Purposeful Leadership

This is episode 1 and part of day 36 of 40 anecdotes of of my upcoming book. In the next 5 days, I will share some foundational lessons that underpins the book – Purposeful at HEART.

This episode highlights the aspect of Purposeful Leadership and how it’s compared to other leadership. The premise of this book is that a purposeful leader has the heart to love people Unconditionally, value people, and believe in people.

Check out more at stepafrique.com/resources/

My name is Gilbert Ang’ana, the CEO/Founder at Accent Leadership Group Ltd.

Let’s connect through LinkedIn

Article by, Gilbert Ang’ana

Despite the numerous benefits of creating an engaged and productive work environment, it remains a challenge for many leaders on actions they must take consistently to drive such a highly engaged and productive workforce. A recent Harvard Business Review article on building a productive workforce cites a study which states that employee engagement is a component of employees; commitment to the organisation, job satisfaction, and energy at work, which results in greater innovation and creativity. 

Moreover, according to Gallup’s report on the State of the Global Workplace: 2022, 1 (21% of employees) out of 5 employees are engaged in their jobs. Additionally, research indicates that one out of every two employees has left a job during their career life and the main reason being; to escape their managers or improve their quality of life. These stats give the picture of the issues around the engagement of employees, which have a greater impact on the productivity of the workforce. Disengaged employees are unproductive and are costing you money and affecting your profits.

With all the countless books, conferences and training on this subject, why do leaders and organisations still struggle to create a highly engaging work environment for our employees? Why do so many good leaders make terrible decisions that negatively impact their team’s engagement and productivity? I boil it down to five building blocks for leaders to create highly engaged and productive workplaces:

1. Lead with Influence

Building a highly engaged and Productive team is a process. A process that requires the intentionality of the leader. Intentionality, in this case, means a shift to behaviours that build Connection, Nurture & Inspire the team. If leaders build intentionality & consistency around these behaviours, they are likely to see a change in the engagement & productivity of their team. 

While your position in the workplace might be one of the most apparent sources of authority, it isn’t the only way your influence comes from. If you practice the mindshift from the authority of position to influence, some shift will happen in your team, growing into becoming a highly engaged and productive team.  The ability to have the mindshift from authority to influence may be the most critical shift required to create a high-performing team – a highly engaged and productive team and organization.   

2. Be Appreciative 

All leaders want to have success.  We all want to matter in one way or the other as leaders. This is where our Ego sinks in. With all the experience, position, expertise, and other power sources, what is my alternative to not exercising Ego?  This is the dilemma leaders find themselves in. They have worked so hard to be where they are. At least for those who have the credibility to say so.  This ego is what kills the success of millions of leaders across the world.

Leadership is not a destination but an infinite aspiration we strive to develop daily. To be a better version of ourselves every day and add value to people and our teams every day, we need to appreciate others. This is what makes us cautious of our ego. Leaders must take the leap and lead with courage to develop an appreciative habit. Leading with courage entails having faith in the team, being authentic and vulnerable with them, and developing some form of self-discipline to keep checking and managing your ego and leadership bubble. 

3. Strive to Connect beyond Communicating

We are in a highly communicative world today. As leaders, we communicate with our teams daily, share ideas, develop plans and strategies, and are clear about our customers’ expectations. After all this work, the question still in my mind is why thousands of organisations are still struggling with their financial sustainability. Why do we still have organisations collapsing?

A report by Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2017 shares that organisations could realise up to 12% higher profits if there is enhanced employee connection. The reason why your team is not hitting the intended performance levels is either one of the following:  They are not clear on the goals  , They are not clear about their roles  , and how to accomplish their goals.  They lack the information, tools, time, or money to achieve their goals. All these issues are about a lack of connection and not necessarily a lack of communication. Connection is built through authenticity. Whether you are a leader in any organisation, it’s critical to be aware of what you are cultivating. 

4. Be the Cheerleader

We all worry at times about our abilities as leaders, more so whether we will remain relevant with the changing dynamics in our organisations. Although distressing, it’s normal to question whether we measure up to others (our peers in the organisations or even our team members whom we feel are more skilled) or to feel momentarily incompetent.  Leaders with an inferiority complex have combative behaviour, jealousy and improper ethical and social conduct. In most instances, leaders with their ability and belief issues bring down team members.

To shift from inferiority, you need to develop a cheerleading habit (building capacity, honour diversity, being the coach)and build a practice of honouring diversity in your team. This will allow you to tap into all team members’ optimal strengths and support team members in strengthening their weaknesses. Building your team’s capacity will ensure that you have enough resources to drive the team’s shared agenda to realise without too much dependency on yourself or any team member as an individual. Being the coach is critical for you to lead from the partnership point of view. It enables you to assure your team members that they have a stake in the team and that you aspire to explore their strengths to maximise their productivity.

5. Be Inquisitive

Leadership success is an uphill task. The leader must be willing to walk the process to the end and celebrate the milestones along the way with their teams. The opposite of inquisitive is apathetic. Apathetic leaders are psychologically absent from their teams. They enjoy the privileges and rewards of being in a leadership role. However, they disengage from meaningful involvement with their teams. Apathetic leaders take value out of their teams. They are quick to take the credit and gains when they are there but are not adding value to the team. Apathetic leaders are silent team and organisation destructors.

The solution is to have a mindshift to inquisitive leadership. In his article “Great leaders share a Purpose to overcome apathy”, Paul Myers shared that; “Curing apathy is now an essential leadership skill — getting others to care, to give a damn about a mission.” As a leader, you will have a deeper understanding of your team and their workplace meaningfulness when you step back and realise you do not understand everything about your team, their intentions, attitude and meaningfulness. This will drive you to find out more, and in the process, your team is likely to be more curious too, which raises their level of engagement. When you practice inquisitive values or behaviour as a leader, you gain clarity regarding the challenges and opportunities before your team and organisation. Still, it also helps you nurture and strengthen authentic relationships with your team.

To stay on top of the latest on leadership trends, make sure to subscribe to this blog news, follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, and check out my book, Engaged & Productive.

This article is an extracted summary from the book, “Engaged and Productive,” by Gilbert Ang’ana, which highlights 5 Mindshifts in Building Highly Engaged and Productive Teams.

About the Author

Do you wish to transform yourself and intentionally lead a purposeful life? Try answer the below inquiries.

Who do you see when you look in the mirror – every day?

When all is silent, who are you? Many of us confuse who we are (our identity) with our roles, our work, our motives, our current lifestyle among others. These things distruct us from truly understanding who we are and therefore curtails us from living a purposeful life. What do you unconditionally love about yourself? Are you embracing the gift that is within you? Are you cultivating it? It is through your gifts that your purpose lies.

How present are you?

Most people are cultured to always be mindful of their past and consitently look into the future they want to have. This is fantastic. However, in most cases these comes at the expense of living in the moment, or being mindful of the here and now. In the end, it affects your present life well-being. It makes it difficult for you to enjoy and have gratitude in the things in your life in the here and now. Your here and now facilitates your conscious mindfulness and awareness which in turn enables you to consciously take intentional steps towards your desired future state.

What stories are you telling yourself that fuel your limitation?

if you want to have purposeful transformation, you need to let go of past things that did not work as planned, and accept them as learning opportunities for what is ahead of you. You cannot control everything that happens around you – sometimes life is going to be different than how you want it to be. Discerning the influences that makes you the mountain of yourself is essential to enable you reframe your perspective. This is what will lead you to your desired dream list realization.

How serious is your dream to you?

My dream is to build a movement of leaders whose power of influence will far exceed the authority of their positions. Will I ever know if I have achieved this? Possibly no. But, the essence of this dream is that, it inspires me to get up every day and move towards this vision. Is your dream serious to you? Where are you directing your energy every day? Are you directing towards taking steps to achieve your dream? If not, is your dream really yours? Is it really serious to you?

Where are you investing your time?

You can have the best dream. The most inspiring one that possibly triggers and provokes your thoughts and makes you shiver. But, if you do not create a space to fulfill the dream, then you will never fulfill it. I had shared in one of my frequent thoughts in my social media spaces that, “In order to achieve something you have never achieved before, you have to become someone you have never been before”. I dare say that in order to live your purposeful life, you must be purposeful on where you invest your time and who you invest your time with. Your priority in terms of your time shapes your destiny. Your destiny leads to the purposeful live you desire.

I hope these inquires have inspired you, provoked your thoughts and more importantly challenged you to start taking action now towards your desired purposeful life.

I would be happy to hear your views, thoughts and feedback about these inquiries. Kindly do not hesitate to share.

About the Author

I have shared a number of lessons already based on my latest book “Engaged & Productive” – 5 Mindshifts in Building Highly Engaged and productive Teams. However, everytime I get an opportunity to listen to the teachings on youtube.

Detailed highlights on more teaching can be found at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHuWQr4ezqVQNkV4RASXQFA or refer to the book for some teaching or speaking engagement https://stepafrique.com/resources/ I get to uncover new thoughts to summarize for my audience. Below are some snapshots of new thoughts that came to mind this past week as I was reflecting on the 5 Mindshifts that is worth your review.

Mindshift 1: from authority to influence.

Influence enable one to develop leadership presence, which is the ability to command respect, inspire confidence, and communicate effectively with constituents at all levels of the organisation.

Mindshift 2: from Ego to Appreciative

Appreciative attributes are anchored on the strength of the leaders emotional intelligence which is a critical leadership skill that enables leaders to manage self emotions and that of others in a way that facilitates appreciation of everyone based on their whole self. Appreciative Mindshift enables leaders to build their ability to build relationships, manage conflict and motivate their constituents.

Mindshift 3: from Communication to Connection:

My most favourite ways I help my clients is to help them understand the art of connecting with their constituents. When they learn how to connect then, they have the real ability to influence and inspire others. The art of connection impacts the results they get with their constituents and even their leaders upstream.

Mindshift 4: from inferiority to cheerleading

Cheerleading entails celebrating constituents with accountability. Cheerleading mindshifts entails leaders establishment of clear goals and expectations for their constituents, and not only hold them accountable for achieving them, but to also celebrate them unconditionally. By fostering cheerleading mindshift, leaders can create a culture of accountability and drive higher engagements and productivity. Such a mindshift enable leaders to manage their inferiority and a culture of blame to one of accountability.

Mindshift 5: from Apathy to Inquisitive.

Inquisitiveness can be a powerful attribute to help leaders build engaged & productive teams in many ways. Inquisitiveness help leaders develop self-awareness and gain a deeper understanding of themselves and develop strategies to improve. Inquisitiveness also enables leaders to start to understand how their constituents thinking and behaviour directly impacts the results of the teams and workout mitigating solutions in god time.

Want to learn more about how to Build a Highly Engaged & Productive Team, get the details of the book “Engaged & Productive” among other free resources at https://stepafrique.com/resources/

This article and summary has been written by Gilbert Ang’ana – Author of the book “Engaged & Productive” among others. Follow me on the below handles for details of my teachings.

