BEFORE YOU LOBBY FOR PROMOTION…

In the past, I wrote an article entitled, Key to Stressless Promotion. In it, I explained the fundamental l principles that will enable you get promoted and stay promoted in your workplace. Today, I want to talk about promotion at workplace by lobbying.

Lobbying according to a book by Prof Jonah Onuoha, Lobbying and Legislative Technique is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s part and parcel of our day-to-day life. But lobbying as we use it in our day-to-day language is an act of manipulating a system or individual to get undue or underserved advantage.

Many people take to lobbying as a strategy for promotion for a number of reasons. One is that they don’t believe in themselves. Two, they are so influenced by the rot in our system that they find it difficult to believe they can get promotion without lobbying.

Whichever one is your reason, know that they are not they are not enough to justify your lobbying for promotion. You know why? The negative consequences of lobbying far out weights whatever you may gain from it. It only takes time to see it manifest.

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Lobbying for promotion positions you to be naturally controlled/ oppressed by the person you are lobbying. He may not have in mind to control you but the fact that you stoop so low to use cunny cunny method to get what you should have waited to get on merit, gives them the impression that they have an upper hand over you.

You see, people who are good at what they do are sought for. They don’t go caps in hands begging. In our local parlance, they are hot cakes. Lobbying reduces you to a beggar; there is hardly anyone that treats a beggar with respect; even if it’s due to him.

You May Never Get the Promotion

Contrary to what you may have heard, everybody in our country is not corrupt. Many have resolved to live incorruptible life and they are still living it. For many of such people, if you show any sign of trying to manipulate them to get undue advantage, they are not only unmoved but also see you as a dubious fellow. They will look at you with suspicion and even give you closer or tighter scrutinizing before your promotion.

Lobbying for promotion will make you a perpetual sycophant because you don’t want  to lose the position you attained by lobbying. If you didn’t get it by dubious method, you don’t owe anybody sycophancy to retain it.

Lobbying for promotion is another way of saying that you are not good enough and therefore needs someone to push you to a position you either don’t deserve or merit.

Many people have lobbied to get promotion and they made I look like the only way forward. It’s not! I repeat: it’s not! More people have had reasons to regret for manipulating themselves into positions they don’t deserve or merit. They don’t have their own views; even if they do, they dare not express it if it contradicts the person they had lobbied; otherwise their position will be on the line.

I prefer to attain any position or earn promotion by merit; not on the wing of lobbying or dubious ways. One of the reasons is that it keeps my respect intact.

Let me tell you something about me.

Right from my days in the university, I have always desired, planned and worked towards becoming very good at whatever thing I choose to do. I look up to men like Daniels, Joseph in the Bible and Ben Carson, Sam Ohuabunwa, Dimgba Igwe and Mike Awoyinfa, whose excellence and in-depth knowledge of their job took to the top and I want my rise to the top of my career to be on the wing of my savvy in my job and God’s grace. I consider it an insult that someone or an organization will say they want to hire me or give a contract primarily because the owner is from my village. Seriously it’s an insult to me. Our being from the same village or secondary school should have only exposed you to my kind of person not that it should be the primary reason for promotion or award of contract.

When you win contract on with your excellence and God’s grace, it comes with joy and fulfillment; the kind of fulfillment a student gets by seeing an A after burning midnight candle.

I understand that there are people who may be trying to take what belongs to you. Leave them; they can’t! Nobody has the power to take what God has given you; unless you reject it. Don’t join them in eye service, it’s about God and You. He brings down one to lift up another. He will elevate you in due course. David didn’t lobby to be anointed King; when God choose to elevate him, he was called. Joseph didn’t plot to work in the presidential villa of his time; but from prison, he was elevated to the palace. If you believe in God and have aligned your life to walk with Him, relax, He is in control.

Listen, I and many other people in our country have gotten things we could not ask or lobby for. It’s was simply arranged and handed over to us. Dare to allow God elevate you; don’t lobby to take someone’s position. You may die on that position!

The point I have, made today is that lobbying for promotion may have worked for many people and seems to be the way of progress but it leaves bitter taste in the mouth of those who subscribe for it.  My point today? Don’t lobby for promotion, qualify for promotion and you will get it with fulfillment, and peace. You won’t be weighed down by the weight of the position.

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