First the leader then the vision; African and Western views of time

I wonder why one never can get used to the feeling that a day, a week, a month or a year flies by. September 2005 is gone forever. What happened and what did not happen didn’t happen. So the first thing to do when we reflect on the past month is to make peace with what is now history. But, before moving on, it is wise to ask a number of questions: Are there things in my personal life or leadership role that I could have done better? Is there perhaps something important that I’m not seeing in my team, or in a team member or in developments in the organisation because I am too preoccupied with other things? Are there things that I know I want to improve on in October? At least, if we do some reflective thinking, we don’t feel so out of control as we sometimes do when we suddenly realize how little we were aware of the gift of time - and by learning form the past we can live more pro-actively.

Leadership

My leadership thought for this month I take from John Maxwell who has a lot of powerful things to say on leadership. The one I want to share with you is so true: People buy into the leader, then the vision. How often have you experienced that someone is doing his utmost to sell you a wonderful dream but you just can’t get excited about it? Not because there is anything wrong with the dream, but because you have not bought into the person. This common experience should remind us of our own priorities in a leadership role. We need to sell ourselves first, before trying to sell the vision. As Maxwell says, leaders find the vision, then the people. But followers find the leader then the vision. It all points to the leader’s ability to connect with people and to build good relationships.

Development

To continue on the value of feedback for leadership development – that I referred to last month – you might find it interesting to know that on average close to 20% of leadership behaviour questions asked in 360 assessments that I have done, had a result where the majority of people working with the leader had a different assessment than the leader’s self assessment (the leader, for instance would say ‘yes, my team members are loyal to me’ but the majority of the team disagree). This clearly indicates how big our blind spots can be and how ineffective we can become as a result of it. Leadership development is to identify those areas and to work on improving them.

African Renaissance

Since I referred to our experience of time in the first paragraph, I’ll share with you some interesting differences in the traditional African concept of time and the modern Western concept of time. Bennie van der Walt in his book Understanding and Rebuilding Africa explains that for the Western man ‘time is a commodity “outside” man “through” which he moves.’ Foremost is the awareness that time is limited and therefore has to be used economically. It can be passed, wasted, lost, saved and made up. Time is very demanding and has a very controlling effect on man. In a way everyone has to obey time because it regulates life. In the African view of time, time is connected to specific situations. When a person says ‘I had a good time’ it reflects something of the African’s view of time as it has more of a qualitative focus than a quantitive one. Time is ‘primarily viewed as our time to be enjoyed together’ and should therefore be flexible to accommodate what is important for relationships. With regard to how time can be measured, clock time is the only way in which the Westerner would measure time. Here again modernity implied that what is natural, the organic rhythm of nature, has been replaced by something man made. The African is conscious of the right time for something which would involve considering when something is appropriate for the people involved. For the Westerner the right time is simply the time that is decided on or planned.

I hope you can enjoy October and live and work contented - one day at a time. Incidentally, I am celebrating my 50th birthday this month … eeish! Any advice for the fifties from those of you who have the experience?

Kind regards