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By Gilbert Ang’ana (PhD Cand.)

This article is meant to stir up conversations and arguments in our contemporary scene and orientation on the much-discussed concept of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). The discussions and arguments on DEI are now a part of our lifestyle, let alone a leadership lifestyle. An article by Harvard Business Review in the 1990s argued that a diverse workforce is not something we ought to have; it is something we need to have, or soon we will be forced to have. Many other arguments link DEI to positioning institutions and organizations to be more competitive.

Is there a possibility that DEI will sooner or later transform?

Just like other earlier concepts like affirmative action, among others? Already there is potential skewness towards inclusion as compared to diversity and equity. Could this be the beginning of the transformation of DEI? DEI has roots in the 1960s civil rights movement that started in the US and transcended all other parts of the world and has expanded to include gender, sexual orientation, religion, country of origin, and other identities. According to Greenlining Institute (2018), the focus of DEI has transformed over the years, from the 1960s – the 2020s:

1. Tolerance – the acceptance of integration of workplaces, schools, and communities (the 1960s).
2. Multiculturalism – awareness of the achievements of various racial and ethnic minorities (the 1980s).
3. Inclusion and equity – Avoiding bias on perceived minority groups (the 1990s).
4. Accountability – in the 2010s, moving forward, this focus is aimed at ensuring that diverse groups are represented at all economic and social levels

Over the past four years, I have been helping organizations at various levels learn how to manage their constituents engagement and achieve higher productivity, and I am strongly seeing that the realities facing people and leaders at numerous institutional orientation today are no longer the realities DEI is designed to fix. Based on the new workforce trend, is it the right time for the concept of DEI to transform? Is DEI the contemporary concept that can really create a competitive advantage in an organization today?

My argument is possibly not. We may need to dive deep into the underlying components of DEI that we may be missing as a people worldwide.

Gilbert Ang’ana

What is this that, when we all practice intentionally, will enable people to appreciate the diversity that each of us as humans brings and allow for unconditional inclusion of everyone based on their various strengths and challenges? I know this is what DEI champions, but I am asking myself for now: Could there be more that we may be unconsciously missing? What if we go “simple – stupid” to our basics?

Let me share some reflective data, though not very conclusive and requires deeper dive. Over the last three years, I have been asking random leaders I coach and train one fundamental question – “Why should you lead anyone?” 9 out of 10 leaders mentioned some of the below reasons;

1. Because I am a good leader.
2. Because I have seen the world
3. Because I have the experience.
4. Because this is my area of expertise.
5. I can guide the team well, and I have the skills and attributes of leadership
6. They have no option; I am the leader this season, and must work together.
7. I have the gift and capability

As you can see, there is possibly almost no leader who mentioned because they are inclusive, or they feel they honour diversity and accept people are who they are and what they bring to the table (diversity and equity). As I mentioned, my observation is not yet conclusive, and I am still engaging more and more leaders and diversity to people who do not consider themselves as leaders for inclusion.

Moreover, over the period, I have also been engaging leaders’ constituents, asking them what kind of team leaders they wish to have. Some of the commonly shared feedback is; A leader who is:

1. Respectful,
2. Honest
3. Supportive
4. Trustworthy
5. Fair
6. Emotionally intelligent
7. Authentic
8. collaborative

All these comments above touch on some components of appreciating diversity, equity and inclusion. However, my thoughts went deeper into – why not just speak about the simplicity of DEI from a practical level rather than making it complex with a higher possibility of losing the intended intentions and bringing about complexities in its measurements and implementation?

My simple perspective to all these inquiries that have lingered in my mind is that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as noble as these concepts are and as great as they impact our lives, institutions, and community, can transition to simply – Love – Value – Belief (LVB).

Gilbert Ang’ana

This is an initial concept I am sharing with the world at this point that will be followed by a detailed review in my new upcoming book later on 12th October 2023 that will expound on these concepts individually and give perspectives based on various organizational orientations.

I, at this point, propose an argument that – could it be that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will possibly transform. Even if not to my proposed Love, Value and Belief but to something else?

• In my upcoming book, I argue that if we Love people unconditionally, we will appreciate who they are as they are, provide an equal platform and champion equality at all times, and include everyone based on their various strengths and challenges. “When you stop loving your people, you start manipulating your people.” John C. Maxwell.
• If we Value people, we will wake up every day finding people to add value to and ways to add value to people. When we value people, we accept their diversity, challenge equity bias and will be inclusive in all we do. “The way you see people is the way you treat them; and, the way you treat them is what they become.” von Goethe
• When we Believe in people, we give them an opportunity on the table. Even when we know their challenges, we encourage them to face their fears and uncertainty, and we equip and enable them to fail forward without victimization. These are all avenues of propagating DEI. “people will rise to the level of expectations you set for them” Anonymous.

I want to stop by posing, “is there a possibility we could move from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to Love, Value and Belief?

I would welcome feedback, comments and perspectives. Be friendly and inclusive. As shared, this is first my initial thoughts and perspective. Details will be coming in my new book – “Inside Out”, with a tentative launch date of 12^th October 2023.

Follow me for more thoughts on this and others through www.stepafrique.com

What is blocking you from being the best version of the leader you want to be?

I attended a leadership talk recently organized by BCA leadership where the guest speaker, Dr Mongezi from Africa Board for coaching consulting and coaching psychology (ABCCCP), posed this question, and the leaders in the forum, who were majorly senior leaders and executives across Africa, shared “Fear” and related sisters of “fear” as a significant obstacle. The next question that followed was, “What would you want to see as the future of Africa – one word?”. Most leaders again mentioned “Prosperous” and other related words.

These two inquiries caught me thinking a lot, and I am still at that point where I feel I need to dig deeper into conducting an empirical inquiry to understand this further. However, the two answers show the dilemma in leadership. Many of us leaders wish for the best outcome in our leadership, teams, organizations, nations and other fields. However, we are blocked from taking those steps immediately in our face by the aspect of our “Fear”. Fear is the Enemy!

Many leaders’ obvious counter-question is, “why should I push myself yet other leaders are not and are doing well?”

Our comfort zone is comfortable!

The reality is that this is also a known fact to leaders. They know that their comfort zone will not foster their growth. Many also know when they have reached their comfort zone but cannot move beyond it because of “Fear” and the related sisters of “Fear”, which are their disbelief, esteem, and self-confidence, among others. When leaders do the same things every day for a very long time, their comfort zone starts to shrink and somehow, the things that seemed comfortable to them start being uncomfortable. That is why we see that when leaders are stuck in the same position for a very long time, they start feeling uneasy, routine-like, and have this inner desire to move to a new role, either horizontal or upward, to move past that discomfort.

I later got hold of the below diagram from the internet (not my own), which helps to explain the concept of this article, “The Bumpy Road to Better”. When we challenge ourselves to undertake assignments, do uncomfortable things, and consistently stay on that path, we move from the comfort zone into the zone of fear but still soldering on consistently. The fear zone is where you are not clear of the outcome of your actions yet, but at least you are clear that if you consistently manage to pass through the fear, there is a likelihood of tremendous success ahead. At some point, the fear zone comprises failures, but when you fail forward and pick out the learnings and re-engineer yourself and your self-leadership, you will in no time push yourself to the learning zone.

I remember it took me much time due to fear to step out and start my full-time Coaching and Consulting practice in Change Leadership due to fear. I had a lot going on in my mind. How will I take care of my family? How will I manage to cover my so addicted hgh monthly salary when I leave formal employment? Is there a market for me, among other fear-related queries? However, I still soldiered on, with my laid-out plans, having faith and belief in my vision – “Building a movement of leaders whose power of influence will far exceed the authority of their positions” and here I am, a few years down the line, having touched many lives, impacted many leaders across Africa and the Worl and provoking many emerging leaders to live and lead their purpose and blessed to have both global and regional recognitions in the process.

Imagine, if I had not taken the Bumpy Road…what would have happened to all leaders and emerging leaders we have bumped across along the journey? What would have happened to all those young leaders I have interacted and have enjoyed a piece of my journey? What will happen to those organizations I have supported to redesign their structure, strategy, culture and are doing well now?

As individuals and leaders, we must always understand that the Bumpy Road we go through is for the Better. If the road were smooth and there would be no fear, then there would not be any revolution today. There would be no inventions and innovations that have been there and are still to come. All great things come with sacrifice, sacrificing to soldier on even with fear. The consequence is to cry during failure and pick up the pieces and still push ahead – fail forward. The consequence of engraving your purpose and vision deep inside you is still dynamic enough to walk the journey in cognizance of the dynamism presented.

Anything worthwhile is uphill – John Maxwell.

There is no improvement without challenge. To keep the focus and grow past your comfort zone, to fear zone to learning to growth zone;

1. Do what needs to be done more consistently. The more focused you are on the purpose and vision, the more likely you will release your fear and pick the learnings in the process.
2. Do it more intensely. Once you find your rhythm, keep intense, and have an open mind for learning and picking out what needs to be resolved along the journey. However, keep the intense higher. This is what pushes you beyond the learning zone.
3. Do it for a longer period. The learning zone is not a run-quick zone. It is a cyclic zone of persistent learning and unlearning untill you become the expert – The Power of Focus!

In the whole process, as you walk through this journey – The Bumpy Road to Better, always ask yourself the following questions that I borrowed from Marshall Goldsmiths: Are you doing your best to:

1. Be happy along the bumpy road to better?
2. Find and sustain your purpose and meaning as you move towards better.
3. Be fully committed and engaged in walking the bumpy road to better.
4. Build valuable relationships with others who might be critical enablers to push you beyond your fear zone to your growth zone.

These ingredients can enable you to move beyond the fear zone to the growth zone in any situation. These are the enables to help you understand that your Bumpy Road is for the Better if you keep the focus, consistency and valuable relationships along the journey.

About the Author

Gilbert Ang’ana is a Global award-winning Change Leadership Coach & Consultant and the CEO of Accent Leadership Group, a Leadership Consulting and Advisory firm championing Leadership Advocacy in Africa and Beyond through Coaching, Training, Speaking and Research. He has authored four books, including an upcoming “Engaged and Productive”. He is also an adjunct lecturer of leadership at ACTs University in Rwanda. Interact with him through LinkedIn and learn more about his organization at www.stepafrique.com

I have had most of my early leadership leading employees contracted to undertake specific roles, achieve specific shared objectives, and are paid for that. This, as much as there are definite teething issues in such leaders, is possibly a much fair leadership role. The employees and you as a leader have something to lose for non-performance and not achieving the intended goals. The repercussions could range from poor performance rating, lack of remuneration increment, lack of commissions and worse termination of employment contract due to persistent non-performance. These repercussions also drive employees and their leaders to strive for something and attempt to achieve their shared goals.

