Blog – Getting back too leadership basics
I grew up in a township in South Africa Limpopo Province and I am one of 5 children. I remember very well one of our favourite past times was to make cars out of wire used for fencing. Some kids, were more creative than others when it came to making cars (I was not one of them). We had one of our cousinIt’s cousin, make The A-Team's car and we were all in awe of his creation.
Obviously the neighbourIt’s side of the fence was first to go in our creations of this fantasy world were creativity was the name of the game. After so many years, the only other time I saw one of these creations was in Namibia. I bought one (see attached pic) for my son when he was 5 year old 10 years ago. I had to test drive and make sure the car is in good condition before letting him play with it.
The process of buying the car, brought into my mind a number of things: back to my childhood years where as a child, the world was my oyster and I could become whatever I wanted without any conformity to anything laid out by adults, having fun was it, we seem to have forgotten about having fun in our lives and are so consumed by work, family responsibilities and other pressing stuff. We only wait for the holiday season to have fun.
Leadership whether politics or at work seems to also have forgotten the basics about leadership, greeting your team members, creating an environment where people express their talents and gifts in the workplace (we spend more time at work than at home), why not have fun at work, constant feedback to and from our team members. Communication is now almost always email, what happened to basic elements of ubuntu (a person is a person because of other people)
Leadership seems to wait for things to get out of hand first before they can communicate anything to anyone which fuels lot of speculation. Communicating such basics as how the team is doing against set targets, what is the progress towards the goal. I recently took part in the Cape Cycle Tour 2019, what was nice was that every 10km or so there was a sign which indicated how many kilometres left to the finishing line, it 110km, 100, 90 etc. This for me was a good psychological boost as I saw the distance left going down which showed progress as opposed to 10km done 100km to go. Leaders should communicate team progress regularly.
Leaders are to share the vision, strategy benefits of any change, answer the what is in it for me questions. Leadership should as per the last article lead by example.
LetIt’s go back to the basics of humanity, having time for each other, greeting with a smile, communicating, having fun and many more favourite past times, like making cars out of the neighbourIt’s fence, create for each other a stress free environment, whether a family member, team leader or friends, indeed, letIt’s go back to the basics.