WHY WE LEAD: FUELING OUR PASSION FOR CHANGE
By Dzikamai Bere
Introduction: The Purpose and the Passion
“There are two important days in one’s life ”, John C Maxwell teaches us in a podcast on ‘How to Live with Purpose’, “The day they are born, and the day they discover why.”
In this podcast, John Maxwell tells of the story when he was a freshman in college and a guest teacher said, “If you are going to be a leader, there are three questions that you have to ask yourself: What do I sing about? What do I cry about? What do I dream about?”
These appear to be simple questions, but they reveal the things we are excited about in life, the passions that drive us, and the visions that keep us dreaming day and night. Unpacking these questions helps us discover our purpose and the passions that fuel it.
Views from the CLA Cohort
As we continue to prepare for the upcoming Civic Leadership Academy (CLA), one of the most powerful experiences for the CLI team was conducting one-on-one interviews with prospective participants to reflect on their leadership journeys. We could have sent a questionnaire and collected the responses without the trouble of setting up meetings. However, since this is our first cohort, we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to get to know each other better and build meaningful relationships. As it turned out, the conversations were very rich.
One of the things that caught my attention was a conversation on motivations for leadership.
We asked the 10 leaders to share what drove them to civic leadership. The responses covered about five areas. These include personal passion, a desire to uplift others, trust and validation from others, addressing a community issue, and the possibility of bringing about positive change.
Of these five, an overwhelming 80% fall under the category of passion. The leaders said they are driven from inside. This is because passion is also underlying and cutting across all the other four motivations. It is like the fuel that makes one continue to serve.
The Civic Leadership Love Affair
In his book ‘Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap… and others don’t’, Jim Collins tells the story of many passionate executives who led their organisations from good to great companies. One such executive was George Weissman, who was an executive at Phillip Morris. In one interview, Jim Collins asked him a question: “When you talk about your time at the company, it’s as if you are describing a love affair.” Wiseman chuckled and said, “Yes. Other than my marriage, it was the passionate love affair of my life.”
I had the same feeling in one of the interviews, when a CEO participating in the CLA spoke about soldiering on with her work despite a lack of funding. She said, “Right now we do not have funding, but we have been very productive through low-cost programming.” She spoke with a passion so great it was intoxicating.
Here is the thing. The work that we do is activism. However, when we develop our activism into organized communities and entities, it transcends mere activism. It is civic leadership. It is movement building – bringing more people together who care about their community and are willing to take strategic action to advance the causes they care about. It is community building. Now, you listen to this language, and some words stand out, and they are essentially about bringing people together. In the fable Makinga, African author Chi Chiazzo teaches, ‘Human hearts are like fish in rich waters. To catch one, you have to bait your own heart. Catch a heart with a heart.’
Beyond Passion
I am therefore not surprised by the finding that 80% of the leaders in the academy identify passion as the key driver for their leadership. We serve a sector that is value-driven, and people are the most significant value. If our hearts are not in it, we are going to hurt people and betray those we seek to serve. Our sector has stories of leaders hurting their team members. In this reflection, I share some key insights from the report that help us to go beyond passion and to find rejuvenation in those times when passion is not enough for us to lead better and more effectively.
Companionship
The stories of passion and civic leadership differ from one leader to another. What I know from experience is that while passion may get us started, to sustain our impact, we need more to fuel our journey. In the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, in leadership law number 21, John C. Maxwell teaches about the law of legacy. One thing he introduces in this law is ‘companions.’ He says that in the journey of leadership, for you to create a lasting legacy, ask yourself, ‘Who are you walking with?’ None of us can lead alone. We need companions along the journey, people who share the burdens of leadership, who share ideas, and who can help fan into the flame when our passions are in danger of being extinguished.
The logic of companionship was perfectly described by Mother Teresa: “I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.”
This is expressed in the driver number three from the report – influence from peers.
One CEO expressed it this way, “I am here because others believed first—colleagues who stepped up as founding trustees, stakeholders who lent us their confidence, and a first proposal and grant that affirmed our potential.”
Companions and peers play an important role in fuelling our passion. They speak positive affirmations to us. Some are mentors, some are coaches, some are sponsors, and others are fellow team members.
As you embark on the pursuit of your passions, it helps to ask, ‘Who is with me?’
According to Liz Wiseman, there are two types of companions. There are diminishers and there are multipliers. When we walk among multipliers, our passions burn like crazy, we rise above ourselves, and we perform at our best. When we are among diminishers, we shrink, and our fire is extinguished. Choose to walk with multipliers. But most importantly, be one of the multipliers in our sector that is so desperately in need of leaders with consistent passion.
Lifting Others Up
Some leaders said their primary motivation is fuelled by their desire to lift others up. One male participant framed leadership as “making space for others to grow, speak up, and shape the future.” Another leader mentioned taking pride in building cohesive teams and amplifying the voices of marginalised people. For these leaders, their success is not only in organisational impact but also in the way they empower others to succeed. This moves from seeking positive companions to becoming such a companion to others.
John Maxwell speaks about this principle in the book, “High Road Leadership: Bringing People Together in a World That Divides.” He says leadership can be a blessing, causing people to rise. But leadership can also be a curse, causing people to fall into desolation. Leaders who lift others up are the greatest desire of our generation, especially in Africa. It is not enough to possess good leadership skills; leaders must also embody and demonstrate good leadership values.
