The Pilot and the Preacher.

Call me weird but the smoothest airplane touchdown of my life, today, is my most precious birthday gift. This was Melbourne to Sydney on Jetstar JQ502. I couldn’t help but literally clap my hands in my wing seat (I have said my autobiography just might be titled “Wingman;” I’m almost always flying on the wing!). A few others applauded too. Then as we deplaned and I approached the cockpit I noticed the captain who had performed the magic had his door open and was standing right in front of it, interacting with some passengers. Again, I couldn’t pass by without verbalizing my appreciation of his masterly act. “That was a great landing, sir,” I blurted out. The captain half-smiled, almost embarrassingly, and managed to mutter under his breath his appreciation of my applause.

On the jet bridge a sense of regret began to creep over me. Ah! I should’ve asked to take a photo with him! A little weighed down by that remorseful thought I still, slowly but surely, made my way into the terminal and headed for the place people empty their bladder. Guess who I spotted when I returned to a cafe in the terminal to grab some breakfast: the first officer of the flight, looking to make a purchase. And the captain! Yipeee!

I was happy to repeat my admiration and appreciation and ask for his name and a selfie this time. He graciously obliged. So I gave him some context: over the last eight days I had taken 10 flights–Accra to Amsterdam, to Detroit, to Montreal, to Toronto, to Houston, to Auckland, to Gold Coast, to Adelaide, to Melbourne and now to Sydney–and no landing could compare. I could’ve had a hot cup of tea sitting on my lap during that landing and it wouldn’t have spilled!

WHAT DO YOU DO?

By the time I had shared my itinerary above with Captain Phil Peatfield, he had to ask: “What do you do?” To which I immediately responded, “I am a preacher.” Usually in the marketplace context I would mention something more relatable like leadership consultant or executive coach but it felt so good to say “I am a preacher,” even if it meant I would be canceled (as in today’s ‘cancel culture’). “I used to fly preachers around,” Captain Peatfield responded, to my surprise. Apparently he served with Flying Doctors Australia, a non-profit organisation that “provides emergency and primary health care services for those living in rural, remote and regional areas of Australia who cannot access a hospital or general practice due to the vast distances of the Outback.” I didn’t tell him I’m a doctor too. And well, that I was once a captain as well, a military one.

The irony is that as a little boy I had really wanted to be a pilot. I was fascinated by planes and impressed with pilots’ uniforms. I was starry-eyed when I saw my professor-grandfather’s itinerary as he jet set around the globe lecturing on African ethnomusicology. In a moment of annoyance at a friend in junior high who wanted to be a pilot too (he was too enthusiastic about it for my liking) I snapped out of it and decided becoming a medical doctor would be the way to go.

“PEARL OF GREAT PRICE”

As I celebrate my forty-fifth birthday today, as a preacher I am thankful for this unexpected pilot gift from God. Educationists like Parker Palmer encourage parents to take seriously what early manifestations and proclamations their children make about what they want to do when they grow up. Palmer says in, “Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling the who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live–but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.”*

As I think of that thing that was triggered in me whenever I heard about or saw my grandpa flying the world, I think of Parker Palmer as a grandfather today.

Watching my granddaughter from her earliest days on earth, I was able, in my early fifties. to see something that had eluded me as a twenty-something parent: my granddaughter arrived in the world as this kind of person rather than that, or that, or that. She did not show up as raw material to be shaped into whatever image the world might want her to take. She arrived with her own gifted form, with her shape of her own sacred soul. Biblical faith calls it the image of God in which we are all created. Thomas Merton calls it true self. Quakers call it the inner light, or ‘that of God’ in every person. The humanist tradition calls it identity and integrity. No matter what you call it, it is a pearl of great price.*

Now that I know what I know, I’m eagerly looking out for what my children, nephews and nieces and young mentees were born to be. God creates no one for nothing. We need to find the clues and lead people in the way they should go–they way they are bent.

