Saturday, February 20th witnessed another mind reforming session as Dr. Camellus Ezeogwu gave us a lecture on the third virtue of Effective Leaders which is INTEGRITY.
Dr. Camellus Ezeogwu, MD, PhD. an American Board-Certified Cardiologist and an Assistant professor of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, started with his first illustration as regards the topic.
“Imagine a beautiful home with a wife, children, friends, security, a good relaxation center, gym, nicely spaced kitchen and sitting room, pool”
Now Imagine one of this scenarios: the home is not peaceful, everybody minding their own business, nobody talking to the other in the home, no good security, no rules to guide behaviours etc. Just one of these.
What do you think would become of this home? You guessed correctly.
Success without hardwork, persistence, sacrifice, risk, rejection, discipline, etc would you still call it success? I guess NOT.
Just like the home, Integrity deals with the totality of a thing, place or person. It is the quality of being complete and whole.
Integrity means always doing the right thing even when no one else is watching.
The core values of CSAAE which are punctuality, accountability, creativity and solidarity are all guided by Integrity.
The foundation on which these virtues are built, is integrity.
A creative leader must possess Integrity. Accountability without Integrity is a shortfall.
According to “Dr. Camellus Ezeogwu”, It’s either you have integrity or you don’t.
Integrity requires truth, clarity, boundary and responsibilities without any ambiguities. It impacts all aspects of life – individual, business, or community.
It anchors on being true to God, self and others.
Integrity can be learned, acquired and developed to become a true daily habit. Some of the ways we can develop this virtue includes fulfilling our promises, keeping to appointments, getting comfortable with saying no in times of compromise, leading by example and taking complete responsibility for our actions, amongst others.
“As an Emerging African Leader, we all want to lead a life that our generations would be proud of, but to do that we have to first build our integrity because it’s what will separate us from other leaders.
Do this and trust the process.” Dr. Camellus Ezeogwu.
We started with Solidarity, then Accountability and here we are learning about integrity. All thanks to Rev. Fr. Godswill Agbagwa,the founder of CSAAE. Thanks to Dr. Camellus Ezeogwu and CSAAE for the opportunity to learn the principles of effective leadership.
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_Together we shall make Africa a better place.
