Many Africans have observed that poor leadership is one of the key issues in the present misgoverning of Africa. Chinua Achebe, in his pamphlet, The Trouble with Nigeria, noted that the lack of economic and political development we see in a country with tremendous human resources, such as Nigeria is largely due to poor leadership. In that light, many scholars have written learned books and articles on leadership. However, these learned writings tend to address themselves to scholars whereas actual leaders tend to be men and women who may not have the time to read books and academic journals. In this piece, I decided to write a brief manual on leadership that actual leaders can have handy and read in a few hours and from such reading know what they are expected to do in their leadership positions. I wrote the material from firsthand experience from having been in leadership position as the executive director of government agencies in the USA, as well as from teaching the subject. The piece pretty much summarizes what actual leaders do. A leader must, for example, have a vision of where he wants to take those he leads to; he must have good understanding of human nature and have good interpersonal skills for it takes people to achieve goals; the leader must get along well with those he is leading. Leaders must understand finance and accounting and other requirements for running modern organizations. This paper carefully delineates what leaders do in the real world and, hopefully, would be leaders and actual leaders, managers and supervisors everywhere in the world could benefit from it. It used Alaigbo as a case to make its point but in truth the material is for all leaders, managers and supervisors, those who use human beings and capital to accomplish social and organizational goals.

Keywords: leadersdhip, training