BORN FOR THIS

I now know that traveling the world was my calling, even from childhood, although I didn’t get my first plane ride till my late teens. But when it rained it began to pour so much that by age 18/19 I had been to every continent in the world except Australasia/Oceania. What a birthday present to have finally made it ‘down under’ to New Zealand and Australia, a quarter of a century later. And it wasn’t being a pilot or physician that brought me here. It’s the preacher I was born to be. Even the pilot was impressed by the preacher’s itinerary. “Wow, what do you do?” The clue all along was that I was born to travel the world preaching the gospel and raising leader-labourers for the Kingdom of God. I know now that I wasn’t meant to be in the cockpit per se but to enjoy the ride and views–the planes’ and the Lord’s.

Whether a pilot like Peatfield or Perbi the preacher or physician, Palmer’s point is one worth profoundly pondering: “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent… Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?”* Good food for thought on my birthday.

Reference

*Palmer, Parker J. 2015. Let Your Life Speak : Listening for the Voice of Vocation. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass.

You may have my bag but not my friends.

An exhortation on not allowing circumstances and people who know no better rob you of the wealth of intercultural relationships in our diverse, complex and globalized world.

MYSTERY OF THE MISSING BAG–WHY ME?

I was the last one to walk out of the airport arrival hall at Gold Coast in Australia. I had all the customs and immigration officers to myself, nearly a dozen, yet I gave them absolutely nothing to do. I not only had nothing to declare, I had no bag! Apparently, my only checked-in bag on the three-and-a-half hour NZ 179 flight from Auckland, New Zealand to Gold Coast, Australia had never been loaded onto the plane in the first place. I had waited and waited in vain for it until when nearly everyone on this very full flight had left the baggage hall and Carousel 6 was literally bare, I approached the Baggage Counter to complain about my missing travel companion.

The chap at the Air New Zealand counter was very nice but his assumption that I was going to be in Gold Coast ‘forever’ fascinated me (I’m surprised I wasn’t annoyed).

“Oh sorry sir but your bag will be delivered to you at home tomorrow,” said he.

“Tomorrow? Who told you I’ll still be here tomorrow,” I quizzically retorted.

It was obvious he felt he was doing me a great favour by offering me special at-your-door delivery but I was not amused. Not only did I need the items in my bag today; I was not going to be in Gold Coast in the morrow. This was a 24-hour meet and greet and off to Adelaide, another two-and-a-half hour flight to the western half of the Australian subcontinent.

By now my mind had begun to formulate various plausible permutations why I alone (for I saw no one else approaching the Baggage Counter to lodge a complaint) had my bag delayed. Why me? What was so unique about me that my bag would be singled out for NOT delivery? The only other thing I knew made me different was that I was the only Black African on the flight. Did this have to do with anything?

Interestingly, as I passed through the Auckland airport earlier I had taken a photo in front of the All Blacks memorabilia shop and tweeted “I wonder why I feel so #welcome. #AllBlacks vs #WhitesOnly. How the times have changed–this one, for the better. #NewZealand rocking it!” Did someone spot that and nab me? Was I too quick to praise New Zealand for progressive race relations? Did this bag saga really have anything to do with my Black skin at all? It is easy to read racism into nearly everything once you’ve been a victim of that dehumanizing attitude and act, I must admit. I resist that. I resent that, even.

MYSTERY OF INTERCULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS–SO WORTH IT

All those thoughts and feelings totally dissipated once I set eyes on the last two people left in the welcome area: Julia and Billy-Jo, two of my special friends from the 1997 cohort of the World Vision Youth Ambassadors! Sooo worth the hustle! I had had the privilege of being a World Vision Youth Ambassador for Ghana in 1996 and had the additional honour of returning in Julia and Billy-Jo’s year as a staff intern, together with Claudia from Colombia.

