My first boss always said to me “fish go dead from the head”, if you get the leadership right then the rest can follow. Without leadership nothing works even with all the beauty, resources, and passions that Africa has.
It has recently been announced that the Mo Ibrahim Prize for African Leadership will not be awarded this year. This is a totally fabulous prize and I applaud Mo Ibrahim, an entrepreneur and now a philanthropist too, who knows just how important good leadership is.
The challenges in Africa are not necessarily about money and resources (after all they have more resources than almost anyone) but good governance is critical to making these resources work for the majority of Africans not just a few.
The fact that the bar for the prize is being set so high is great. Festus Mogae is an African leader who has husbanded the mineral wealth of his Bostwana to build a country. In fact the bar must have been very, very high that they did not give it to John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor whom I understand has been successful at promoting good governance in Ghana while in office.
This prize recognizes a reality that many African leaders don’t have anywhere to go after they leave office so they stay too long and loose the plot.
It makes us all think about when and how leaders should move on? So many African leaders have been good at the start and then lost it as they held on. But it’s a question for all of us. One thing is certain we will move on and getting the exit and handover right is the greatest indicator of how good we were. We all need to keep in mind that one day we will need to exit and work hard to build the next generation that will take over.
Where do you turn for new insights, or to throw yourself into the unfamiliar? Do you have to take a year out and travel the globe? Or should you simply go out in your own street and see it through another person’s eyes?
I explained the Common Purpose 360 Day (an invitation from Common Purpose to do exactly that, and challenge the way you see the world), to my daughter last week. She started giggling. She said that I had pestered her all her life to “never judge anyone until you had walked a mile in their shoes”. She said that she had discovered the perfect response to my lecturing…you should do it, because then by the time the person you are judging has figured out what you are up to, you are a mile away and have their shoes! I fear that I am not a serious parent.
Her giggling came the day before she threw me, unplanned, way out into unfamiliar territory, because she fell and fractured her skull. It has been a grim and frightening week and her recovery sounds like it will be lengthy. I have spent hours and hours in different levels of serious casualty wards – seriously out of the familiar and challenging the way that I see the world.
So what have I learnt, or re-learnt?
How impatient I am and how much stress that puts on people around me
How easily I slide into the “group speak” of being horrible about the British NHS. At every level it has been top notch for us, all week. I must stop adding my voice to the endlessly critical naysayers and share my pride at how impressive they were.
As I walked down one corridor (for the four hundred and fiftieth time), I looked again at the notice board with the thank you notes pinned to it. I have to get better at taking the time to write letters of praise and thanks.
How lovely it is watching a team do what they really love…and doing it really, really well. That’s what the emergency room was. It took me some time watching them to spot who the leader was (in fact I am not even sure I know now). I suspect it was the person (who looked least like the leader) who came and put in another drip when all the others had failed. She (or he maybe if it wasn’t her) was invisible, but you could feel her everywhere.
Next year, I want more control over my 360 Day experience.
There is an interesting discussion on the Common Purpose LinkedIn group encouraging us to be brave enough to answer the question “Why should anyone be led by you?” – not an easy one. How would you answer it?
In the discussion there is the suggestion that you should think about whether you are consistent in your leadership. Would it be the same answer at home and at work for example…and specifically with your partner? The thought that my husband would ever let me lead him (or indeed that he would ever attempt to lead me) makes me laugh!
I spoke for a long time with a business leader in China about leadership. It made me realise that as a Westerner if I hear the words “Leadership” and “China” in one sentence my mind immediately computes “Mao” and to some extent turns off. Yours might too.
So it was interesting to go further. He talked about the Confucian roots of everyday leadership in China: of the credibility of the word “wisdom” in the context of leadership; of the commitment to forests rather than trees, so that systems deliver; of the culture of cultivating yourself before you lead. He said that Chinese culture is very old and is now perhaps being reborn.
And he talked about what the Chinese perceive Western leadership to be about: the drive to perform ever better individually; the dismissing of words like “wisdom” as wet; the drive to specialise and to compartmentalise.
As ever, the temptation to be defensive and make easy retorts needs resisting lest something important passes us by.
Back from holiday; weeks of unrelenting rain; the only variation was whether it was light drizzle or heavy rain.
In the end we ran out of “things to do in the rain.” We stopped checking the forecast too because we had no hope of change. We bonded, made new friends and learnt new games but after a while a stupor set in.
I am thankful that my family has grown up so that we were no longer, at least, struggling to cope with cooped up kids and soggy clothes.
In the rare bright moments we poured out of the house, never a full day without rain but half days sometimes; and we made the most of them. And they were all the more special.
So in this blog about leadership, my summer discovery is that leaders need sun.
I wrote that down fast when the chair of a Strategic Health Authority in the UK said it to me the other day. What’s the point in talking things through with people who agree with you? So why do we spend our time doing it? And why do we get so worried when people do have different views? And why do we do we believe that homogenous teams are the most successful?
A deeply frustrated friend came home the other day muttering “some people can actually do it, but most just act it”. He was talking about a group of leaders he is on a board with. “They act it, leadership, well; they have been really, really well trained; they know what to say and how to say it, and they say it with such conviction. But underneath, they simply are not leaders”.
I had been at a meeting too that day, with a man who appoints interim leaders to failing organisations. He was desperate – his pool of talent needed new skills now. They couldn’t simply work the numbers, move them around, appoint consultants and “drive through” a new strategy. They would actually have to lead – and become vulnerable in so doing – because there was no alternative turnaround option.
The world is revealing the difference between people who act it (and act it well) and people who really are leaders – brave, bold, inspiring, unpolished, driven and difficult.
I am on holiday now. My main challenge has become producing daily picnics for large numbers of teenagers in Scotland!
There was a feature on BBC breakfast this morning about what your holiday reading choice says about you. As it happens, I made the terrible mistake last week of sending lots of friends a text asking them to tell me what to read while I am on the beach. I asked for things that will hurt my head and change my mind. They took me seriously!
The list is below. It’s long, and not exactly light reading, but it’s sure to change my mind on lots of things – that must be good.
If you have any suggestions of books, articles, podcasts, videos, magazines to add to the list then let me know.
30/09/2009
A bit late for summer, here is an updated list based on more titles that have been sent to me. Some of them good be could be nice for reading as the days get shroter this winter.
It is interesting that the word brave is so often watered down. “No, no”, they say, “you don’t mean brave, you mean take calculated risks.” Well I don’t really – I mean be brave. Things are moving fast, and by the time most things are fully calculated the opportunity is likely to be gone. I met someone from China last week who said she found the UK truly desperate to work in because things went so unbelievably slow. We are going to have to move faster, and to do this we will have to be brave enough to make decisions that are not calculated ones. Some failures will happen as a result, and we will have to be brave to face up to, deal with and then live with them.
I was brought up to have no respect for any position, age, background or title. My father told me that no one was better than me other than as a result of their ability, experience, achievements or character. At best people like this in me, and at worst they think my lack of deference is downright rude.
I went to a lunch with that Morgan Tsvangirai , who was in London as part of his “European Safari.” He tried to explain just how impossible it is in his culture for the young to challenge an old man. He said that it was simply inconceivable, and so deeply disrespectful as to be unthinkable.
I tried so hard to understand. The expression “Respect your elders” was almost a tease in my childhood home and has never been used in my own family. My children would laugh me out of the house.
It is such a deep, deep difference. While I am in China, I need to keep it at the front of my mind or I will appear rude.