However, this is different when leading volunteers. It takes a lot of effort and influence for the leader to implant in the volunteers’ hearts and minds the value of the shared goals and the importance of striving to attain the intended outcome. Ideally, the volunteers may have no tied motivation towards the outcome. The volunteers are not on contractual terms. The leader has no power to hold anything against them. The leader cannot punish the volunteers. The volunteers are not obligated in any way to put in their optimal efforts and resources towards the attainment of the intended goals. This makes the dynamics of leading volunteers different and therefore requires some enhanced leadership capabilities and competencies to align and achieve an exceptional outcome with volunteers.

In the last three years, I have successfully run various programs with volunteers and am currently involved in various leadership avenues with a majority of my constituents as volunteers. Over the last 5 years, I have been heavily involved in various leadership platforms where my primary constituents are volunteers and this has enabled me to Unlearn and re-learn how to effectively lead volunteers to successfully achieve the desired goals. My unlearning and re-learning journey was definitely bumpy and the reason is sharing some of my practical takeouts that can enable a leader somewhere looking at leading volunteers, or currently leading volunteers and those who have had some experience and struggling to find their path and even those experienced leaders leading volunteers, there is always something new to learn. Below are five essentials traits for understanding when leading volunteers.

Be Catalytic and Humble

A catalytic leader takes charge of tasks without bearing down on the constituents. To lead volunteers, you must develop catalytic behaviour. Lead without emphasizing your authority or acting superior. A catalytic leader leads through coaching and mentorship. Your role should partner and provoke your constituents into finding their intrinsic motivation and link to the shared or intended goal. Without enabling your volunteers to unpack their intrinsic motivation and support them in linking their motives to the shared outcome, chances are that they will not be of value as volunteers. To achieve success in leading volunteers, being catalytic in a humble way is your path to success. This will enable connecting with your constituents, reduce fear or disdain for authority, and your constituents will feel more comfortable and confident interacting with you as their leader and motivated enough to match together in delivering the success of the shared goals.

Love and Appreciate your Constituents

Many leaders that I have encountered and even coached find it difficult dealing with “loving” their teams. They feel that loving their teams will weaken their focus and authority. They feel that loving their teams exposes them to a high level of vulnerability risk than they are willing to take. The reality is that if you do not love the team you are leading, you are barely influencing them. If you do not love your team, you are not connecting with them to levels where they can give their optimal efforts in delivering intended success. You are barely utilizing their optimal intelligence and, in this case, collective intelligence. You cannot lead volunteers if you do not love them. If you do not truly love your constituents, you cannot genuinely appreciate them and the efforts they put towards delivering a shared goal. There is no other remuneration to give volunteers than to genuinely love and appreciate every effort they put towards achieving the shared outcome. The more authentic you love and appreciate your constituents, the higher the effort and risk they will take in delivering the shared goal.    

Crystalize a Purpose in your Constituents

Volunteers, in most cases, are with you because of the shared alignment on the course you are taking. They believe the course is aligned with their values. Therefore, cementing and crystalizing that shared understanding and values in their hearts will enable them to see the worthy purpose in walking with you towards achieving the shared values. When you take the lead in crystalizing the purpose in enabling them to understand that the course they are taking is worth dying for and living for, there is a high likelihood that they will be fully engaged and productive as you match together. However, some courses are not dying and living for, and if, as a leader, you do not crystalize the course as a purpose worth pursuing together with your constituents, they will temporarily walk with you and drop you off. They may feel that the initial attachment was just one of their curiosity sparks and realize it is not worth pursuing, dying and living for. To lead your constituents who are volunteers for a sustained, extended period, enable them to crystalize their purpose in understanding that the shared course is worth dying and living for.   

Be both a Courageous Leader and a Follower  

A courageous leader builds courageous followers. In my youtube channel – Accent Leadership Group, I have extensively addressed this discussion of courageous followership through various brief episodes. Kindly find time and check it out. However, in brief, Courageous leaders “ are individuals who are capable of making themselves better and stronger when the stakes are high, and circumstances turn against them,” says Harvard Business School Professor Nancy Koehn. Leading volunteers require you to develop courageous leadership. Courageous leaders create a culture of trust and respect. This is what will enable your volunteer constituents to follow you. Courageous leaders foster the development and evolution of their constituents. This, in turn, leads to an accelerated push towards attaining the shared goals. However, courageous leaders are also courageous followers of their constituents. They acknowledge that they may not entirely know everything and believe their constituents are experts in various fields and have much greater insights than them. As a courageous follower, you understand when to take responsibility and delegate responsibility, when to serve your constituents, when to challenge them and allow them to challenge your authority; and when to allow your constituents to take charge in facilitating change fully. These attributes will enable a successful relationship with your constituents and lead to greater success in achieving shared goals.

Create Simple and Reproducible Structures

Leading volunteers is a collaborative leadership effort. Ideally, there should be no hierarchical structure. Empower all your volunteers to be both leaders and followers simultaneously. Enable a culture of shared understanding, mutual respect and accommodating behaviours among your constituents. Have a mechanism for open sharing of information, encourage constructive conflicts and allow your constituents to develop the attitude of disagreeing to agree. This will enable them to apply their intelligence and creatively develop collective intelligence. Your role is unlike the traditional top-down approach to leadership in which management controls the flow of information and determines the course of action the team must take. Your role is to allow collective intelligence to determine the course and challenge or provoke deeper engagements where you feel the outcome is still not well thought-out. As a result, your constituents will be more engaged, feel trusted and are more likely to take ownership of the shared course and goals. Creating a simple and reproducible structure creates an inclusive environment that energizes your constituents, releases creativity, and cultivates a productive and joyful culture.

I believe these five traits can enable you to lead volunteers effectively. I have practised them over the last five years. I have engaged with the volunteers I have led and am still leading through feedback and in most cases, these five areas keep coming more often. Sharing with you will challenge you to practice them if you are leading volunteers. I want to challenge you as a leader, not leading volunteers but employees, to practice these traits and see how that will transform the engagement and productivity of your team. I have incorporated most of these traits in my upcoming book “Engaged and Productive”, coming out this August 2022. Watch out for the book. It is a very thought-provoking book that will challenge your current outlook on leadership and equip you with values that will enable you to build highly engaged and productive teams.

If the above thoughts have been valuable, do not hesitate to like or share with your friends and other leaders in your circle and share feedback on how your outcome has been as a result of practising these traits consistently in your leadership.

About the Author

Gilbert Ang’ana is the CEO of Accent Leadership Group, a Leadership Consulting and Advisory firm championing Leadership Advocacy in Africa and Beyond through Coaching, Training, Speaking and Research. He is a member of various nonprofit organization boards, including Chairing Rotary Club of Athi River Board as the current President 2022/23. He has authored three books, including an upcoming “Engaged and Productive”. He is also an adjunct lecturer of leadership at ACTs University in Rwanda. Interact with him through LinkedIn and learn more about his organization at www.stepafrique.com

Building courageous followership is an intentional organisational process. Courageous followers are creative and innovative, propelling their organisation’s success higher than average organisational followers.

Sadly, many organisations today, despite the knowledge on the advantages of building an inclusive leadership culture, still exercise an “All powerful leader” culture in their organisation. This is a drive right from the top leadership. The way they engage their employees and the culture they build around their employees. Most organisations, including top global organisations, have built this culture consciously over time and some unconsciously due to divergence between what the organisation propagates in their written core values and what the top leadership practice. The organisations have created submissive followers, not taking advantage of their resources for optimal performance.

For optimal success in today’s VUCA environment, organisations across all orientations need to foster collaborative leadership and followership.

Collaborative leadership enables organisational leaders to understand their influence and use it to compel their teams towards the shared goals/values positively. Additionally, collaborative leaders build collaborative followership. Collaborative followership entails courageous followers who work with the leader to deliver the shared values and goals of the organisation.

In a collaborative relationship, we have influential leaders and Courageous followers working together to drive the shared organisational values. Three key focuses must be in place for success.

1. The Influential leader must understand their authority and turn it into a positive influence in building courageous followers.
2. The influential leader and the followers must be glued and have a common interest, driving the achievement of shared values or goals for the organisation. Divergence from this means each party is driving their values and goals and, therefore, a source of conflicts in the relationship.
3. The Courageous followers must understand the dilemmas facing the leader and all the pressure it comes with and support the leader in driving the achievement of the shared values and goals.

Common set-back in this relationship arise due to the following.

When the leader views followers’ relationship as a parent-child relationship. This can result in rebellion from the followers and a lack of inclusivity and appreciation of the value of the followers from the leader.

Parents-child relationships are more dependent and kill followers’ creativity and innovations, resulting in below optimal productivity.

Regardless of age, your followers are not your children in an organisational setting in whatever orientation. To take Responsibility and drive optimal productivity, they must be appreciated for their strengths and weaknesses.

I have talked more about how to develop into an influential leader in my upcoming book “Engage and Productive” – 5 mind shifts in building highly engaged and productive teams—coming out in August 2022. Watch out for it.

Let us briefly discuss the charsteristics or dimesions of courageous folowers for understanding. Many scholars and leaders have extensively discussed courageous followership. I borrow the same philosophy from Ira Challeff, who wrote the book “Couragoeus followership. Below are seven critical dimensions of courageous followers for your note as a follower, but also for your understanding as a leader of how you can build courageous followers and not submissive followers. This is the only way to ensure you achieve optimal productivity on the shared goals and values as an organisation.

Courageous followers:

1. Take Responsibility  – they assume their Responsibility without push and are essential players in playing their part in the achievement of shared goals.
2. Serve their Leaders – by going over and beyond their assigned tasks, supporting their leaders in decision-making, and unburdenning the challenges their leaders encounter along the journey to achieving shared goals by standing up for their leaders in tough times.
3. Challenge Status Quo – share their contrary options respectfully when they engage. Challenge extreme and outdated policies and procedures that are hurting the achievement of shared goals.
4. Stand for Morality – Value harmony but not at the expense of integrity. Know when to stand for contrary moral action respectfully. Know when to disobey, including to the extent of resignation respectfully.
5. Speak to Leadership – Know when to sensitively and strategically speak up to the leadership.
6. Listen to other Followers – Collaborate, and develop mutual trust, respect and understanding. Disagree with agreeing.
7. Transform – understand when to change the status quo for the better. Take the initiative to change the status quo and jump-start a transformation.

These are but some of the characteristics or dimensions of courageous followership. Practice them as a follower, encourage such as an influential leader and see your team’s productivity change.

All the best, let us get in touch for more discussions on how we can help your teams and leaders understand how to utilise their power of influence beyond the authority of their positions to better their teams and organisation.

About the Author

Gilbert Ang’ana (PhD Cand.) || CEO at Accent Leadership Group

• Certified Leadership Coach and Teacher by Maxwell Leadership Team (MLT)
• Certified Engagement & Productivity Coach by International Coaching Federation (ICF)
• African Leader of the Year 2022 by abcccp.com
• Coach Consultant of the Year 2022 by abcccp.com
• Top 50 thought leaders and influencers by Thinkers360.com
• Top 40 Global Change management Gurus 2022 by leadersHum.com

The Customer Experience & Satisfaction index in many organizations today is either in a steep decline or fluctuating year on year. Why so?…. If you look at those organizations carefully, you will realize that their Employee Satisfaction is also on a steep decline. Their employees aren’t content at their jobs. Why?… Because their employees’ experience is poor.