Julia had represented Canada back then and for her, this was our third in-person meeting since 1997 (Prague 2015, Ottawa 2021 and now Gold Coast 2023). But Billy, I had not seen in-person at all since our teenage years! Billy-Jo (yes, she was the first lady I met called Billy–she was way ahead of the gender conversations today!) was the Youth Ambassador from New Zealand. Again, the first Pacific Aboriginal I had ever met, a beautiful Maori, inside and out. Billy’s since become a senior nurse, married to Matt (great guy!) with whom she has three children and migrated to Australia. Interestingly, both Julia and Billy-Jo’s husbands are called Matt. Julia’s Matt is American while Billy’s Western Samoan.

What an incredible day of food, fellowship and fun we had all day, at home and at the Burleigh Beach. The unadulterated love, the open-hearted learning, the deep laughter… What a precious gift we received from Dr. Jerry and Mama Ruth Chang of World Vision Taiwan a quarter-of-a-century ago, a gift that keeps giving, even today.

Now I’m glad our children are getting to know each other as well. The gift ripples on. Just before my family permanently headed to Ghana after a dozen years of being resident in Canada, Julia’s two girls and my brood had a whole day together at their home, right outside of Ottawa, Ontario. In fact, even in the midst of the jamboree we made a WhatsApp video call to Ghana for my older girls to say “hi” to their Canadian sisters. And now that I’ve met Bella and Asher, Billy’s last two (the oldest is away playing rugby and doing school in New Zealand), we have already started conversations about getting them to visit Ghana!

MYSTERY OF INTERDEPENDENCE

Friends, that’s how it ought to be. People are people, made in the image and likeness of their divine Creator, and made to link up with that source, live, love, learn, and lead, leaving a good legacy. Becoming a World Youth Vision Youth Ambassador was a life changing experience–50 young people from 50 different countries. That opened my mind a lot and opened the world to me. As I’ve said before, “My heart expanded and has never been able to shrink again.”

Back to the mystery of the missing bag. For sure I felt very special, having been singled out for some (or no) reason. For good or ill, that’s a conversation for another day. Suffice it to say, this has been a fascinating week, beginning on Monday March 6 in North America (Toronto, Canada and Houston, Texas, USA) with a celebration of the land of my birth’s Independence Day and her renaming from ‘Gold Coast’ to Ghana. I was now ending the week in another Gold Coast, of Australia. The same chaps christened and colonized both; on either side of the equator. What we really need in this world, from individuals to nations, is interdependence; not dependence or independence per se. We were made for this! And we all ought to live the way we were purposed to in order to flourish personally, as families and communities, in the corporate world and among the commity of nations.

In the mean time, you can have my bag but you won’t rob me of the richness of interdependent, intercultural relationships. Never!

How to Apologize Properly: Seven Succinct & Sturdy Steps.

Let’s talk about apologizing properly. Some people are too prideful to apologize when they err (including me, sometimes). That’s so wrong. But even for those who know they are in the wrong and want to make things right, they often still get making things right wrong.

Imagine my shock, when l was scheduled to have a meeting with one of the top CEOs in Africa and l kept waiting and waiting and waiting and… this person wasn’t showing up. So I signed off from Zoom about 20 minutes later and sent a message: “I hope you’re okay…” etc. etc.

It wasn’t until the next day when this leader sent what was supposed to be an apology. All this person said was, “Apologies.”  End of story. What?! I was shockprised. “Is that how to apologize?” I soliloquized. Then l began to understand why only a couple of weeks earlier one of my close friends who is also a top executive of a Ghana Club 100 company shared with me how one of my daughters had totally shocked him. Apparently, she had stepped on him or something of the sort (l forget) but that wasn’t the source of the shock. It was how she apologized. That so astonished him and he said to himself, “I’ve got to learn how to apologize this way.” He is now actually teaching his family that this is how to apologize properly henceforth, when you do something wrong.

