Obedience in the Absence of External Supervision
In the previous article, we saw the place of taking personal initiative in self leadership. In that discussion, it was pointed out that for an individual to lead his/her self effectively, he/she must first and foremost discover his/her material and non-material needs and thereafter, take practical steps towards meeting those identified needs. Here, another important element of self leadership will be considered which is ‘obedience in the absence of external supervision.’ Some scholars may simply refer to this as self impose discipline or internal discipline. However, irrespective of what it is called, the most important thing is to understand and practise the principle.
As an element of self leadership, obedience in the absence of supervision is the ability to obey when you know that disobedience will not attract any punishment! It is the ability to keep to the rules even when you can do otherwise and go scot free.
For instance, one of the rules of an academic institution is: no cheating in examination. And in some institutions, cheating has been defined to include such trivial actions like sharing pencil and eraser with the next person! Therefore, ‘obedience in the absence of supervision’ detects that even if there is
no invigilators in the examination hall and you have all the opportunity to go contrary to the rule for whatever reason; you should deliberately refuse to. Not because if you do there is going to be any punishment but because as a leader, you are committed to leading yourself first.
‘Obedience in the absence of supervision’ applies everywhere; not only to students. As a daughter or son, it means obeying the instructions of your parent even in their absence. As a man or woman on the steering, this element of self leadership demands that you obey the traffic lights even if there are no police or road safety officials and you are sure you are not going to get involved in any accident. This principle suggests that as a civil servant, you remain in your place of responsibility even when your supervisor or superior is absent. It also implies that as a public office holder you uphold and abide by every bit of the code of conduct even when you have the opportunity to do otherwise without penalty.
There is an historical event which shows people who practised this principle. It is the account of the incidence that took place when Prophet Jeremiah visited the Rechabite clan. Now, Jeremiah was a reputable, well respected prophet. All his prophecies were as certain as the day follows the night. His divine utterances with respect to Jewish captivity and freedom all came to pass. In fact, it was by his declaration that the false prophet Hananiah died. So, such a prophet was he who visited the Rechabite clan and commanded that they should drink wine. Now, Jonadab, one of the fathers of the Rechabite clan had left instruction that no member of that descendant was to drink wine. At the time when Jeremiah commanded the Rechabite to drink wine, Jonadab had been in the grave for more than two centuries. In fact, most members of that generation were not opportune to meet Jonadab alive. And yet, even in the absence of Jonadab, the Rechabite clan looked at the mouth piece of their God who was known for his high level of integrity and said to him “No! The ancestor of our clan, Jonadab son of Rechab, made a rule that we must obey. He said, "Don't ever drink wine…” (Jeremiah 35:6-7. CEV). The account of prophet Jeremiah and the Rechabite clan contains so many lessons which reinforce the principle of ‘obedience in the absence of external supervision’.
First lesson to be noted is, never break the rule no matter who is persuading you to do so. The clan of Rechabite had every reason to have drunk wine that day given the personality of the person who gave them the instruction. But you see, obeying a man of integrity is not a justification for doing what is wrong. Applying this to our daily experiences, it means that it is not justifiable to cheat in examination even when your teacher says “you have 30 minutes to go; if you have any material to help yourself make use of it and be fast”. It also implies that it is not justifiable to beat the traffic lights no matter who is with you in the car persuading you.
The second lesson in there is this: the absence of law enforcement agents is no justification to break the rules. From the account above, the Rechabite clan could have drunk the wine given the fact that Jonadab was dead for more than two centuries. In other words, since he was no longer alive, their disobedience could not have offended him neither mean insult nor disrespect to him. However, being conscious of these variables, they still stuck to the rule. Applying this to our daily experiences, it means that as a student, the absence of the library staff is no justification to turn the library into a discussion venue, neither is it a justification to take a book out of the library. As a son or daughter, it means you do not have to abandon the house chores meant for you simply because your parents or other superiors are not available. As a religious man or woman, it means obeying the tenets of your faith even when your leaders are not available.
Obedience in the absence of supervision is a very vital element of self leadership. It is not an in-born ability neither does it come in a day but is acquired through determination and constant practice.
At this juncture, it is important to mention that employing this principle in the art of leading yourself has certain benefits.
First, it can earn you positions of honour. For instance, in the case of the Rechabite clan, they had a position of honour because of their obedience to the rule of their ancestor. The God of Israel spoke to them through Jeremiah and said: “Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not lack a man to stand before me forever” (Jeremiah 35:19. NKJV). To further illustrate this benefit, an employment scenario in a certain organization will serve. A certain organization intending to employ a production manager advertised the position and called for interview. On the day of the interview, all interviewees were instructed at the reception by the receptionist that once into the interview hall, nobody was expected to come out till after the exercise. In the interview hall, a member of the panel came from the director’s room where they were watching the interviewees through the closed circuit television (without their knowledge) and told them to wait patiently as the interview will kick off in no time. After, 60 minutes of waiting, one person went out to answer a phone call and returned. In few minutes time, another went to out to use the rest room. Thereafter, after about two hours, the in and out movement had increased without any warning from anybody. At the end, although all were interviewed but as you can guess, it was one of the obedient fellows that got the job.
Another benefit of this element of self leadership is that it can deliver you from certain traps and unpleasant situations. For instance, a friend once shared an incidence that took place in school. They were in the hall writing examination when a teacher walked into the hall after about half an hour into the examination and announced: “this is an open examination, you can use your text book, handouts, notes and any material that you can employ to assist you”. As you can guess, majority of the students rushed to their different materials and began to flip through the pages. My friend said he thought to himself: what is open examination? If we were to use materials to assist in answering the questions, then we should have been given a take home assignment instead. Therefore, he and very few other students decided they were going to write it all alone without any aid! When the result of that examination was out, he reported that except for them who wrote without any aid, all other students scored below average! If you analyse the incidence carefully, then you can see that the examination was not just a test of knowledge but also a test of character. This means that the marks those students who scored below average lost was the reward for integrity. In other words, the announcement by the teacher was a test put up to see the character of the students. And only those who could obey in the absence of external supervision passed the test. Another incidence took place in school which illustrates the importance of obeying rules even when nobody is watching or there is no punishment. There was this rule that students should appear on the departmental dress code every Monday and Wednesday and also during examinations. Some students held unto the order while some treated it with levity. There came this day when we were to write a compulsory departmental course and one student who was particularly used to not wearing the departmental dress code came to the examination late and without the dress code. He was denied entrance and before he could return from his house where he went to change up, half an hour was gone out of the one hour allocated for the paper. To shorten the story, he failed the course, repeated it and that led to an extra year in school for him. So you see, he had become used in disobeying because there was no daily monitoring and punishing for disobeying that even in the day of examination, he did not remember to obey and that made him learnt the lesson of his life.
Before moving on to discussion on taking actions base on personal justifications as another element of self leadership, it is important to reiterate that self leadership demands that we stick to rules even when nobody is watching or there is no possibility of being punish for disobedience. When we do this, then we can be sure of heading to positions of honour as well as stay out of unforeseen traps.
---Udeme Udoh 08/2017