Tuesday 31 December 2013

You Made Me A Better Person in 2013. Happy New Year!!

My last 2 Christmas' were very lonely. Two years ago, I spent Christmas Day sick and stuck in London Gatwick airport after eating a bad food in Istanbul-Turkey, throwing up miserably and causing so much discomfort to passengers and cabin crew. I was welcomed home in Birmingham the next day drained and dehydrated. Last year, I spent it at home in Ghana with my housemate in our little space in Odorkor. I was very broke after a hectic year of delivering more with less. We didn't cook any decent meal, we bought on the streetsa mirror of the reality of millions who have no chance at a simple Christmas meal of rice, stew and dry fish.

This year hasn't been particularly special and perfect, but I have gone through 2013 coming in contact with people who have loved, cared, taught and supported me in diverse ways, of which I'm grateful about and want to show my deepest gratitude. Gratitude comes from the word 'gratis', which means 'free'. So in essence, I'm grateful for everything all of you reading this note freely impacted and invested in my life. "Gratitude is the freeing expression of a free heart toward one who freely gave".

2013 was like a dragon with a gift in it's mouth. Taming the animal was to take 365 days of learning, living and leading. I am not saying I didn't achieve anything, what I mean is that our maturity as leaders could take our entire lifetime. We will land, but we will still have weaknesses, no one is ubermensch. I've always seen transformation as a complete change from acorn to an oak tree; or like the sight of a giant ultra modern hospital funded by the P.E.A.C.E Plan to replace a torturing former site of genocide in Rwanda. But what about our daily struggles, suffering and sorrows? They are also part of our transformation! So we shouldn't discard them, we should share them. Always focusing and sharing our successes might generate competition, but continuously sharing our struggles promote community.

We've thought about leadership to be all about influence, charisma and having followers. But how about it becoming the other way round— sharing, supporting and serving others with our entire humanity. How about being a servant, leading from a position of weakness? How about being a listerner, the art of influencing people with our ears? How about avoiding unproductive arguments that sap our energy and focusing on winning people rather than arguments. I have purposed in my heart to learn and practice these.

In the year 2014, I have no huge expectations to be honest. I have only a revelation to spend time building my relationships with everyone around me. My good friend John-Son Oei, a recipient of the Augustman Magazine Man of the Year award and one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Malaysia today who builds houses for poor people opened my eyes to an important truth we often ignore as leaders, as we shared our traditional end of year lessons— "the value of a team set in the right foundations of love, trust and emphasis on relationships over performance".

So that will be my priority. And building relationship with people requires time investment. I see time as John Taylor's "Chronophage", outside Cambridge’s Taylor Library of Corpus Christi College. It has a grasshopper with a huge chomping mouth eating up every minute with a half swag. Time is boring but it's the most expensive gift we can give others because they cannot pay for it.

So many things occurred in 2013; I was transformed by the love and focus of Saddleback Church; the Environmental Movement ran a highly successful campaign against coal in Ghana; I attended my first Bar Camp; Ronny got married; My Australia friend living in Ghana, Eleanor made me lasagne after 18months of not eating it; and Anna Rose sent me her first book 'Madlands' from far away Australia which was to transform my activism and convert my friend who was a climate skeptic.

In 2014, I look forward to leading and serving the Ghana Youth Environmental Movement (GYEM), supporting Pass-A-Book-On, Dress-A-Kid, Share-Your-Lunch, Helplan, AYW-G and all the great initiatives up and running here. At GYEM, we call it our 'Year of Growth'— advancing our passion, purpose and partnership and building leaders of courage, competence and character to shift power with tools, techniques and technology. I'm looking forward to our first ever National Power Shift 2014 and Exponential 2014.

I also look forward to the World Cup in Brasil, "the land of keepie-uppies, sarongs & thongs". But before all that, I don't want to miss the reality of thanking everyone reading this note, because throughout 2013 in the midst of the fun, success, pain, pressure, problems, trials, tests, temptations and tribulations, you loved me, you supported me, you chided me, you criticised me, but in all that you didn't make me bitter, you made me a BETTER person.

Happy New Year!!!

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