This is the way to apologize, for acts of commission (doing what you’re not supposed to do) and omission (not doing what you’re supposed to do) alike:

1. Mention the fellow’s name: “Anyele.” “Frankie.” Mentioning a person’s name calls their attention, makes it personal, and connects us to the caller.
2. Spell out your offence: “l missed our appointment” or “l did not put the money in the bank like you had asked me to”
3. Acknowledge you erred, openly admitting it: “l am wrong”
4. Let them know you regret it, verbally articulating it: “I am sorry”
5. Ask for their pardon: “Please forgive me.”
6. Wait for their response (hopefully they can process right there and then and also give you a response in the affirmative).
7. Thank them (no matter the response).

So here’s an illustration of how my CEO friend should’ve apologized: “Yaw. I totally missed our appointment and stood you up. I am wrong. I am sorry. Please forgive me.” This is the way to apologize properly. Just saying “apologies” or a half-hearted “oh sorry” in a huff doesn’t cut it. I am learning to do this better and better because I realize that sometimes when I’m not really really sorry I don’t want to go through this process and certainly don’t want to make the above string of statements.

Giving the other person the opportunity to forgive you by saying “please forgive me” is very empowering for the offended party. It kind of disarms the offender simultaneously too. I hope you’ll practice this and that true transformation will transpire because you are truly deeply sorrowful for what you did wrong even if it’s the slightest thing. Remember, “Ms. ABC, I did XYZ. I am wrong. I am sorry. Please forgive me.” Then await their response and thank them. This is the proper way to apologize. Some even go an extra length to state what they’re going to do to make things right and/or renegotiate the promise.

I am wary of people who are not self-aware enough to recognize they’ve done wrong, whether upon self-reflection or via feedback. And I don’t trust those who won’t say sorry after they’ve been made aware of it, and do it seriously and sincerely. I won’t do business with them because they have low integrity. Of course ,the first layer of integrity is keeping one’s word. But when inadvertently through extenuating circumstances one is unable to, to keep one’s integrity we still need to acknowledge that our integrity is unraveling (not just pretend we never gave our word in the first place) and then still honour our word by apologizing in the above manner and renegotiating.

Apologizing properly is not a trivial matter. It has saved personal relationships, families, communities, organizations and even nations. Let’s begin to take apologizing properly and sincerely seriously: on a personal level, then in our families and communities, ultimately in our corporate world and national life. Now, go and do likewise and teach the people at your workplace, on your team, and even your spouse and cubs to do same. That’s the way to go.

The Fathers’ Appetites Have Soured the Children’s Futures

Meet Tim Elmore, Intergenerational Leader of Leaders.

Dr. Tim Elmore’s passion for leader development began in 1983 when he worked alongside and was mentored by best-selling author, Dr. John C. Maxwell. Since then, he’s emerged as an author, leadership expert, and keynote speaker who’s trained more than 500,000 leaders in hundreds of organizations worldwide.  Speaking of intergenerational leadership, he’s also the Founder and CEO of Growing Leaders, a non-profit team that equips students and young professionals around the world to become life-giving leaders. Tim has developed young leaders on every continent and has spoken in 50 countries including India, Russia, China, Brazil and throughout the Middle East.

Dr. Elmore has advised corporations such as Chick-fil-A, Cox Communications, the Home Depot, Cici’s Pizza, Delta Global, Coca-Cola Consolidated, and more. He’s spoken at top-tier universities such as Stanford, Texas, Duke, Ohio State, Georgia Tech, U.C. Berkeley and more. And he’s presented to executives and world-class athletes with the Kansas City Royals, New York Giants, Houston Rockets, and San Francisco Giants. His blog is read by over 100,000 people weekly.

THE INTERGENERATIONAL WORKPLACE OF THE 21ST CENTURY

At Live2Lead on October 7, come hear how Tim brings his decades of research and leadership experience to bear on what might be the biggest, most dramatic, and most disruptive shift the workforce has ever seen: the vast diversity of several generations living—and working—together. Tim Elmore explores the fact that for the first time in history, up to five generations find themselves working alongside each other in a typical company. The result? There can be division. Interactions between people from different generations can resemble a cross-cultural relationship. Both usually possess different values and customs. At times, each generation is literally speaking a different language!

