Use your leadership for service - Professor Naana Opoku-Agyemang

Professor Naana Opoku-Agyemang, 2020 National Democratic Congress running mate to former President John Dramani Mahama has urged the youth to use their leadership styles to serve people with humility.

She said often some leaders behaved as if those placed on a lower level of the organizational structure were their subordinates and not their colleagues who were playing different roles to advance the vision of the entity or group.

“Such an attitude leads to unwarranted tension and becomes a good avenue for failure”.

She was speaking as Guest Speaker at the Girls Leadership Boot Camp organized by Plan International in Accra.

The event hosted about 150 young aspiring leaders.

She said despite the variety of definitions and styles of leadership, the qualities that run through successful leadership and outcomes included integrity, respect for and sensitivity to the needs of others, setting examples worthy of emulation.

“Most important of all, is for a leader to remind himself/herself that others have placed the leader in that position, that power and other ideas reside in the group that s/he is privileged to lead, composed of people not less sensible, of worth or intelligent than the leader”.

Professor Opoku-Agyemang said while some of the helpful qualities may be difficult to attain and sustain, leaders must take inspiration from others who had exhibited even better qualities and achieved great outcomes.

She encouraged the young ladies to study the history of the continent, country, community and family, to discover leaders who served without greed, arrogance, hypocrisy, and being self-serving, but those who put others first.

“As young women who aspire to the positions of leadership, you must aim high, work towards excellence in whatever field they find themselves, not be afraid to try, to accept responsibility and to learn from their mishaps.

She enumerated some of the obstacles that impeded the progress of women generally and urged them not to be deterred by the distractions, real and challenging though they might be.

She said that despite gender role differentiation, there was hardly any profession in which women did not participate before formal styles of education.

She mentioned religion, food production, processing and preservation, the medical and health sciences, architecture, the military, metal processing, hunting, astronomy, weaving, the judiciary, and many areas of the human sciences.

“A true leader does not pretend to know it all, has the maturity and respect to engage, consult, to recognize talent in others and create the space for their development.