"Under excellent leadership, a problem seldom reaches gigantic proportions because it is recognized and fixed in its early stages."— John. C. Maxwell
According to Arnold Glasgow"one of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency." Two examples from unfortunate national tragedies in the continent of North America will give us a clearer
meaning of this message.
An earthquake of devastating proportions destroyed lives and properties in the nation of Haiti, North America in the year 2010. Thousands of families mourned seeing relatives and friends killed, cities were submerged in the process leaving debris of what were once houses and structures. This happened despite repeated warnings from geologists and researchers for over ten years who had predicted a couple of times the strong possibility of an earthquake in Haiti. Government officials ignored these warnings because they felt the research in to the possibility of an earthquake in Haiti was vague, the inevitable eventually happened and the capital city was turned to a ma.s.sive rubble at the end. Over 220,000 people died and another 300,000 were estimated to have been injured.
A similar tragedy took place in the United States of America in the year 2001, but it wasn"t environmental in nature this time, it came in the form of a terror attack on the city of New York, prior to this attack, security departments and government officials had been warned of an impending attack initiated and to be executed by Al-Qaeda trained terrorists on the soil of the United States of America. A New York time reports of 2012 suggest that as early as June of the same year that the CIA was in the know that a terror attack was imminent. The pentagon according to the same report dismissed the report as a ploy by the Iraqi government to deflect attention from its activities that were under scrutiny at the time. Despite the strong evidence of a possible terror attack, the government ignored the warning leading to the worst terrorist atrocity ever witnessed on American Soilever, leading to the death of over 3,000 people.
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These are two clear examples of failure in leadership, these two tragedies happened because people who were paid by government to do their jobs simply dismissed strong warnings as mere speculations, they had enough time and resources to look into these reports and apply the necessary caution but they didn"t. The most worrisome thing about the devastating consequence of their actions is the fact that it wouldn"t have cost them anything to have acted the proper way by coming up with precautionary measures.
While these stories refer solely to failures in leadership at the level of government and public administration, the same applies to different aspects of life. If you do not quickly act to address a potential big problem in your marriage, it can signal the end of the union when it eventually plays out. The same for your organisation or business, when you identify an issue that might require your urgent attention and you refuse to look into it, it might result into an emergency that could bring down your organisation completely. What of the area of your health? A slight pain by your sides might result to a health issue of terrible proportions if ignored.
Like I have always maintained, everyone of us is a leader in our own right, because we are playing the role of a leader somehow within our own inner circle. Some of us are fathers, mothers, business owners, minsters of the gospel, heads of departments in our organisations, political office holders, lead fore men, pilots, bank managers, general managers, heads of security department, admin officers, accountants etc. We are leaders at different levels within the society, so we must all reason and act like leaders, because our leadership skills will be called into action at some critical point in life whether we like it or not, so for this reason we must always be well prepared to provide leadership when needed. Some warning signs are also ignored due to pride, and like it is often said that pride comes before a fall, that"s what happens eventually, the person in the middle of a controversy that could have been addressed long before it gained momentum faces humiliation at the end of it all.
How to React to Warning Signs Investigate:
It is clear that most times there are warnings before a problem leads to an emergency, this warning comes in a physical or a mental form, the real problem is when these signs are ignored. What to do when these warning signs come by any form is to investigate, you have to investigate thoroughly, the process has to factor the possibility of the incident taking place, and depending on how devastating the consequence of the occurrence of the incident for whatever reason, will determine how the people investigating will do everything within their means to forest all an occurrence of the perceived problem.
Confront the Issue:
Most times people ignore obvious warning signs because they prefer to live in self-denial, they just can"t come to terms with the fact that an impending problem can s...o...b..ll into something of dire consequences, so they act like they are in control when deep down they are wishing it will never get to the point their instincts is warning them of, so they leave the issue hoping a miracle will just take away the problem. The solution to a situation like this is to confront the issue headlong and get to the root of the matter, the first step is to investigate, investigation provides an avenue of possibility that there is a problem, confrontation is the action that will likely throw up solutions.
Provide Solutions:
The next step after confrontation is to provide solutions, this is the most difficult part, and it is the one people always wished they never had to face, that is why they live in self-denial in the first place. Providing solution most times is expensive and requires a lot of sacrifice and resources. It is always like the moment of truth, the needed commitment puts a lot of people off. Like the example of Haiti, imagine what it would have required to evacuate over 600,000 people from a city because of an impending earthquake, the government would have needed to commit a lot of resources in the area of manpower and financial resources, sotheychosenotto see a very concrete proof of an impending earthquake since the solution needed was too much of a sacrifice at the time for a seemingly vague report on a possible earthquake.
In conclusion, never ignore a warning sign, no matter how vague or little it is, that might be all the opportunity presented to you to solve a problem that ordinarily would have destroyed you.