How can we hope to work together when we can’t even understand each other? Tim will provide the tools to:

• Get the most out of the strengths of each age group on your team.
• Foster effective communication instead of isolation among people.
• Build bridges rather than walls so that loneliness becomes connectedness.
• Connect people to learn how both veterans and rookies can mentor each other.

ADD VALUE TO YOU AND YOURS

At YAW PERBI Executive Leadership Education all our offerings are to the end that leaders grow personally, succeed professionally and become significant societally. Join Dr. Tim Elmore and the other stellar faculty Dr. John Maxwell has put together for this year’s Live2Lead conference and tune up your leadership game. Register now through this link. Impress upon your organization to join the movement that will transform society by becoming a Patron of Live2Lead. A Patron company or individual is one that sends at least 10 leaders to Live2Lead. Together we can change our world for the better!

Register HERE, NOW.

Meet Gwyneth Gyimah Addo, a Sight for Sore Eyes.

Gwyneth Gyimah Addo, often affectionately called Gwen, is a wife, mother, author, philanthropist, business leader, motivational speaker, marketing strategist and the CEO of Ghana’s leading human hair company, The Hair Senta.

After graduating from the University of Ghana, Gwen joined Standard Chartered Bank Ghana for six years. She holds an MBA in entrepreneurship and innovation from the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) as well as an Executive Management qualification from Harvard Business School. Gwen was recently featured in a Forbes Africa interview on the global market boom of hair extensions and wigs. Her many awards include CEIBS Global Impact Award, CEIBS Most Promising Female Entrepreneur Award, and the 40 Under 40 Sales and Marketing Award.

Gwen founded the mega HIBS AFRICA global event to project the beauty industry on the continent and the Leading Senta Foundation which focuses on mentoring youth. Her first book, DIRECTION, is already creating impact in the lives of many young and adult readers. Her love, commitment, reliance and trust in the Lord is unquestionably the pivot around which her business success revolves.

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET

It is hard not to like Gwen. She is absolutely winsome and authentic–what you see is what you get. This largely accounts for her over 100,000 following on Instagram, the social media platform on which she has virtually built her business. Finding high level leaders in Ghana who embody this year’s  Live2Lead theme of “Leading with Integrity for the Common Good” has not been easy. Many crowd-pulling speakers did not seem to fit the bill, if we were going to be serious about walking the talk. It has been heartwarming to get to know Gwen personally, upon high recommendation from my network, and to find her a leader of integrity. The icing on the cake, for me, was to expressly read from her new book, DIRECTION, how integrity is a non-negotiable for her and the multi-million dollar business she heads.

On October 7 this year, Gwen will share her views on leadership and integrity and how she manages to remain authentic in a cut-throat society. Mrs. Gwyneth Gyimah Addo is a sight for sore eyes, literally and figuratively. Friends, we are going nowhere without integrity. For in the words of Zig Ziglar, “It is true that integrity alone won’t make you a leader, but without integrity you will never be one.”

Tune up your personal, professional and leadership game at this year’s Live2Lead conference. Register now through this link. Nag your organization until they join this rising movement of learning leaders that will transform society by becoming a Patron of Live2Lead. A Patron company or individual is one that sends at least 10 leaders to Live2Lead. There’s no way we can have at least 100 such Patron organizations and companies in Ghana and not transform it, one centre of excellence at a time. Together we can change our country and continent for the better! Let’s do this! Register here, NOW.

Meet Doris Kearns Goodwin, Presidential Historian Extraordinaire

Doris Helen Kearns Goodwin is an American biographer, historian, former sports journalist, and political commentator. In 1964 Kearns received a bachelor’s degree from Colby College, Waterville, Maine, and in 1968 she earned a doctorate in government from Harvard University, where she later taught government.