Many organizations in the current era are so focused on customer experience and they do whatever they can including “pushing”, threatening, and challenging their staff to exceed their customers’ expectations.

There is only one thing that most who don’t achieve the level of customer experience score they anticipate achieving don’t do……

Model the aspect of EXCEEDING EXPECTATION.

Many organizations expect their staff to do what they are not modeling and the reason many employees are not aware of what it means to really exceed expectations. They are not hitting the right nail in the right position because they do not know-how.

Their Organizations have not and are not Modeling the same in them. Their organizations are not EXCEEDING their EXPECTATIONS, yet they are required to somehow theoretically know what it means to Exceed expectations.

I wish to challenge organization leaders out here, whatever the orientation of the organization, whether a tech, public, private, religious institution, or others. You all have some form of customers you serve. For you to be at a level where you are EXCEEDING your customers’ expectations consistently with ease, MODEL that to your employees.

EXCEED their expectation. This is not about financial expectations, although that too matters, but in areas that touch on your employees well being, culture, and environment among other factors that would ensure your staff’s workplace is conducive for them.

EXCEED your staff expectation before Requiring them to EXCEED your customers’ expectations.

This is not about TRAINING your employees on customer experience matters, though that is important too. If you are to consistently year-on-year perform exceptionally well in the metrics of EXCEEDING your customers’ expectations; you have to consistently EXCEED your employees’ expectations.

You are where you are today in your customer experience journey because of the level of employees experience you are delivering.

Just like many organizations, I am pretty sure you are very clear on what is required to improve your customers’ experience. This is what you train your employees on, you have taken the time to do customer surveys and understand what your customers need, and that is why you are championing efforts to ensure your employees exceed their expectations.

However, if you would equally invest the same level of focus in understanding your employees’ needs, and invest similar resources in meeting and exceeding their expectations, your organization’s performance metrics across all lines will be over the roof. you will be consistently meeting your revenue or whatever goals you have set year-on-year. your employees’ engagement and productivity index will be consistently exceptional. The challenge is many organizations do not invest this effort in their employees but expect their employees to invest efforts in going out of their way to consistently exceed their customers’ expectations.

It can’t happen, if it happens, it’s not consistent, and that is why probably your organization is operating at non-optimal levels in other metrics besides customer experience.

So…if you wish to improve your Customer Experience consistently if you wish your employees to exceed your Customers’ Expectations, start by understanding how you can improve your employees’ experience, and how you can exceed their expectations.

We can help…

This article has also been featured in a few headline change management platforms.

Author

Gilbert Ang’ana

CEO at Accent Leadership Group

Top 40 Global Change Management Gurus, 2022 by leadersHum

http://www.stepafrique.com

4 Most Important Elements in any Change Initiative

This past weekend had taken a trip with a group of friends as part of our group retreat to unwind and have fun with our wives. Was privileged to ride along with my good friend Desmond (Dez as we call him) who is a change catalyst and an expert in management information systems. For the better part of the journey, we talked about change management, change leadership, and catalyzing change and had some concurrence in many areas but also divulgence in a few areas. Typical of two Ph.D. scholars defending their schools of thought.

At least one of the obvious alignments we had was the fact that CHANGE is constant. Successful leaders and organizations are continually in a change mode. This is so because they want to be efficient in their spaces, they are always setting new horizons, goals, or objectives, and many organizations are continually finding ways to improve their processes, operations, and experience in the eyes of their customers.

In today’s world, it doesn’t matter really whether we are the ones who initiated the change because somehow we are affected even if we were not the originators. This, therefore, means that change is inevitable for anyone or any organization. This brings a critical angle that the heart of change is in the people. Whether managing or leading change, its success is dependent on the people and how they are supported throughout the change period. This means that the role of the Change Managers or Change Leaders is to guide their people through the transition – this means championing people to think or act differently by promoting the benefits of the change.

People approach change in many ways: Some are always:

• Reluctant to adopt change
• Neither accepting nor rejecting change
• Early adopters

Therefore as a Change leader, you must expect some pushback from your people especially those who are reluctant and those who have not yet accepted nor rejected the change. Second, listen to each one of these groups for their views and reasons for their current status in change adoption. These views will enable you to identify the barriers to the change process which would be a good learning point as a change leader to work on improving or cause correcting to allow room for more people in the change bus.

For a likelihood of success, the change leaders or managers must demonstrate 4 key characteristics consistently:

1. CLARIFY the why in the change VISION. Change leaders must not only see the result of the change and work backward by clarifying the why of the change to challenge, and champion others. They must be able to communicate the vision in a way that compels others to follow.
2. CONNECT with their constituents. It is one thing to have clarity of vision, it’s another thing to Compel others to follow. The result of compelling is momentum in the intended direction and momentum can only occur if the constituents are connected with the leaders and the organization. Connecting is a skill that change leaders must build.
3. INSPIRE their constituents to focus on the process that leads to success. Change is never easy. Change is always uphill. People will not find the motivation to move uphill regardless of the challenges if they are not inspired or feel inspired. Change leaders, therefore, have a critical role to instill rhythms of self-discipline that will inspire constituents to follow through beyond just being motivated to succeed. John Maxwell said, motivation keeps you going but, self-discipline keeps you growing. Therefore inspiration builds self-discipline which enables higher chances of success.    
4. EMPATHETIC with the people and the process. Change is uphill, sometimes people feel exhausted along the way, and others feel hurt in the process. Therefore change leaders must be able to understand what their team members are feeling or experiencing, which helps them make better decisions for the group. An empathetic leader can implement change effectively and still make sure their constituents are heard and included.

Are you ready to lead a change?

A change leader’s mandate is to reorient the attitudes and behaviors of people (mindset). The mindset can only be tapped successfully if the leaders connect with their constituents at personal and emotional levels so that they can adapt to new ways of thinking and acting. 

It’s worth noting that there will always be resistance. Not everyone will be committed to the change process. However, by implementing the four key elements of change — Clarify the why of the change vision, connect with constituents, inspire constituents, and be empathetic — you’ll position yourself for likely success. 

Most important, As a Change Leader, start by thinking about the heart of change – the people that you’ll be supporting. Always engage those who will be affected by the change and keep them at the center of the change plans — this is how you’ll build a stronger team during the change process.

Author

Gilbert Ang’ana

CEO at Accent Leadership Group

Top 40 Global Change Management Gurus, 2022 by leadersHum

http://www.stepafrique.com

“What makes credible leaders?”

While there is extant information on credible leadership, there is insufficient information that addresses the holistic exploration on the making of credible leaders to understand how everyday perceived effective credible leaders engage, interact and act to sustain their credibility.

Our CEO Gilbert Ang’ana conducted a research study aimed at exploring the experiences of perceived credible leaders to holistically understand their perceptions and experiences.

This research has provided in-depth and holistic insight into the making of credible leaders, highlighting perspectives that are perceived and appreciated by leaders and also elements that are understood as borderline credibility challenges

The findings of this study have revealed the key dimensions of what makes credible leaders and especially its centrality on the moral self. Credible leaders are believed to have aware of the moral self which is a critical antecedent to credibility and enables the development of resilience, competence and are caring and building others to be better versions of themselves.

Check out and read the full research study and findings through the link below:

For feedback, questions, engagements kindly reach out to:

https://card.link/items/sQVZjpqLEd/?exchange=true

Gilbert Ang’ana (CEO at Accent Leadership Group Ltd), info@stepafrique.com

Break Away from those Limiting Beliefs!

The truth about why you don’t do RISE or Haven’t RISEN to YOUR Occasion yet is because of your limiting beliefs in setting your Personal Goals – Annual resolutions

Gilbert Ang’ANA, CEO ACCENT LEADERSHIP GROUP LTD

​​Yes, that’s right it’s you am talking to.

Are you frustrated that you did not achieve what you had set to achieve the last year of 2021 and possibly the goals in 2020 too?

Has that resulted in low confidence in yourself to set up new 2022 goals?

Are you the person who doesn’t believe in setting annual personal goals or resolutions?

Are you this person who is motivated as the year starts and then loses focus and discipline just a few weeks or months after?

Do you lack the discipline and consistency to see off your routine and new habits that will enable you to achieve your goals?

Do you procrastinate on serious goals to tomorrow, which becomes weeks and months till you give us and say it wasn’t meant for you?

It’s time to shed that, and you start over again. Resetting your mind from those limiting beliefs!

I’ve learned to crush the limiting beliefs on setting personal goals at the beginning of the year once and for all, which has helped me to be Authentic, Bold in my goals in order to put in the consistency required to achieve them.

If you are that person who finds excuses not to set your personal goals at the beginning of each year, then you are suffering from limiting beliefs either consciously or unconsciously. The fact that you are creating excuses in putting them down is a sure way that you may need to check your limiting belief!

Why?

Because if you are employed, somehow you find yourself doing corporate goal setting for the quarter or the year and sharing them with your boss.

If you are in business you automatically are doing your business plan for the year to see how you can grow your business in whichever spectrum.

The fact that you are not creating time to do your Personal Goal Setting or resolutions or action plan for the year is a sure testament to your limiting belief. The earlier you acknowledge, the better for you to work in breaking your limiting belief and setting your mind in the right frame to accomplish the areas you wish to.

Believe me, I know what you’re going through. I have been there in those years when I could just let the year be and said to myself, no this year I will take whatever comes my way. I am not putting pressure on myself in setting goals that I won’t see through!

But the fact is, limiting beliefs entertained could lead to something much deeper and destroy the potential and God-given purpose in your life and may sometimes lead to mild depression and lower self-esteem.

What causes limiting beliefs and how can you overcome them?

Cause #1: You Fear Failure

Do you fear you’re not good enough to see your goals through?

Do you feel that you have done that before and are unable to be consistent?

Do you fear that you will fail? Again?

Following through with your goals for the year requires Focus and Consistency. These are the two critical self-disciplines dimensions you need to inculcate.

A word of encouragement, your fear is legitimate. It’s justified!

However, rather than let it overwhelm you, embrace your fear. Let it humble you to see your goal ahead as something that requires humility to achieve. The humility that you have to walk the process to achieve the goal.

Let humility motivate you to be focused, and consistent, and put your best foot forward. THAT’S what led me to overcome my limiting beliefs then and concur with my fears. That is what has led me to concur with all the goals I set every year since then and put focus and consistency to push myself to success.

Embrace your fear and let it humble you to push towards your goals this year!

Cause #2: You always think it’s not the right time/year – Procrastination

Procrastination is killing the dreams of many people across the world. Some say that the richest place in the world is in the graveyards because there is a wealth of unfulfilled dreams and goals due to procrastination! Whether that is true, I leave it for you to say.

