Leadership is not easy. Ask Prime Minister Perry Christie. Ask former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham. Ask a pastor. Ask a boss. Ask a responsible parent. And yes, leadership is difficult at times, because the most difficult issue you face is colleagues who, as Christie put it, "bitch and complain".
According to the online Urban Dictionary, "bitching" is "Repeatedly saying something over and over, or rather whining about it, therefore destroying the point you were trying to make and making you look like a complete bitch because no one is listening to you." Is that what Christie meant his colleagues were doing? Who knows. This much is true, however: if you lead, you will face this in some form or fashion. The longer you lead, the more you will face it. Strong leaders have to deal with it, and weak leaders have to deal with it more. Capable leaders confront it; incompetent leaders confront it more. Human beings are more inclined to blame and complain than accept responsibility and forge ahead. The PM says when he hears his colleagues "bitch and complain", he asks them, "Suppose you were me?"
Well, in politics - in fact, in life - those who "bitch and complain" are not the leader. Very often, under the pressure of many complaining constituents, they want nothing more than relief and look to the leader for it. In the face of the whining followers, leaders must summon those unique qualities characteristic of sound leadership: vision, focus, resolve, principles, communication, courage, honesty and motivation. They must never themselves become whiners and complainers. They must not yield to the loudest complainers, rewarding their whining as some virtue greater than patience and self-reliance. A leader should, a leader must, listen, but listen to all. Quiet souls who work diligently for the group's cause need as much, sometimes more, attention than those loudmouth gripers who tend to get almost all the attention. Calling talk shows incessantly and complaining about everything on the planet is no virtue. There is great virtue in rolling up your sleeves, getting in the fight and producing some difference yourself.
It gives me no pleasure to say it, but it seems to me that too many Bahamians, both in positions of leadership and in the wider public, have become weak and timid. The golden years of this nation, when prosperity and abundance made us the envy of the Caribbean, have made too many of us limp, lazy and dependent. Now, in the hour of our great challenge, we "bitch and complain", looking for some grand political savior or saviors. We don't ask, "What can we do for ourselves?" Rather, we ask: "What will they do for us?" In this is the defeat of our people and the wrecking of our nation. Self-reliance is a virtue that needs reawakening among us.
In his book "Self-Reliance", Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."
As far back as antiquities, this much is true: success has never been the reward of the sluggard, the lazy or the complainer. It belongs to the diligent, the creative and the industrious. There is no salvation to come from the political realm of our nation, even if some great push might. Government has never been and will never be the champion of prosperity for our country, even if it must help facilitate it. We, the people, individually and collectively, of this land, must gird up our loins; we must pick up our plows; we must get in the fields and do the great work necessary to turn ourselves around. Many are already doing this, and doing so under the most trying of circumstances; but too many are not. Too many are simply settling for mediocrity, preferring do what we feel is enough to get by, and discovering that what we are doing does not even do that. The hour is late and the task is great, and only greatness can answer that call. That greatness is not only in some political or religious head. It is in all of us, and if we recognize it, begin to tap into it, it will change our personal circumstances and perhaps that of our nation.
o Zhivargo Laing is a Bahamian economic consultant and former Cabinet minister who represented the Marco City constituency in the House of Assembly.
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