But the fear of GOD keeps a leader from abuse of power. There is hope for leaders that repent. We can repent. Yes, we can say NO to corruption.

#AppraiseYourself

#LeadYourself

#LeadByExample

#SayNoToCorruption.

Communication as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary is the act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behaviour to express or exchange information.

Communication can be verbal or non verbal such as facial expressions, gestures, body language, eye movements, dressing or appearances, mail, email, radio, television, facebook, twitter, text, or whatsapp.

It is about exchange of information between a team or teams, between friends, families for coordination, effectiveness and efficiency.

How do you communicate as a leader?

Your tone of communication portrays your message. What tone do you use?

Check your communication.

When you ask yourself the following questions, you will know the areas where improvements are required. Then you can act on that.

1. Do you gender strife by your communication?
2. Do you divide to rule by your communication?
3. Does your communication bring peace?
4. Do you manipulate by your communication?
5. Do you humiliate by your communication?
6. Do you oppress by your communication?
7. Do you harass by your communication?
8. Is your communication clear?
9. Is your communication productive?
10. Is your communication adding value to others?
11. Is your communication achieving optimal goals or stalling goals?
12. Does your communication edify or furnish others?
13. Is your communication hurtful, lacking respect?
14. Is your communication prideful?
15. Is your communication encouraging?
16. Is your communication consoling?
17. Is your communication purposeful?
18. Is your communication corrupt?
19. Are you talking? Know that Talking is different from
20. Do you compliment enough or you just tear down?
21. Do you communicate with wisdom?
22. How is your body language?
23. How is your dress language?
24. Do you listen when others talk?
25. Do you allow others to talk?
26. Do you talk when you should?

For communication to be effective and provoke efficiency, there is the need to consider these points carefully with the intention to make amends where necessary in order to achieve great and good success.

#GoodCommunication.

An adviser is one who counsels on a subject which may be private or professional. It is giving guidance, recommending, directing, educating, on a subject or person. It involves information about an issue or person, whether positive or negative.

Merriam –Webster dictionary describes it as giving an opinion or suggestion about what should be done.

This is offering personal or official or professional counsel about a person or an issue to someone or an organization or a nation.

A leader cannot afford to be void of counsel. There are good, and evil counsel. Every purpose is established by counsel. Where there is no counsel, the people fall and purposes are disappointed. But in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. Proverbs 11:14.

Leaders should watch out for evil counsel that can destroy a whole nation, family, organization or an individual. Ahithophel gave bad counsel in 2 Samuel 17:7-14 while Hushai gave good counsel. The leader in this case is to decide which to follow.

Leaders should try not to forsake the good advice of the older and experienced members of their teams. In 2 Kings 12:8-14 the king chose bad advice over good advice. Doing the opposite of good counsel is preferring evil counsel, and this portrays foolishness. Wise counsellors are expedient to the success and establishment of purpose.

Leaders need to have wisdom to discern evil from good. Evil counsel can cast you down as a leader. Therefore a leader should guard against crafty, wicked, and scornful counsel.

Bad counsel from a friend (Jonadab), made Amnon to sleep with Tamar his sister. 2 Samuel 13:3-5.

Bad counsel from Memucan got Vashti banished from the king’s presence. Memucan opened the king’s eyes to see how great Vashti’s crime was. Esther 1:16. If you surround yourself with wicked counsel, they will cast you down. Let the counsel of the wicked be far from you as a leader. Also, be aware of when your wise counsellors are becoming brutish, then correct them immediately.

Leaders should also take note of hateful users like Haman, who wanted to use the king to deal with his own personal enemies.

A leader needs to take note of the people that have taken counsel against him or her, so that he or she can plan on how it shall come to nought. The chief priests and the elders took counsel to put an innocent person to death in Matthew 27:1

Leaders should be aware of jealous advisers who try to put distinguished uncorrupted advisers into trouble. This happened to Daniel, where a group of administrators told the king to enforce a decree that can eliminate Daniel. This conspiracy landed Daniel in the lion’s den. This leader made a decree that would have grieved him, had it succeeded. On another occasion, the astrologers made king Nebuchadnezzar to put three innocent people into a blazing furnace by their counsel. Daniel 3:7

Leaders should take particular notice of the advisers who are able to tell them the truth, as well as correct them when wrong. Paul advised Peter to be consistent in his deeds before all.

A leader should take time to get good spiritual counselor who will give guidance to help him or her not to walk against GOD’s counsel, because only HIS counsel stands forever.  Psalm 33:11 and Psalm 1:1.

Whom are you receiving counsel from? Isaiah 40:14. From adulterers? From the wicked? From the scornful? From the mischievous? From the corrupt? From the merciless? From the manipulative? From the foolish?

OR from the wise? From the one that is full of understanding? From the knowledgeable? From the righteous?

It is good decisions that make great people.

Wisdom is profitable to direct.

Who is your adviser?