You cannot eliminate procrastination, but you can accommodate it in a different form. You can make it your most valuable asset in form of Reflections.

From a personal experience, in times where I feel like procrastinating specific goals, I accommodate it in my reflection moments every Friday and I get an opportunity to think through it deeper and refine the goals in a way that I can then transfer and drive them with focus and consistency.

I accommodated and transformed procrastination as part of my creative process!

By accommodating and transforming procrastination in this manner, you can both indulge it and continue with the set goals in a more refined and with more clarity that would drive your focus and consistency to their achievement.

Cause #3: You await a Perfect time or year

Many people struggle with perfectionism and many people in most cases use it as an excuse for not setting their personal goals. Taking too much time in trying to see your goal to perfectionism before taking action can be a crippling time thief.

It is likely to slow down your efforts to start taking action and potentially kill the potential goal altogether with limiting beliefs.

The solution?

Life does not demand perfection. It doesn’t require you to be constantly fearless, confident, or self-assured.

Life simply requires that you keep showing up. Your discipline of focus and consistency is what will keep you on a learning and growing mode on the specific goals and you will refine them and have more clarity on the go.

Now that I’ve shown you the real problems you have on your limiting beliefs of setting personal goals annually – resolutions, search for solutions that work best for you.

There are two types of people in the world: those who wait and those who do.

Those who wait spend most of their lives in the planning stage, getting ready to do something. They talk about their dreams in terms of “someday.” Those who wait are waiting for that perfect moment when all the stars align for them to go after their dreams. They say things like “I will do it…The reality is that “someday” never comes and the person who waits misses every opportunity while holding out for that perfect moment.

You can Break Away from the old you and your limiting beliefs.

RISE TO YOUR OWN OCCASION THIS YEAR 2022

“Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”

Napoleon Hill

Coach Gilbert

P.S. So we can schedule a coaching session to enable you to understand and break away from your limiting beliefs and Set your Personal Goals/ 2022 resolutions. Block your date and time through www.stepafrique.com  

Are you a New Year Resolution Person or are you Living by the Day Person?

According to the time management firm Franklin Covey, one-third of resolutioners don’t make it past the end of January. Such surveys have led to many people giving up and feeling they are already part of the statistics of failures even without starting or trying.

Over the years, we have ended up with two groups of people: The first group of people is those who believe in setting New Year resolutions, goals, and vision whatever you call it. These people believe in the importance of starting the year by envisioning what you wish to achieve for the year. Some are diligent and dedicated and walk the vision to the end regardless of the challenges they face. Whether they achieve the actual results anticipated or not, they get motivated and are happy by their dedicated discipline throughout the year.

This group of people believes that growth doesn’t just happen. You have to work, you have to put effort, you have to be focused, and you have to be consistent regardless of the challenges ahead. These groups believe that challenges are what define them, challenges are what make great leaders. Leaders were made for challenges! And if you are unable to concur yourself first, then you may not be able to concur with other spaces of leadership out there. Self-Leadership and Self-Discipline are what help these groups to concur themselves through the year to see their goals and vision to light. This group has mastered the art of pausing and allowing themselves to reflect. They have understood that learning to pause allows growth to catch up with them and can make the necessary corrections, improvements, and energize focus towards their growth trajectory.

However, others do it for fun, to feel good that they also have a plan somehow they can share in their circles. At the start of the year, they are well motivated to start well but do not have the discipline to keep growing into the year with consistency. This reminds me of what John Maxwell shared, “Motivation keeps people going, but, discipline keeps people growing”. The latter group does not have the discipline to keep growing into the year with consistent habits to see their resolutions, goals, vision into reality. They have not understood themselves, their capabilities, and strengths and this could be their undoing in their consistency.

They are unable to grow as they have not known themselves well. John Maxwell shared the Law of Awareness, “You must know yourself to grow yourself”. This group would be presumed to not know themselves, as they set out goals that they are unable to consistently follow through based on their strengths. But, are doing it at the start as part of the fitting in and having a feel-good spirit that they at least tried or at least they had the good intentions. However, good intentions alone don’t matter, good intentions without action are like being a dreamer without taking the initiative to act.

To see your vision, goal, resolution for the year through, you must be able to go beyond seeing yourself achieving to taking the steps every day towards your goals, having the right people surrounding you that will challenge you even in those difficult seasons and keeping the discipline to grow every day.

The second group of people is those that do not do their resolutions, goals, and plans. They have resorted to living by the day. They give themselves comforting reasons in many ways – I have allowed God to direct me, so am not planning, I am living me the day, my goals or resolutions is to make no resolutions, I do not want to make resolutions I can’t keep, resolutions are for children and many other excuses they give.

These are people who have given up on their capabilities or abilities, they are not sure what they can achieve and what they can’t achieve. They have allowed themselves to have limiting beliefs dominate their mind to a level of mediocrity. They have not understood their significance, they, therefore, have no story to write for themselves. They are unaware of what is important to them, so any action will do – living by the day. They, therefore, make their days not count, no goal to count for, so the goal that the day brings becomes their goal and they celebrate anything that comes their way and assume it’s what they are to achieve. This group does not believe in their capabilities and therefore does not understand that their beliefs drive their behavior. They end up living a borrowed or someone else’s dream or mission for the year.

They own their memorable days, weeks, months, and year by chance as they did not decide the outcome for their days, weeks, months & years.

Whichever group of the two you fall into, critical is for you to understand that your growth for this year will not just happen by chance, it will take action, efforts, and consistency by you. Your cost of success is you. It doesn’t have to be a big fight with yourself for the year, but, you need to start from where you are and be committed to making small changes. Focus on your strengths and align your goals with your areas of strengths. If you align your goals and resolutions in the areas of your weakness which is what most people do, you will not achieve them as you will not be motivated on them and consequently, you will not develop the discipline to see yourself grow in the goals.

“I want to lose weight in 2022, maybe this is you but, your strength is not in the gym, or you may not have the financial muscle to pay the gym for the whole year, yet you insist on enrolling in a gym anyway the first month. You will not sustain the gym to the end and you will give up and be frustrated. Why not keep the resolution or goal and say I will walk 3 times per week instead and see how you can attain your goal by also working within your areas of strength rather than weakness. 

Whatever your resolution or goal for the year is, to lose weight, eat healthier or change diet, get fitter and take more exercise, spend more time with family and friends, be more aware and take care of mental health, sort out finances and cut back spending, and many more, align them with your areas of strengths and follow through with discipline by developing your strategy for execution.

When we operate in the areas of our weakness, we create goals and resolutions aligned t our weaknesses and end up creating excuses for not having the discipline to execute the goals to succeed.

Therefore today make a conscious choice to always operate in the areas of your strength. This is what will trigger you to understand your why in life and even for the year 2022. Living out your why in 2022 will give you the confidence, motivation, and discipline to grow and attain your resolutions, goals, plans, and whatever the name you call it: the bottom line is, it is your “Personal Growth Strategy” (PGS) that you are playing with. You decide to let it be a worldly growth strategy, so whatever comes your way, whichever side the wind blows you are okay. Or you FOCUS, employ SELF-DISCIPLINE, build CONSISTENCY and be AUTHENTIC to create your PGS and see it to the end!

The key to personal growth and success is recognition that no one else can do the work and make the effort in our place.

Make 2022 your year, take the bold step to develop your growth strategy.

Need Help? Engage us through http://www.stepafrique.com or info@stepafrique.com

About the Author

Adaptive leadership is a leadership model that aims to embrace change, creativity, experimentation and innovation. Adaptive leadership entails the leader anticipation and identification of the root causes for challenges and find ways to sustainably overcome them. The overall aim is for leaders to enable their teams handle challenges and adapt to evolving environment. This requires a new perspective in leaders mindset to be more than just leaders from a positional perspective handing down direction. Instead, they must develop positive influence, be open to feedback, ready for inevitable change and prepared to shift course when necessary.

Three dimensions of adaptive leadership that I believe are key in aligning the practical understanding of adaptive leadership:

1. Flexibility – Adaptive Leaders must be courageous in handling uncertainty in their environment and accept change as part of the organization lifecycle. This entails facilitating a creativity culture that entails embracing failures as learning opportunities that would lead to continuous innovation; operating with policies and procedure as guides and not rules that must be followed that creates more of a bureaucratic culture.

2. Reflective – Adaptive leaders must be able to lead self and have command of personal presence and mastery. This involves being aware of self, curious about self and our experience with people. This also means that as an adaptive leader you should strive to create vulnerability trust in your organization or team that would facilitate reflective learning which is what drives organization learning.

3. Empathy – Adaptive leaders takes time to understand their teams create a genuine interest on their team members’ lives, their challenges and their overall feelings. The leader in this case makes an effort to understand their team’s situations, differing perspectives and what they are going through, in order to offer support and help. This will help foster trust, autonomy and recognition in the organization.

Characteristics of an Adaptive Leader

Adaptive leadership is an evolving and dynamic leadership and is a daunting force to influence your team and organization. How can you as a leader take advantage of adaptive leadership principles to transform your team and organization. The below are some of the key traits of adaptive leadership that can be adopted:

1. Emotional Mastery: Emotional mastery is a process of self-awareness; where a leader understands their emotions; are able to control them and make a conscious effort of not letting it control or dictate their life. Adaptive leaders are able to control their personal emotions and handle relationships empathetically. This is what enables them to build productive relationships and trust among the team.

2. Transparency: Adaptive leaders are are fair, honest and authentic leaders. It’s important to not skirt around the truth or give people only the good news instead of all the facts. Honesty can ensure that changes are embraced and understood by employees and stakeholders.

3. Vulnerability: Adaptive leaders are open to feedback, and foster vulnerability which then drive vulnerability trust in the team and organization. This is the ability to accept mistakes and failures as learning opportunities and allow the same mentality to the team members without victimization.

4. Creativity: Adaptive leaders have the ability to enable the team create and realize innovative solutions especially in the face of complexity and shifting situations. Adaptive leaders create clarity of purpose for their teams and encourage new strategies, and empower their teams to optimize their full potential.

These are practical skills that any leader can adopt with effort to inculcate an adaptive leadership culture in them. Any leader can intentionally develop the requisite skills needed to practice adaptive leadership approach and support their organizations navigate change.

To learn more about leadership and refine your own leadership skills, join our leadership masterminds. We teach advanced leadership values and techniques critical for your leadership journey. Reach out for more engagements info@stepafrique.com or http://www.stepafrique.com

About the Author

Negativity can have a huge impact on how we feel and act and it doesn’t matter which area of our life whether at work or even at home with your family.

Negativity is a tendency to be DOWNBEAT, DISAGREEABLE, and SKEPTICAL. It’s a pessimistic attitude that always expects the worst (according to Vocabulary.com).

In our world today there are many stories of how negativity has ruined organizations especially when the majority of team members are always skeptical and not turning them around to make changes, this leads to the toxic environment at work which I talked about in my previous article on “Toxic Organization Culture”. We have also enough stories in the world on how negativity has ruined individuals’ lives especially when the individuals’ concerns have had negativity over their lives and have believed and stuck with them for a longer period which led to low self-esteem, and low self-efficacy.