History is packed with examples of great leaders who led with flawed values and caused the world untold suffering. Leaders like Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Idi Amin, you name them. They used their leadership skills not to lift people but to lift themselves and manipulate those around them. We all know those organisations in our sector where team members would rather take a pay cut than work under toxic and abusive leaders. We all know someone whose performance suddenly improved when the leadership changed. With good leaders come high-performing organisations and empowering work environments.
This is why John C. Maxwell says, “Everyone deserves to be led well.”
Seeing What You Believe
“What do you dream about?” This is one of the questions that John Maxwell was asked as a freshman while seeking to find his purpose.
The first of my top five Clifton Strengths is ‘ideation’. The report says,” You are fascinated by ideas. You are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.” The second one is ‘futuristic.’ The report says, “You are inspired by the future and what could be. You energise others with your visions of the future.” In the law of navigation, John C. Maxwell says leaders see more, leaders see first, leaders see far.
In the needs assessment interviews, leaders said they are driven by seeing the change brought about by their work. They are motivated by the belief that their work can change the systems driving inequality and poor governance. One leader aims to “restore trust in democratic spaces” through transparent and participatory decision-making. Another CEO has designed models of civic engagement that have successfully influenced local governance decisions. For these leaders, motivation comes from the possibility of creating long-lasting structural change, not just short-term project outcomes.
When we see the results of our efforts in dreams, and we paint them for our world to see, we motivate more people to believe and work in pursuit of that reality. I saw that happen through ZimRights’ People’s Human Rights Manifesto, which pioneered a new conversation between the political leaders and the electorate. In that work, I have learnt that these successes are good fuel for our passion. They drive our momentum, and it is important to celebrate them.
In his book, High Road Leadership: Bringing People Together In A World That Divides, John C. Maxwell teaches us to value our contributions. What we do and what we give in this life, no matter how small, is not insignificant.
He writes, “If you are a leader or a team member, working on a worthwhile goal, and you are contributing your best according to your strengths, abilities, and opportunities, you are doing your part. Don’t minimise it. When you value your contribution, it also empowers you to genuinely value the contributions of others.”
Confronting the Wicked Problems of Our World
Jim Kwik, the author of ‘Limitless: Upgrade your brain, learn anything faster and unlock your exceptional life’, is now a well-known expert in memory improvement, brain optimisation and accelerated learning. He writes, “You have no limitations. In spite of what others have told you, your potential is infinite.”
Jim arrived at this truth because of a problem that he needed to solve. Following an accident, his brain was damaged, and he struggled to catch up in school. The brain damage caused a severe learning disability. For him, that challenge was an invitation to breakthrough leadership in brain optimisation.
In the needs assessment survey, some leaders said problems in their communities led them to their calling as civic leaders.
“I didn’t plan to lead,” said one leader, “I answered crises. In our hardest moments, I stepped in, covering multiple roles when resources ran thin, and kept the organisation moving. Those crises became my pathway into leadership.”
‘What stands in the way, ’ so goes the ancient saying, ‘is the way.’
What sets civic leaders apart in our world today is that they are driven primarily by the desire to solve community problems. They do not seek profit. They seek the common good. Their work is to confront some of our world’s worst wicked problems.
As a student of history, I look back into the past and ask myself, what would our world look like without civic leaders like William Wilberforce, who led the anti-slavery movement? At a time when slavery was the norm, he stood up and said something was wrong. I think of the champions of the liberation movement in Africa, such leaders as Samora Machel, James Chikerema, and Nelson Mandela. The people who, at the time, were treated as rebels and terrorists but championed the end of a major era of injustice. I think of champions like Martin Luther King Junior and the civil rights movement. I think of people like Rosa Parks, who championed the cause of gender justice and women’s rights. Today, I think of the thousands of ZimRights activists mobilising communities to rise against various forms of injustice in Zimbabwe. I think of the Black Lives Matter Movement that has brought the world back to a conversation on racial justice. I think of millions of activists mobilising for climate justice around the world.
Our world needs leaders who set themselves apart to tackle these problems day in and day out without counting the cost. As the leaders shared the different problems that they are solving, I was inspired and felt driven to connect with such causes. Solving these problems becomes a fire that drives our passion to lead.
What the Academy Can Offer
The assessment report shows that the leaders are already advanced in many aspects. As part of the 2025 Civic Leadership Academy (CLA), CLI will offer courses that help participants reflect on their calling and sharpen their leadership tools to maximize their impact. If you are participating in the CLA, you may want to consider taking some of the courses that align with this article. You will find these on www.civicleadershipacademy.org. Our recommended course is ‘The Journey to Self’
[Enroll for the Journey to Self: Foundations for Intentional Leading]
Conclusion
The needs assessment report is a gold mine. It is amazing what comes out when you sit down with 10 distinguished leaders and ask them a simple question – why do you lead? We lead for different reasons depending on our backgrounds. But one thing ties us together – passion. We share the passion to solve problems, to see a different world, to lift each other up, and to become the companion who fans the flame of others. This is why we lead, and this is what sustains our leadership. What more fuels you?
Dzikamai Bere is the Convener of the 2025 – 2026 Civic Leadership Academy. This article is a reflection of the 2025 CLA Needs Assessment Report. It reflects the views of the leaders who participated in the survey. Comments to this article can be sent to admin@civicleadershipinstitute.com
