From good to great and charismatic leadership; Shadow factors in leadership

What would be the top three things that would have the biggest positive impact on how South Africans think about themselves as South Africans? In my last letter I suggested that winning the Australians in cricket would go a long way. I forgot about the Bafana and the African Soccer Cup! Indeed I think that it would do wonders for our patriotism – across all races - if our national soccer team could be one of the top 10 teams in the world. Unfortunately, as you know, we failed dismally in the African Cup competition. For sport lovers in our nation (and I think most South Africans are) the performances of our teams is not a trivial matter and it would be high on the list of things that would give us that good feeling that we are part of a winning nation. The leadership in sports administration in our country obviously has a very big responsibility. Why is it that we have to hear of one controversy after the other, that we lack consistency and stability in the leadership? Is the problem limited to sport or is it only more obvious in sport? Maybe you have the answers. Let’s hope that we have what it takes to perform well in the World Cup in 2010.

From Good to Great

Jim Collins in his book From Good to Great begins with the statement ‘good is the enemy of great’. There is a lot of truth in that statement. As human beings we easily settle for what we perceive to be good. In the research that he based his book on, he and his team identified companies that made the leap from good results to great results and sustained it for at least fifteen years. 1 435 Fortune 500 companies were researched over a period of nearly five years. I don’t know about you, but with that kind of groundwork, I am very willing to take notice of the results. In a nutshell, the key success factors of companies that were able to break through the ‘just good’ barrier, points to discipline – disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action. However one of the interesting discoveries that Collins and the team made, had to do with the profile of the leader of the organisation. We often wonder what the role of charisma in leadership is. Many people are very impressed by the effect and power that so-called charismatic leaders have. The problem is that the motivation behind many charismatic leaders’ actions, namely the stroking of their ego’s, only becomes clear when good results become bad results. The great leaders, Collins found, embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves. They display a workmanlike diligence – more plough horse than show horse. The message in this finding, I believe, is firstly to be sure of your real motives as a leader and secondly to make sure that you don’t overlook potentially great leaders simply because they don’t dazzle.

Development

When we think about leadership we actually think about people and their effectiveness to influence other people positively. That effectiveness rests fundamentally on a person’s character and inner being. Parker Palmer talks about leading from within and points out the shadow factors that restraint a person’s leadership potential. Those shadows, he says, get projected on institutions and on our society.

The first one he names is the deep insecurity about our own identity, our own worth. We have an identity that is so hooked up with external, institutional functions that we may literally die when those functions are taken away from us. We live in terror at the thought of what will happen to us if our institutional identity were ever to disappear. The tragedy is that we then tend to create institutional settings which deprive other people of their identity as a way of dealing with the unexamined fears in ourselves. We need to take an inner journey to discover why we would find it difficult to give to other people in a way that really empowers them rather than trying to protect our institutional identity. To take an inner journey is to find the deeper spiritual sense of being. It is to discover the great spiritual gift of self worth. That is to know for certain that who I am does not depend on what I do. Identity doesn't depend on titles. It doesn't depend on degrees. It doesn't depend on functioning. It only depends on the simple fact that I am a child of God, valued and treasured for what I am.

I will share with you the other shadows that Palmer discusses next month.

African Renaissance

Nepad’s Peer Review Mechanism gives us reason to be positive and supportive of the initiatives of Africa’s leaders of state. For a little bit of information about the progress of this process I quote from the latest communique of the African Peer Review Mechanism (22 January 2006): ‘The APRM, which was adopted by the participating Heads of State and Government on 9 March 2003, is an instrument voluntarily acceded to by Member States of the African Union as an African self–monitoring governance mechanism. The objective of the APRM is to ensure that the policies and practices of participating states conform to the internationally agreed governance values, codes and standards as a means of fostering political stability, economic growth, sustainable development and accelerated sub-regional and continental economic integration. The APR Forum has ultimate responsibility for oversight of the APRM organisation and processes, for mutual learning and capacity building, and for exercising the constructive peer dialogue and persuasion required to make the APRM effective, credible, and acceptable.

The 4th Summit of the APR Forum will conduct of the “peer review” of Ghana and Rwanda. The “peer review” is a process of sharing of information and experiences and mutual learning with a view to assisting the country concerned in improving on
identified weaknesses as well as providing other participating countries in learning from the best practices of the country under review.

At present, 23 have formally acceded to the process namely Algeria, Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda. The Khartoum Summit will also provide an opportunity to the three countries which expressed their intentions to participate in the APRM namely: Sao Tome & Principe, Sudan and Zambia to formally accede to the APRM by signing the Memorandum of Understanding on the APRM. With the accession of Sao Tome & Principe, Sudan and Zambia, the total number of participating countries in the APRM will reach 26.’

Let’s hope that this process will have the desired effect and contribute to the realisation of the African Renaissance dream.

Kind regards