These are just but the many negative aspects of negativity. However, I went further to review the 3 keywords that define negativity as highlighted above:

1. DOWNBEAT – according to the oxford dictionary, means a decline in activity or prosperity; which means there is a need to be a call to action for a change to happen, or for a shift in the positive direction. Therefore, this means Downbeat breeds a call to action for a change.
2. DISAGREEABLE– according to Merriam-Webster means, causing discomfort. When something causes discomfort means there is an opportunity to make a change to a comfort situation – an opportunity to look for solutions to create comfort. 
3. SKEPTICAL – according to the oxford dictionary means, not easily convinced; having doubts or reservations. The positive side of this is, it triggers more to be done to convince, more to be done to change the doubts.

Don’t get me wrong…..I’m a firm believer in the power of remaining POSITIVE whatever the situation.

However, many of us have been brought up to think and believe Negativity is entirely not good, and that’s where I have a divergent opinion – NEGATIVITY is not entirely bad if we learn to pick out the positive aspects of it.

If we learn to understand why our mind goes to negative zones and thoughts; we get to find ways on how we can either cub those thoughts or use the thoughts to make the change we need to, to become better.

If we learn to listen to the negative conversations and sentiments from our colleagues without victimizing them but, getting to genuinely understand their thoughts, we will get to understand what needs to be fixed and take corrective action.

NEGATIVITY if well utilized will birth CREATIVITY & INNOVATION in individuals and organizations.

Opposite of negativity is loyalty, and optimism and based on my explanation above, it can be creativity and innovation is well utilized.

Negativity is not bad after all.

Next time you have negative sentiments from your colleagues, don’t dismiss them as being always negative; take time to listen…….think……and get to understand the sentiments deeper…….the find solutions and turn the sentiments into positive action.

Next time you have negative thoughts, take a minute and review the thoughts deeper and get to find out why and how you can turn them around.

Embracing negativity has some great benefits, negativity can make us behave more creatively, and fairly curious and can spur innovation in an individual, and an organization.

About Author.

Toxicity in organizations is an area that is consciously avoided by many organization leaders and unfortunately, they come to deal with the downstream effects later in their journey when it’s already fully inculcated as part of their culture – thus, the reasons for – TOXIC CULTURE.

Critical for many organizations to understand is the long-term effects of toxic organizational culture – has the potential to paralyze the workforce and erode creativity and innovation. 

An outlook of a toxic work culture that traditionally has created a slow reaction to resolution by organization leaders was the mythical understanding that – a Toxic culture is only portrayed by workplace fighting, drama & unsatisfied staff.

Whereas that may be true, the view is not entirely the case in current organizations setting!

The contemporary view of toxic workplace culture has a lot to do with how employees get their work done and how they feel every day, both on and off their jobs.

This not only explains why individuals sometimes feel they wouldn’t wish to report to the office that day but, they just have to because they need to – basically because of the pay for their well-being; and sometimes create unwarranted frequent sick offs.

Another example;

Have you had a scenario where you engage with your team leader or the HRD team with a problem that they recognize, and agree is a problem but can only sympathize about? This is a classic sign of toxic work culture in the organization.

Toxic organization culture has not only a huge measurable impact on productivity and the well-being of the employees, but also affects employees’ external environment like relationships in families, and friends because employees will spend their time in the evenings, weekends, or even on holidays consumed with stress, anger, and anxiety.

Toxic cultures general affects individuals’ self-esteem, motivation, relationships, and affect the individuals’ lives.

How Toxic Culture is developed in organizations; Toxic culture is created in two levels by Leaders & also by Individuals within the organizations and below are key areas;

TOXIC CULTURE CREATED BY LEADERS

Leaders who are more focused on organizational politics than their core business

• Many organizations today acknowledge they have organization politics, and there are many books written on managing organization politics. In my opinion, these organization politics are parallel organization cultures created by leadership teams.

• Organization politics do more harm than good in the organization; many leaders will spend their entire leadership journey managing politics for personal benefits like promotions and salary increments and being viewed in good standing rather than be productive in their assigned areas.

• The resultant is that they tend to create and pass the same culture downstream, by leading with the same bias, not acknowledging and supporting their teams better and they also develop a culture of being managed the same way they manage upwards.

• Leaders spending much of their time in this kills team synergy, morale and creates a toxic culture unconsciously which then bogs everyone down.

Nonperforming leaders

• Nonperforming leaders are there and, unfortunately, there are many nonperforming leaders in organizations some are existing as a result of what we have covered above managing politics and relationships within the organization.

• If we are to use the Pareto 80/20 principle – only 20% of leaders in any organization – and yes including your organization – are more effective to produce 80% of the results you are experiencing. So, what are you doing with the 80% of your leaders operating at 20% productivity? 

• Your lack or ineffective performance management; noting am not talking about front-line results on financials only but, holistic balance results based on a balanced scorecard is what is creating a toxic culture. 80% of your leaders are unproductive and a recipe for toxic engagements.

• Take action – get your unproductive leaders off the bus before it is too late; it’s costly to deal with reversing a toxic culture inculcated than individual leaders at the right time.

TOXIC CULTURE CREATED BY INDIVIDUALS

Unsatisfied employees due to various reasons

• Employee dissatisfaction could be from various reasons; including issues discussed above created by leadership to issues of unclear or outdated policies and procedures within organizations. These could result either in fear where employees operate without trust among themselves and their leaders or may also result in rebellion where employees now operate at free will and intentionally act in violation of various things within the organization as a result of long term oppression or their voices not being heard.

• Employee dissatisfaction can also result from the fact that people do not speak up or are not allowed to speak up even when they are presented with unrealistic goals, ridiculous plans, or patently silly ideas they are expected to implement. What happens is employees have not to say and they say nothing, but, they complain behind their backs and this is one of those areas of propagating toxic culture already created.

Unrecognized/ unappreciated good performers 

• When organization leaders, teams, and individuals are more involved in looking at the negative and demerits of situations and only care when situations are not working and miss an opportunity to challenge or appreciate the excellent performers, there is a higher chance that the situation, in the long run, may lead to a toxic work environment.

• There is little or no recognition of extraordinary effort or triumphs – but – a quick punishment when there is an issue – will eventually lead to an average performance by the top performers. Employees working extra hours, or going an extra mile in their assignments including and taking on too much work goes unnoticed and are expected.

• These are signs of toxic work culture in your organization that you need to start remedy before losing top performers.

Nonperforming employees

• Just like in nonperforming leaders, these need to be checked too at individual levels in an organization. Nonperforming individuals should not be in a position to get away with poor performance, missed targets, and inappropriate behavior or treatment of others.

• These behaviors should not be status quo within the organization.

• Great working cultures don’t tolerate such non-performing behaviors both from the topline and even in others areas of balanced score attribute within the work environment.

• Organizations must adopt an attitude of getting tough with people who bring their worst selves to work by offering them the opportunity to improve or drop off the bus.

Three areas to focus on to change this trend and remedy the toxic culture in your organization.

Embark on Organization Culture Change; Review and make amendments to your organization culture to enable flexibility, diversity, and inclusivity, humane, and vulnerability to allow for creativity and innovations. Commit as an organization to review and action on pertinent information and feedback receive and taking the time to create something new and different.

Effective performance management and reward; Look beyond top-line performance on numbers only. Good performers and leaders on topline are not necessarily good with others aspect of business and since an organization is a whole being, this aspect is critical to check before it’s too late. Also important to match the right kind and amount of praise to each individual, encourage peer recognition to create an employee’s sense of belonging. Finally, apply coaching & mentorship appropriately and make a call quickly if people or leaders need to be dropped off the bus.

Effective organization listening skills; The victims of toxic work culture are majorly the employees; but, the organization as a whole suffers and in the long run creates a huge productivity impact.  While the onus is on organization leaders to define and correct the culture where they stand a higher chance of getting that done if they get take time to listen for feedback from and involve the employees and possibly other stakeholders.

People, make the culture.

Toxic cultures can be changed. How committed are you to make the change?

About Author.

There is no organization that is successful today that has been short of effective leaders; kindly note that, in this particular case for these leaders it’s not about the titles, but a more of the meaning and impact of the individuals. Effective leadership is one of the critical drivers for growth, development and innovation. Leadership in general aims at providing direction, guidance and inspiration; effective leadership is more, effective are passionate, and confident; they have unwavering commitment, courage but, also make room for courageous followers; they nurture their strengths and potential. So what makes an effective leader? Here are some of the key mindsets of effective leaders:

Curiosity

Many people have been brought up with a myth that was based on a traditional adage that said, “Curiosity killed the cat”, no wonder many people today and it’s also sad to see many leaders today are not curious. This has resulted in leaders with no clue on how the future will be, how their past is affecting their present and are just running the business for the moment; and yes they might be getting results for the moment especially when the environment is favorable but, they stumble when the environment changes just like we have seen in this period of covid-19 where many have stumbled and their organizations too have stumbled.

Why? Because many of their leaders were/are not curious.

Effective leaders use thoughtful and targeted questions to get information; they ask, powerful questions to raise their level of expectations for them and for the team. They ask questions to uncover the barriers and provide holistic solutions and way forward collectively with their teams and creates aspects of accountability of actions.

Curiosity is a critical skill for transformative growth and change that effective leaders must CULTIVATE since it brings about the creativity that fosters innovations.

Vulnerability

Many leaders today especially from an African setting view vulnerability as a weakness; we have been brought up to a myth that leaders are supposed to handle any situation without showing weakness – militaristic way. This is actually the source of many poor relationships in organizations; many leaders today are being managed by their teams and information flow is limited to what they want to hear due to this aspect of lack of leadership vulnerability. Looking at the current period, many leaders and organizations would possibly have devised better ways of handling this period and still maintain better performance if they would have evoked vulnerable leadership style in their engagement with their teams.

Effective leaders today are vulnerable with the team but accountable in every action. They allow creativity which means, giving room for failure but, emphasizing on aspects of learning from the failures is key. They are focused on the learnings attained rather that the failure itself and this promote vulnerability trust; they ask for help where required; they are open and this creates a vulnerable trust space within the team.

Vulnerability is a great way to build trust with each individual within the team and organization whose end result is building a vulnerability culture, which involves team synergy, supportive and helps propel the organization to greater heights.

Action

These are things that leader’s do that make them successful and is very different from leadership behaviors or styles. Leader’s actions are founded from leader’s beliefs, values but also affected by organization’s culture and values. Traditional myth of leadership is that it gives direction and makes people follow their direction; however, contemporary leadership will be a flop if such mentality is brought to the table. Effective leaders know the way, show the way by leading the way as shared by Dr. John C. Maxwell. You cannot be an effective leader is you cannot navigate the way and lead your teams in the direction you wish to go as a team or as an organization.

