Insulting the President of Nigeria and other lessons in shame

When I was 21 years old, I insulted the President of Nigeria.

I was an intern at the International Centre for Reconciliation in Coventry, UK. One summer Tuesday, my boss was headed off to London for meetings about disarmament and ongoing tensions in the Delta Region.

He asked me to put together a briefing packet on the proposed tenets of a peace deal. I was feeling playful, so I inserted a funny note to Stephen wishing him well with pictures of pigs that I cut out of a magazine. A bit of cheeky fun.

When he returned from London, Stephen called me to his office. “Tell me about the front of the packet.” It turns out that Stephen had never seen the first page. When he met with President Obasanjo, he passed him the packet. The Muslim president flipped to the first page and was met with a page full of pigs.

I will never forget the purposeful, gracious way that Stephen dealt with me. He didn’t berate me for the awful position that I put him in with a world leader. “I know that this will never happen again.”

Shame is a crappy motivator. Shame can get you short-term results, but in the long term, it demeans your people and undercuts your authority. Communicating boundaries and expectations (no pigs in the briefing packet!) with trust shows confident, caring leadership.