Leadership: Time for a different conversation

Taaka Awori Opinion Feb - 13 - 2014 , 11:36

Much of the conversation about leadership in Ghana, as in other parts of Africa, has focused on the failure of our leaders. Not surprisingly, our attention is firmly fixed on our political leaders because their failures, with their devastating impacts, are so public.

If we are to shift our experience of leadership in Africa to one that is more positive, we need to start a different conversation. This new conversation would be grounded in a reconceptualisation of what we have to come to understand as leadership. The following presents three ways we could start to think and eventually talk about leadership differently:

Leadership— relationship between leader and follower.

There is no leader without followers. Yet our discussion about leadership, to date, has been largely dominated by a discussion of what the leader does and his or her (largely negative) traits. We miss half of the equation and thus only get half a solution.

By focusing on the relationship between the two, we get to explore not only what the leader does to strengthen that relationship but more importantly how followers are complicit in contributing to the nature of the relationship.

This issue is important for us on this continent because we have not tackled head-on the extent to which we are getting the type of leadership we deserve. To this end, the conversation would shift to discussing questions such as:

•As followers, how are we contributing to the quality of relationship i.e. the leadership we are getting from those we have to or choose to “follow” whether in our families, churches, companies/organisations or public life?

•As followers, do we exercise leadership by finding creative and effective strategies to strengthen the quality of leadership we experience? Or we do we grumble and keep our heads down? When our elected leaders fail to deliver on promises, do we engage politically? Or do we find private solutions to public problems?

•As followers, do we hold ourselves accountable for ensuring the quality of leadership we deserve or do we simply blame, pointing at the leader for the shortcomings in the relationship? You may say: “The leader has more power.” I ask: “Are we maximising our power as followers? The conversation on Citi FM about social accountability is spot on and in the right direction.

Leadership starts with the self

Our conversations have often focused on how leaders have managed human and other resources. At the heart of leadership, however, is the leadership of self. Most of the major breakdowns we see in leadership are fundamentally about the inability to lead oneself. You cannot lead another if you cannot lead yourself.

As Michael Jackson sang: “I am starting with the man in the mirror.” Leading yourself starts with self-awareness and self-knowledge that is grounded in self-love. Continuing with the premise of leadership as a relationship, if our relationship with ourselves does not have some element of healthy self-love and respect, then our leadership often mirrors that same lack of love and self-respect.

This is largely a question of emotional intelligence of which some of the hallmark behaviours are self- awareness and self-management. Thus, in our new conversation about leadership, we would start to ask:

•How do we nurture self- awareness in a culture that is so “other focused” that any attention to self is considered as being selfish and indulgent?

•How do we enable people to understand how healthy self-love enables one to genuinely serve another, while a lack of self-regard contributes to self-centredness?

•How do we develop a culture where people display personal leadership by taking responsibility for their behaviour, rather than blaming others or situations for their actions or inactions?

•How do we support people to display the type of leadership in their personal lives that they would like to see from their leaders? In other words, how they can serve as an example for what they would like to see in the leaders? As Ghandi said: “Be the change you want to see.”

Growing quality leadership

If we are to grow quality leadership on this continent, we should study and learn from examples of good leadership; focusing all our attention on the cases of bad leadership is not helping us.

It has been said that you get what you focus on. The more attention you devote to something, the more of it you will see showing up in your life. Our conversation about leadership has focused on the worst aspects of our leaders; it’s no wonder we keep getting more of it.

This is not to say we should ignore or fail to hold our leaders accountable for their bad leadership. However, perhaps we have spent too much time on what is not working without recognising that we have examples of excellent leadership on this continent.

This is where we should focus our learning. Thus, in the spirit of appreciative inquiry in which you selectively choose what is working in an area as a means of improving it overall, our new conversation about leadership would explore the following:

•Where are the examples of exemplary leadership? What is it that the leaders are doing to contribute to the quality of leadership? What is it that the followers are doing?

•What are the lessons we can draw from these examples or case studies?

•How do we apply these lessons so that this becomes more of the norm?

They say that the epitome of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to see a different result. I believe we are all ready to see different results with respect to the leadership we experience. If this is so, then let’s start with a different conversation that can eventually shake us into taking different actions.

The writer is the former Country Director of ActionAid Ghana. She is co-founder of the Busara Group and a leadership development practitioner and coach. She can be reached at t.awori@thebusaragroup.com.