This doesn’t mean being operational as the CEO for example, but by being keen to follow through on the actions and one in a while navigating through your team’s experience to understand some of the challenges they are facing and possible solutions they have in mind.

Effective leadership knows the way, shows the way and leads the way!

Responsible

Many leaders today undertake their responsibility perfectly but, only as guided within the confines of their job descriptions. In instances we ay not blame such leaders because, they are boxed in this manner as a result of some of the organizational restrictions and cultures that force their leaders to operate within their JDs and policies even if they are outdated.

Effective leaders go above and beyond and through creativity and innovation brings change in their organizations beyond the status quo are able to stand by their decisions and actions. They take responsibility for their decisions even if it contradicts with the existing status quo and culture that possibly could be outdated and needs change; they also hold others responsible as well on operating above their status quo to find create solutions for the organization.  

Connect

Effective leaders apply communication shift in their engagement with team. They do not correct and direct but, connect. They are focused on connecting for equipping and influence rather that correcting and directing for positional influence. The end result of connecting with the team is a more invested, & satisfied team in their tasks and assignments.

Connecting with team, ensures the leader understand team members’ abilities and values, as well as relevant facts about their personalities, that then fosters sound interactions and work assignments based on strengths, but also supports the leader understand areas of coaching and mentorship they need to apply to enable their teams improve on their capabilities. John C. Maxwell shares that connecting is not our natural strength, we have to be intentional about it; it’s all about others and its not just about words but more that that and finally if we do this well, connecting is the engine that increases our influence as leaders.

Are you an effective leader? How conscious are you applying these mindsets in your daily leadership journey?

<p value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">This is a Book Review where I share critical leadership insights on the context of the book, "The Champion's Mindset by Jim Afremow".<br>This is a Book Review where I share critical leadership insights on the context of the book, “The Champion’s Mindset by Jim Afremow”.

I have highlighted the 4S as the critical leadership lessons and the aim is to provide valuable leadership lessons, provoking your thoughts and have a paradigm shift.

Hope you enjoy the insights from the video below, subscribe to the channel to receive weekly insights on several book reviews weekly but also to receive a 1-page pdf summary of my insights of the books.

FROM REACTIVE TO CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

Leaders today are faced with many critical challenges as a result of the VUCU (Volatile, uncertain, complex, and unpredictable) environment which then requires the leaders to be more creative and at higher levels, than ever before. However, many organizations today both locally and even globally have most of their leaders leading reactively. Examples are in financial services when one financial institution kicks off a deposit mobilization campaign to mop up deposits for purpose of their strategic focus, you will find all other key financial institutions will similarly do the same their tactics would have changed due to the change in the tactic of their competitor, another example is in telecommunication where we have seen the two major institutions in Kenya, one being more reactive to the other institution campaigns; this is more the same for insurance companies and many other organizations across the world with such a reactive leadership block. Away from Corporates, we also see a similar issue in political leadership. When addressing issues politicians instead of being their own, most would wish to imitate or address their rivals rather than focusing on their agenda, and what they would wish to achieve in their political agenda.

“Many organizations today both locally and even globally have most of their leaders leading reactively.”

Gilbert Angana

Don’t get me wrong in saying such behaviors from leaders portrays some reactive leadership instead of them being more creative. A good example of reactive campaigns for example would be when organizations and leaders react based on the current realities and environment by aligning their businesses and campaigns to respond to real-time events, news, and topics that will make their brand appear more relevant and relatable. It’s also likely that the content and campaign will receive more impressions than usual, given that numerous people will already be actively engaged with or aware of the topic at that particular time. However, reactive leadership is not based on the change in the VUCU environment, has built-in limits to scale, and tends to cancel itself out, and outmatched by the complexities that leaders face.

The solution to such organizations and leaders is on the aspect of training their leaders to shift their paradigm and be more ADAPTIVE than REACTIVE as the first step to more to being CREATIVE leaders. This then requires the leaders to start evolving to a higher order in their thinking and leading; this will enable them to start solving basic problems of complexity in their environment. Adaptive Leadership is the door to creative leadership, if we do not evolve then it’s highly likely that the leader will fall behind; this, therefore, means that organizations with leaders who are not adaptive, are not evolving and therefore the organization becomes less and less relevant to their customers, and eventually perish or no longer have a positive sustainable future performance but rather operate to survive only.

Adaptive Leadership is the door to creative leadership, if we do not evolve then it’s highly likely that the leader will fall behind

What does ADAPTIVE mean as a journey to CREATIVE? It means evolving from the INside OUT; coming up with new ways of decision making, acting, and making a better meaning out of situations; deconstructing our current leadership levels (John Maxwell talks about five leadership levels in that order as position, permission, production, people development, pinnacle) and reconstructing the next higher leadership level more fit for the particular complex and unprintable purpose.

Therefore is summary leaders shift involves moving from REACTIVE to ADAPTIVE to CREATIVE leadership; ADAPTIVE LEADER’S recognize the volatile and uncertain environment we all operate in and develop self-leadership mechanisms to enable them to evolve so as not to be left behind,  CREATIVE LEADERS, on the other hand, more a notch higher, they take cognizance of the complex and unpredictable environment, then move to a stage of strategically acting to influence that environment and develop solutions for the uncertain and unpredictable environment. This is why you see the difference in organizations that aim to create solutions based on their environment and those who use the shortcut of copying their competitors because they are unaware of their environment themselves but believe they operate in the same mechanics as their competitors without really internalizing their uniqueness in purpose and acting.

So, how do we help such organizations and their leaders? What steps can the leaders start taking to move to CREATIVE leadership?

Let’s look at three stages to evolve into a creative leader, and each of the below stages is built-in in Step-Afrique transformadaptive leadership research conducted and overview of the details can be found at https://stepafrique.com/2020/12/29/the-re-invention-of-leadership/

1. Sharpen Your IN

When we start developing our self-awareness, building on the aspect of managing our internal self in our thoughts and actions, then we will start having some level of self-confidence, which builds on our self-esteem to start making the small evolutions in our inner self as leaders. The leader without proper awareness of self, will not be aware of their environment and therefore means they will be managed by situations that are happening around them including situations that their competitors are driving and therefore end s up copying unashamed just because of their lack of self-awareness which has had a ripple effect in the lack of their environment awareness and therefore managed by their competitors and environment. When the leaders deploy themselves in this state of lack of self-awareness and inability to manage themselves and their surroundings, this is will make them lead and live reactively, since their behavior is being managed by outside circumstances and expectations and majorly dependent on outside validation of their bosses or otherwise for their job security and self-esteem.

Their organizations then end up acting and continuously living up to the expectations of their competitors, and depend on their competitors’ next strategy or campaign that will then enable them to make the next move. This then results in an organization that is not living to its full potential, with such self-limiting leaders, not tangible innovations in the organizations rather than what they have adopted from their competitors pasting their tactics and running and therefore are hit hard when the complexity of their environment shifts. The last season of 2020 and now has been a good example to showcase some of those organizations and their strength of creativity is measured by their sustainable performance now and in the future.

It’s critical to understand that leaders who have to Sharpen their IN –Self Leadership have some level of discernment of what is important to them, what they stand for, and have clarity of ideas and actions they would implement since they have a sense of purpose which is translated into their vision for the future for themselves and their organization. This then drives AUTHENTICITY and avoid scenarios of copy-pasting what others are doing and acting, but rather focus on your vision and the vision of your organization. This is the hallmark of CREATIVE leadership, where you as the leader no longer lead by or through fear; where you as the leader are not playing for purposes of losing, but focused on your purpose and vision.

What are you standing for as a Leader and as an Organization?

Leaders who have to Sharpen their IN –Self Leadership have some level of discernment of what is important to them, what they stand for!

• Building Your OUT

The tension from INside OUT is heavy in leaders, from understanding self to focus on strategic understanding which mainly touches on understanding your leadership purpose. Every leader wants to be part o something much greater than them, they all envision to be Strategic Leaders in their own right, but the majority of them the struggle is on the HOW? I have written a workbook on LEADERSHIP PURPOSE that will be released in the next couple of weeks that is a step by step guide that helps leaders understand, develop and live their purpose that will be accompanied by a consecutive LEADERSHIP PURPOSE COACHING PROGRAM on the same that would be beneficial to help leaders develop this aspect if interest visit www.stepafrique.com for details and booking.

Many leaders genuinely and constantly try to pursue to understand their OUT through their IN and get the understanding but it’s never easy to get that spot where you feel this is it now; this is my leadership purpose. HIGHER CREATIVITY sprout at the beginning of is the understanding your LEADERSHIP PURPOSE

If as leaders, we continually play into our COMFORT ZONE all the time and avoid taking risks, we won’t be able to EXPERIENCE OUR GROWTH and thus may not be able to discover our PURPOSE.

Organizations focused on becoming market leaders must have leaders who are highly focused and motivated to pursue their purpose and their organization’s purpose and not be managed by their environment and their competitors. Most organizations today lack this focus and purpose and that is why many of them end up doing anything to avoid losing the confidence of key stakeholders including being driven by their competitors’ strategic goals and activities.

A read an article by an anonymous scholar who shared “Living on purpose is risky, but paradoxically, by taking the future into our own hands, individually and collectively, we create a different kind of safety—the kind that comes with creating the life and future we were born to create”.

An organization cannot pursue its purpose and also be managed by competitors’ activities at the same time!

If we continually play into our COMFORT ZONE all the time and avoid taking risks, we won’t be able to EXPERIENCE OUR GROWTH and thus may not be able to discover our PURPOSE.

• Developing your UP

This last aspect is critical and forms part of the loop of transformadaptive experience as a leader that helps develop the leader’s creativity – CONSCIOUS. A higher level of creativity as a leader is achieved by not only understanding your LEADERSHIP PURPOSE but, by also living it. Developing your consciousness helps you to have clarity in the discernment of your relationships, your full environment, and its effects, and how to optimally take advantage of it, but more so is the ability to take action and living the purpose – SELF-EFFICACY. This CONSCIOUSNESS is at the core of the leader and determines how the leaders deploy themselves into circumstances moment to moment. Based on our research on transformadaptive experience our research, we found that RELATIONAL, ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS, and SELF-EFFICACY are ingredients for highly-creative leaders.

From an organizational perspective, leaders at this stage are less self-centric (positional, permission, and production) and more about developing the capacity and capability of the organization (people development and pinnacle levels). The leaders then are more approachable and skillful in working with people, listens well, build high-performing teams, mentor, and develop capability in others, and then empower them. The leaders are operating at a High-creative level and can understand that creativity and growth is not about them but the team, and the organization; they can understand that their level of creativity is only one, but incorporating the team results in a multiplier effect in their leadership and the organization as large; they start to embody their vision calmly and with integrity across their teams.

Literature reviews on leadership state that “when we drive others for our self-centric purposes, we do so most often out of fear and playing not-to-lose. We lose sight of the larger purpose (perhaps we never had it in sight), and our self-centric purposes rise to the fore.” This then makes us as leaders focus less on contributing, and work hard to meet the expectations given to us by others, our competitors, and in their activities.

