Beware of glorified fakeness or lack of authenticity in your life. Be very careful not to mistake labels for quality or public relations for Bible truth. Even more importantly, don’t substitute personal growth with quick fame, microwaved credentials, titles and top line knowledge. Don’t embrace the fantasy of false equivalence or mistake proximity to power for equivalence!

SUCCESS IS A CONDITION not a position or possession!
Do not mistake success as the source of happiness until you’re so desperate to succeed by fair or foul means. You will be a very bitter – and not better – successful version of yourself. First value yourself, value truth, value authenticity and value what you are. Life did not put you in Africa so that you aspire for intellectual, cultural, economic and spiritual slavery to Europe and America. Desire wholeness and healing from a sense of inadequacy, inferiority and self-destructive doubt!

EXCUSE YOURSELF and EXCUSE US!
The fact that you have or hold the same qualifications or title as somebody else does not make you equivalent at all. Let me repeat, being on the same panel as global corporate, government, faith or civil society leaders or rock star Professors does not make you equivalent to them. Zoom appearance and Selfie doesn’t amount to equivalency. Excuse us, we know what you are capable of as well as what you are not. Excuse yourself, you know that short cuts don’t always amount to completion of great journeys, right ?

CRUCIBLES OF LIFE

Please stop making up theories about how life, leadership and success works after only a few tears and years. Don’t profess expertise before your qualifications, skills and experience have been through the crucibles of life, work, adversity and failure and come out on the other end still totally aligned, intact and credible. You think you know something because you have had one great post, a lucky break or brilliant student’s promo? Life is full of greater geniuses and dreamers who failed. Be constant and consistent for the next decade or two.

Repeat this skill, expertise and experience in different organisations, positions, contexts and countries with the same or greater measure of success. Then come back here and talk shop about great success, leadership or life principles! For now, sit down and learn from both your books and real life. Otherwise your book theories and life in a decade from now will be so far apart like Earth & Mars or Like an Anti-corruption activist who becomes a politician and cabinet minister or an Opposition Leader that joins the ruling party as an official without portfolio or purpose!

CLONES & CLOWNS
Don’t use clichés, quotes and platitudes from books that you have read, videos or movies watched as the only basis of your understanding of Life, leadership, success and happiness. Remember that as good as all those leadership stories and case studies that you are relying on are; the people involved were not dealing with the same people or cultural, social, spiritual, political and economic context as yours. When you apply the lessons they offer, make relevant contextual adjustments, differentiation, domestication and distinction. Even the world’s major religions adjusted when they got to Africa.

Don’t be a ridiculous educated or smart clone! You read a book from America or Europe about how to campaign, raise money for social causes, empower people, dress, talk, behave or negotiate for success and you want to apply it to our mothers, fathers, youth, politicians, traditional leadership, religious or cultural context without any adjustments at all? Who bewitched you? Why do you think that you can use an American or European leadership fantasy, experience, experiment or expertise to produce authentically African organisations, experiences and outcomes?

Listen, your parents and grandparents were forced to learn Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dickens, where are they now ? Even they had the commonsense to reject becoming good English-speaking or French-speaking paupers tormented by a sense of false civility! Stop it! Emancipate yourself from this mental, cultural, spiritual, and social slavery!

Colonialism and coloniality will always produce spectacular shortcomings. If you don’t adjust your constant reference to American Corporate, political, civic or spiritual experience as the platinum standard of life , You will reproduce the same absurdities of super rich or powerful minorities driven by super profits with very little humanity : the same racist, white supremacy, poverty and inequality.

Black folks that think that they cannot succeed without worshipping whiteness, Europeanness or Americanness. Folks that see success based on their similarity to, acceptance by and/or acceptability to European or American supremacists .or even just accents – are just Clowns.
Accent is not substance! Colonial embrace is neither legitimacy, authenticity nor success. It is mere utility. You are a usable native! Have the accents if you wish, but please also get some commonsense and wisdom whilst you are at it!

BE AUTHENTIC!
Stop admiring dysfunction. If you can’t, please don’t turn it into an article of Faith or Bible of leadership and success. Learn to question some things and think critically! Otherwise, you will turn folks or your organisation into an intellectually, contextually and culturally disconnected shoddy version of the American or European ones . Abeg ,even if the people you lead get the Euro-American accents and de-contextualised jokes right , they will never be European or American.

Try being authentic. You’re here in Africa in order to promote, produce and practice an authentic homegrown global expertise and experience