Goodwin won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in history for her No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (1994), and in 2005 she published Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which focused on Lincoln’s management of his presidential cabinet. The book served as the primary source for Steven Spielberg’s biographical film Lincoln (2012). She later wrote The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (2013) and Leadership in Turbulent Times (2018). In addition to her works of presidential scholarship, Goodwin wrote Wait till Next Year: A Memoir (1997), about growing up in the 1950s and her love for the Brooklyn Dodgers. She also served as a news analyst for NBC and as a consultant for Ken Burns’s documentary Baseball (1994).

TO LEARN OR NOT TO LEARN

It breaks my heart when I hear a famous statement like, “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history” (Georg Hegel, German philosopher). Yet of a truth, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” That quote is most likely writer and philosopher George Santayana’s, and its original form read, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” While leaders must not live the past, they certainly must leverage its lessons for today and tomorrow.

Consequently, in a fireside chat with John C. Maxwell at Live2Lead on October 7 this year, Doris will share key leadership insights gleaned from her decades of experience as a presidential historian, public speaker and Pulitzer-Prize winning author. The leadership lessons learned from some of the greatest leaders in our history provide timely clues on how to navigate the current condition of the leadership deficit we are experiencing today.

Come and up your personal, professional and leadership game at this year’s Live2Lead conference. Register now through this link. Nag your organization until they join this rising movement of learning leaders that will transform society by becoming a Patron of Live2Lead. A Patron company or individual is one that sends at least 10 leaders to Live2Lead. There’s no way we can have at least 100 such Patron organizations and companies in Ghana and not transform it, one centre of excellence at a time. Together we can change our country and continent for the better! Let’s do this! Register HERE, NOW.

Meet John Maxwell, Mentor Emeritus

No single individual has influenced my leadership paradigm and praxis like Dr. John C. Maxwell. I started reading and understudying John in the late 1990s and have been teaching his materials ever since, both as a bonafide EQUIP trainer and a certified Maxwell coach/speaker/trainer on the John Maxwell Team (JMT).

Meet John Maxwell–my mentor emeritus–the #1 New York Times bestselling author, coach, and speaker who has sold more than 30 million books. John has been identified as the #1 leader in business by the American Management Association® and the world’s most influential leadership expert by Business Insider and Inc. magazines.

Dr. Maxwell has also received the Horatio Alger Award, as well as the Mother Teresa Prize for Global Peace and Leadership from the Luminary Leadership Network. His organizations—The John Maxwell Company, The John Maxwell Team, EQUIP, and the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation—have trained millions of leaders from every nation in the world.

The annual Live2Lead conference is John’s brainchild, and he always opens and closes, with other phenomenal faculty sandwiched in between. I have been privileged to host it on both sides of the Atlantic, in Montreal, Canada as well as Accra, Ghana.

LAWS OF COMMUNICATION AND LIMITS-BLOWING CONTENT

At Live2Lead this year, John  C. Maxwell will be sharing new content from his upcoming book on the 16 Laws of Communication. Maxwell explains how to identify, grow, and apply your critical capacities. Once you’ve blow the “cap” of your capacities, you’ll find yourself more successful in your daily life.

We are absolutely convinced at YAW PERBI Executive Leadership Education that leadership (including communication) is taught; not just caught. Join John and the stellar faculty he’s put together for this year’s Live2Lead conference and up your leadership game. Register now through this link. Impress upon your organization to join the movement that will transform society by becoming a Patron of Live2Lead. A Patron company or individual is one that sends at least 10 leaders to Live2Lead. Together we can change our world for the better!

Register HERE, NOW.

Raise the Roof, Lift your Lid!

I just arrived at my room in Cape Town after three flights from Accra to Nairobi, Nairobi to Johannesburg and Jo’burg to Cape Town. A question on my mind as l flew here far above sea level, sometimes as high as 38,000 feet, has been, “How high is your leadership lid?”