A higher level of creativity as a leader is achieved by not only understanding your LEADERSHIP PURPOSE but, by also living it.

If we change that mindset, then as leaders we move from sharpening our IN which is our self-leadership; to building our OUT which is our STRATEGIC PURPOSE; and eventually developing our UP which is our CONSCIOUSNESS living our ability to make a difference and this is the pinnacle of CREATIVE LEADERSHIP.

So make that Paradigm Shift as an Individual Leader, as an organization to move from REACTIVE to CREATIVE leadership and see the transformation in SELF and ORGANIZATION.

We can help you develop such a robust program to enable your leadership team to undertake this transition to reach out through www.stepafrique.com

Author:

Why Your Organization is Deeping this Season?

We have seen how COVID-19 has affected the business environment, even organizations that were thought to have strong foundations especially here in Kenya have been shaken and affected, we have seen a huge dip in many organizations revenues and consequently profitability, most have actually moved into losses these couple of months so far. This business environment will not go away in a flash, it’s here to stay for a while, that means that organizations that still drag or fail to move with the tide, are highly likely to be left on the shores of failure, losses and possibly shut down.

So what has really changed this season compared to all past such Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Unpredictable (VUCU) seasons in the past that some organizations have survived?

The simple answer for me is that, many organizations have been on a roller-coaster and had neglected for a long time the aspect of developing conscious leadership in their teams. Don’t get me wrong many organizations have been developing their teams through trainings and most of the trainings are generic, internal, and mainly meant to satisfy their balance scorecards and those who have taken it a notch higher are mainly to develop some aspects of leadership capabilities that are basic and not necessarily strategic and conscious.

So what exactly is conscious leadership and why is it important?

Conscious leadership is a transformational leadership style with a critical focus on growing and strengthening the people, and teams, who in turn will grow and strengthen their organizations and their surrounding business environment. This then makes this leadership more responsive and not reactive by ensuring that they continuously strive to improve under any circumstance and create an inspiring environment with those around them for continual creativity, innovation and growth.

Conscious leaders are not only cognizant of themselves, and their teams, they are also cognizant and aligned with their customers’ current demands and future needs.

When you understand what the world needs from you, then you are able to build solutions and create a profitable business out of it.

Many organizations today have invested their energies and resources in technological advancements in light of the digital transformation which is a great investment no doubt but most of them at the expense of their people from a consciousness perspective. Here in Kenya there are numerous examples of both blue-chip organizations and even local companies that have spent fortunes to upgrade or bring onboard new technological solutions but their people aspect have been heavily hampered resulting into their current predicament in their business revenues.

It’s important for organizations to understand that in as much as technological advancements will take us into the future, it’s the aspect of consciousness that will keep humanity from extinction a sentiment that is also opined by Deepak Chopra founder of Chopra Foundation.

With many organizations today hanging in the balance, those that are likely to survive post-this season, will definitely have to change their view on business and restore the aspect of conscious leadership in their organization.

They have to take an intentional shift to developing leadership consciousness to restore their competitive edge.

So how do you do that? How do you power or align your organization or business through consciousness?

Go back to the basics: Renew your Organization Purpose and ensure everyone is re-aligned.

Conscious leadership requires that all that you do as an organization or business is impactful and fully owned by the people driving the purpose who are your leaders, staff, teams and more so your customers are fully aligned and also own your organization purpose.

All your teams must go back to the basics, to being passionate about your organization and in synch across all units, divisions and segments in driving and generating revenue with clear focus on positively impacting the customers.

The key to going back to basics is for the organizations to think outwards in delivering value to the customers while looking within, their teams must own and understand their purpose, share the purpose internally through synching processes, systems, teamwork, and inspiring leadership among others. This is where most organizations have lost touch in the current season.

Promote Flexibility: Allow teams to challenge the organizations beliefs, policies, and develop the reality of the new business model.

I have had a chance to work for the last 13 years in great regional organizations here in Kenya, with great structures and policies but the reality is, those structures and policies many of them are outdated and not in synch with the current realities, but built on the premise of political alignment within the organizations. This then creates bureaucracies, rigidity and inefficiencies that might not be easily realized since they are at the heart of the system and many other parts somehow keep moving thus making them operate at sub optimal level. However, many of such organizations have been shaken now and if they do not relook at their systems efficiencies, structural integrations, flexibility in their people and policies to challenge some of the traditional status quos, then they may not necessarily grow past this season to their trajectories.  

The only way organizations will survive and thrive in such times is by allowing their traditional beliefs and policies to be challenge by their teams in order to come up with contingency plans that will help them stay on top of any situation.

Organizations that allow their policies and traditional beliefs, to be challenged are likely to disrupt their strategic thoughts and result in strategic innovations and a way forward where everyone else sees a dead-end.

Step up; Develop Conscious Leadership Culture

Our society today is an open book so to say, consumers are very keen on service, experience, but more so can see right through the value an organization adds into their lives and even business. Consumers also wants to deal with organizations and businesses that are conscious of who they are and live up to that.

Start this radical mental shift and re-define your organization.

More so engage us, we work with you to develop and help you build a base of conscious leadership culture within your organization.

A conscious leadership culture is centered on coaching and trust – trust between colleagues, customers, leaders, stakeholders, partners, communities and so on. In a culture of trust, people can speak their truth knowing they will be heard and respected. This is what will make you survive and thrive.

Step-Afrique Pitstop is a Leadership publication authored by Coach Gilbert with the aim of teaching and coaching matters leadership and how it shapes our society and world. Get in touch for details on how we can create a customized Coaching & Training Program for your teams and organization

Accent Leadership Group (Step-Afrique Consultancy) www.stepafrique.com : info@stepafrique.com Office: +254762990422

About Coach Gilbert: Gilbert Ang’ana is the CEO at Step-Afrique, an Author (BREAK OUT & SPEED), a Ph.D. scholar in Leadership development, a Leadership Coach & Trainer; Passionate about Leadership Development, and more so on Conscious Leadership.

WHO WILL CRY WHEN YOU DIE?

This year has been a great year for me by any standards, but also had its share of disappointments. When my dad passed on this year, I had pushed myself hard and say no, I don’t want to cry, God gives us life and God takes life, and I remember reminding myself in my head several times that NO – I will not cry, even when I saw my sisters and brother crying, I kept the focus and for sure I did, until the last day when we were laying him down the grave and I busted out into a loud cry that I couldn’t even control. I wondered how, and where did this come from?

My question for you today is – Who will Cry When you Die?

And I don’t mean here physical cry like I did when I saw my father going down the grave.

In my book – BREAK OUT, I wrote about my journey to discoursing my calling and purpose; right from birth God had a design for my life, from my unique blackness to my journey throughout, being that leader from young age-prefect in primary, in high school, taking on leadership realm in the campus at front line political change champion in the first year to building and supporting other leaders in the consecutive years, to my corporate journey starting from the entry-level to where I am today, is a testament of HIS purpose in my life which He has allowed me to take every step. However, this journey of DISCOVERY was not smooth; I have met good leaders along the way, I have met bad leaders, or not so good leaders, I have met good individuals who became a friend and even brothers, but I have also met individuals who have not been happy about my journey and my path, I have had personal issues, falling along the way, but fallen forward where I had to pick myself up and focus on the call, the goal. I knew along the journey that I had a greater calling and Purpose, which I am living today!

What is your purpose, how can you connect it with what you have gone through so far?

or are you a;

Get up, go to work or business, Go to bed Person?

I recall my times across the corporates I have worked with, KCB Bank, Co-op Bank, and recently Airtel; and in all these areas, I have had very emotional send-offs, of my teams sharing very deeply emotional stuff of how I had impacted their lives, the great change they have created in their lives as a result of our interactions, the stuff they have learned ad implementing as a result of our engagement, the value they have found in me, the challenge I have given them and the story can go on and on. I have been overwhelmed with all the comments and emotional sentiments from my team – BUT, I kept asking myself, what did I do? I did not see how I did, but I came to discover that, it’s the way I valued people, the way I carried myself from an Integrity and character, the way I challenged people to move from their status quo, the way I challenged people to STOP managing TIME and manage themselves, and the way I had to find the greater meaning of my life myself, the contributions I intentional made in the lives of others and the way I enjoyed that journey and many other ways. This is what made people cry every time I step into other journeys, I was living the journey that God designed me to, the path that I needed to go through, to learn, add value to people as I moved to the bigger picture which was HIS calling for my LIFE. And today I am living my journey, my calling, and my Purpose, just because I never lost focus along the PATH.

The question you need to ask yourself as you read this is;

How can you find the greater meaning of your life?

How can you make a lasting contribution through your work?

How can you enjoy the journey of this life as you make that lasting impact?

If you want people to CRY when you “DIE” when you move to other steps in your life be intentional. I read a book sometimes back by Robin Sharma on this topic and some key profound things I learned are:

1. Every day be kind – Add value to people
2. Focus and keep your perspective – your bigger picture should dictate your daily actions
3. Every day keep your discipline – this is what will make you strive
4. Be honest and trustworthy – we don’t have many people today in this space
5. Your past is your past – learn & focus on your future and towards the bigger picture
6. Keep off detractors – could be your closest friends, your boss, say NO to such, and FOCUs on your priorities
7. LOVE what you DO and DO what you LOVE
8. SERVE – all GREAT LEADERS live a selfless LIFE

DISCOVER YOUR CALLING!

RE-WRITE YOUR LIFE STORY TODAY!

LIVE YOUR LEGACY ONE-LIFE AT A TIME!

This is what will MAKE people CRY when you “DIE”

See below detailed download

Step-Afrique Pitstop is a Leadership publication authored by Coach Gilbert with the aim of teaching and coaching matters leadership and how it shapes our society and world. Get in touch for details on how we can create a customized Coaching & Training Program for your teams and organization

Step-Afrique Consultancy www.stepafrique.com : afriquestep@gmail.com Office: +254743990422

About Coach Gilbert: Gilbert Ang’ana is the CEO at Step-Afrique, an Author (BREAK OUT & SPEED), a Ph.D. scholar in Leadership development, a Leadership Coach & Trainer; Passionate about Leadership Development, and more so on Conscious Leadership.

The church in Africa among other religious institutions historically have influenced political life since the pre-colonial era, we can relate to how colonialism came alongside the spread and growth of Christianity in Africa. In the post-independence period to date in many countries in Africa, religion and more so the church still plays a big role in advocating good politics and governance; In South Africa for example during Apartheid, some church leaders (led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu) sided with the poor and called for the end of the apartheid. In Liberia, during the Liberian war, the head of the Lutheran church was asked to be the vice president of the state while efforts were being made to end the war and many other examples we can relate to.

• Build grassroots’ power

• Public Education on the BBI thematic areas and its impact

• Lobbying

• Nonpartisan voter mobilization

How do vulnerable leaders act?

For more details download copy of Step-Afrique PitStop Publication below