Leadership Development in Africa - Part 1
(to read the comments so far click here)
I would like to welcome Dr. Paul Rono as my co-author. With Paul’s experience as a university lecturer and my experience as leadership developer for numerous private and public companies in Africa, we think we can give the reader a good ‘blend’ of effective leadership development for African managers. Natural Leaders? Modern Functional Leadership is essentially to facilitate the interaction within a group to achieve preset goals, to realize the organization’s strategic objectives. Such functional managers or leaders are usually nominated, appointed and selected from among equals. If people utilize proper and effective managerial tools and motivation, performance and effectiveness increase considerably. Of course, this is also applicable to African managers and leaders acquiring or possessing modern functional leadership skills in a target achievement and ‘productive’ environment. Successful Leadership Behaviour Successful African Leaders Competencies What are Effective Leaders? Characteristics of Effective Leaders Highly productive leaders tend to spend more time than less productive managers to: Managers and Leadership Development To become truly effective African Managers and Leaders they will have to be developed through sustainable leadership competency programs that offer training with a difference. (See “Trends in Leadership development” Part II). These development efforts should be highly interactive, aimed at leadership and managerial competencies such as delegation and responsibilities acceptance. These customized interventions are generally short (maximum 4 to 5 days) followed up and coached by their superiors, i.e. the participants should be given room to ‘experiment’ with their newly acquired skills. In Summary In our next article, Paul and I will go deeper into specific competency development aspects such as the ability to delegate tasks, sense of responsibility and speeding up the execution of tasks, again related to African managers and leaders. More About the Authors More About Lex: More About Paul: This article was written for the International HR Forum Blog, where I am a contributing editor. For more articles of interest on a variety of International HR topics, visit the blog at http://internationalhr.wordpress.com.
Authors:
Lex Lindeman – HR Boosters and
Dr. Paul Rono – Kenyatta University (Nairobi)
The leadership and philosophies of African political leaders have affected institutions and companies in various African countries for many years. For example, charismatic leaders were believed to be those who have the natural capacity and personality traits or qualities to lead. Hence, leaders were said to be born or natural “great men.” Traditionally, leadership was said to be an attribute of personality. Born or charismatic leaders become real leaders because they have such personality qualities but also: ambition, patience, pride, humility, wisdom, friendliness, dependability, force, endurance and, of course, managerial competencies.
The elements enumerated above are essential to successful leadership behaviour. The successful leader is:
The modern African leader or manager should be more ‘democratic’ in his/her relations with subordinates and at the same time maintain the necessary authority and control in the organization or institution for which he/she is responsible. The somewhat less modern African leaders rely on collective accountability. Good (thus effective) leaders inspire people/staff to perform optimally if necessary individually or as a team. The best African leaders, despite their many differences in personality, practice certain principles like delegation, creativeness, networking, individual accountability and decision-making.
The nature and style of functional (managerial) leadership greatly influence job satisfaction and motivation. Effective leaders show consideration for employees and enable them to have a sense of participation in decisions that affect them and they will have the following characteristics:
Most leaders want to be more effective in their leadership. Some think they only need to learn techniques, others assume that they can learn a magic formula or foolproof method. Effective functional leadership implies an intensive development process. Some of the ability comes as a result of experience, some by learning from mistakes, by profiling from the experience and mistakes of others, from personal insights and by learning managerial skills.
It is certain that African countries will grow and develop in the coming years; look at the example of the pace of growth of mobile phone networks and coverage. Efficient infrastructures, systems and processes are put in place. However, just this is not enough; Inspiring Functional Leadership is an absolute necessity for growth. Sustainable investment in the modern development of African managers and leaders is primordial. In order to accelerate and maintain growth in Sub-Saharan Africa we must put in place the right learning work environment and formal, high-impact development possibilities.
Dr. Rono is a lecturer at Kenyatta University in Nairobi. He is an authority on leadership development, and has published various articles related to leadership development in Africa with a progressive yet adoptable and realistic view. Watch for his new website coming soon!
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