THE FIRST OF THE IRREFUTABLE LAWS OF LEADERSHIP

Of course you know what a lid is, the cover of a container. How high your lid is determines the quality of the leadership that you provide for those you lead. I learnt this a long time ago, some 20-25 years ago from John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. It was the very first of the principles of leadership he espoused in that bestseller and my life has never been the same since.

As John challenged me then from the written word—and many years later in-person—I must always endeavour to lift my leadership lid because no family, organization, church, community or country would ever grow past their leader. The leader is the lid over those (s)he leads. Sometimes when training leaders I ask, “are you a leader or ‘lidder’? because a leader is literally the lid on the progress and prosperity of their constituency. In a sense, every leader is a lidder; the question is “how high?”

IMAGINE THIS PRESIDENTIAL LID

You probably have heard me tell the story of a certain African president that a group of us, Maxwell certified leaders, were trying to connect in-person to John C. Maxwell for a national transformation process and programme. This president had never heard of John. In all probability, he hadn’t read any other contemporary leadership experts but hopefully he has digested at the very minimum some of the leadership classics like Plato’s, ‘The Republic’. It is a scary thought that this African nation—and by extension every family, organization, corporation, community, church etc. within her—would be constrained by the tightness of this head of state’s lid. I almost added, “through no fault of theirs,” but I guess they voted him into power.

HOW TO LIFT YOURS

While we educate a new generation that should be too enlightened to allow such tight lidders to lead African nations in the next decade, let me ask you, let’s get personal: how high is your lid? We forget, many of us (or we might even not know), that leadership is not just caught, it must be taught. And that’s why I love the opportunity, come October 07, for us all to be part of a life-altering, lid-lifting Live2Lead virtual experience with local faculty and global ones beaming all the way from Atlanta, Georgia.

We are gunning for 2,000 leaders—from emerging (youth) leaders, through leaders in the establishment (i.e. government/public sector leaders) to established leaders in the private sector, including executives from the corporate space. We will be taught in word and deed by powerful speakers and shakers like John C. Maxwell himself, two Patricks (Lencioni of the USA and Awuah of Ghana) and a Patricia (CEO of Vodafone, Ghana).

RAISE THE ROOF!

One of the most powerful discoveries in psychology over the last generation has been that people can learn and grow and change! So wherever your lid is today, if you learn to lead better you provide more room for those you lead. John will be the first to tell you that “your capacity determines your impact.”

Perhaps, some of the conflicts you are experiencing right now in your organization, church or wherever you lead is because your lid is too low and so people keep hitting it. And there is going to be continued tension and banging (conflict) till at some either you leave the stage or your people take their exit. As you have probably heard it said, people join organizations but they leave people (managers/leaders). It’s time to make room, lift your lid, raise the roof!

I have been part of things l left because the lid was too low. It just wasn’t life giving and l know people have also left my leadership when my lid was low because it was just too tight. Learn to lead. Each one of us can learn to lead better. Blow off the lid so that all of a sudden the people under your leadership feel this space and freedom because you lifted your lid and now they can breathe and create and innovate and… live again.

Join us at Live2Lead Ghana 2022, on October 7, and let’s all learn to lead better so that the people following our leadership can live better. If leading is your purpose on earth—that you live2lead—then you might as well as learn2lead, and do it well. As Donewell Insurance puts it, “If it must be done, it must be done well.” If we must lead, then we must lead well. Let’s blow off some lids and see our constituents blessed beyond measure, growing great and strong.

Right outside my hotel room window is the breathtaking view of the majestic, towering Table Mountain at 3,500 feet above sea level with no real ‘peak’ per se. No lid! So in the meantime, while you contemplate your lid, I will enjoy Cape Town on your behalf.

Post Script

Register and join LivetoLead here.

‘I DO’ or ‘NO CLUE’?

Happy Saint Valentine’s Day! I think it makes a difference when you prefix the ‘saint’ before ‘Valentine’s Day’ because unfortunately a lot of unholy things happen on Valentine’s day but it’s a day to celebrate a saint who out of love, gave of himself for others. That’s what the essence of love is, it’s not so much what we can get but what we can give.

This is why I love the commonest scripture which numerous people who are not even Christ-followers know that by heart (John 3:16): “ For God so loved the world that He gave…” Love is three things (3As): Love is an affect (emotion), an attitude, and an action. If you would take another look at the most famous passage in all the world about love, 1 Corinthians 13, you would see love showing up mainly as attitude and action. There are a few affects sprinkled here and there but mainly attitude and action. That’s what love is–not just an affect and an attitude but love is action, so love gives.

Kathy & Gerry Kraemer, our mentors

On this particular Valentine’s day, I want to send a shout out to the love of my life, Naa Anyele Perbi (nee Ampa-Sowa). We’ve been married for over 15 years now and one of the things that has saved and sweetened our marriage is searching for and satisfying each other’s emotional needs, something we learned from marriage mentors of ours in Montreal, Canada. Gerry and Kathy Kraemer do a marriage workshop and illustrate this beautifully. The point is that each of us–depending on where and how we were born and raised, our make-up/wiring, personality, life’s critical incidents etc.–receive love differently. This is not just the general and popular ‘five love languages’, no! This is way beyond that. This is deeper than that. Based on our life stories, we each have unique emotional needs.

The Kraemers love to tell the emotional needs tale this way: On the day we get married you we exchange vows and say, “I do.” Gerry and Kathy half-joking assert that we probably should rather say, “No clue!” instead of “I do!” for indeed, we have no clue what we are getting into, no matter how much in love we are and how much we think we know of ourselves and of the other. They actually project their 1970s wedding picture and ‘photoshop’ in an ‘invisible’ suitcase by each of them, symbolizing the baggage each of us comes into a marriage relationship with!

And this is how they illustrate it: Gerry is blindfolded by his wife, who then holds a cut-out heart, a big heart, right in front of her. Now, Gerry holding a bow and arrow (the plastic kind with a sucker at the end) then tries to hit the target, the heart of his dear Kathy, going boom, boom boom!!!! And guess what? He misses Kathy’s heart every time. Until eventually he allows her to remove the blindfold so he can now see exactly where her heart is and can strike it point blank or from afar, any and every time.

The point is this: there are a lot of books and audiovisuals out there that talk about love and romance in such generic terms such as ladies love flowers and guys like sex. Don’t buy this stuff! There are guys who love flowers and gals who have a bigger desire and capacity for sex than most men you know! There is actual work to do in specifically finding out through conversation and some tools (those who take our YAW PERBI Family Foundations Mastermind actually get to go through this) to know these things. Basically, you can find out from conservations with or without expert help. What makes your spouse feel fully alive? In other words, what gives oxygen to their souls? When you find that out (when your spouse let’s you in on the master key(s)–and by the way you don’t have to understand it!, you don’t even have to like it–just do it! When your spouse says, “I am XYZ and this is how l love to be loved, would you love me this way?” I hope your answer would be yes!

Today being St. Valentine’s Day, a lot of people are going to give gifts that they would have loved to receive; not gifts people would loved to get, necessarily. That’s how humans behave: we tend to give what we would like ourselves or what we think is good. But if we would take the time to hear the heart of whoever we’re trying to love, they would tell us, they would give us a clue what makes them feel loved or what gives oxygen to their souls.

“I am Yaw, this is how I love to be loved… (Errrm… I won’t tell you! Only Anyele knows that!) …Would you love me this way?” Love somebody the way they want to be loved, the way they feel loved this Valentine’s Day; not the way we want to love them. Have a Happy Valentine‘s Day!!! and a great month celebrating love, true and love, lasting love, pure love, for God is love. Whatever you do today, may be it be saintly!