What is African Leadership?
What does Afican Leadership mean?
A useful start is to define “leadership” but that isn’t easy. Apparently over 2,000 books and 35,000 articles are written about leadership every year. Presumably each has its unique definition but there is consensus about the link between leadership and followership. Without followers there is no leadership! There is general agreement that followership should be voluntary and willing, if not passionate and inspired. Exercising power, especially the power of the powerful over the powerless, is not generally regarded as leadership, though it gets things done.
So then what does African Leadership mean? Does it mean a natural, homegrown approach to leadership that is unique, peculiar or endemic to Africa? If that is what it means, I haven’t come across it, though I have diligently searched for it over the past 15 years. And if there is such a thing as African Leadership, how do you put Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Albert Luthuli, F.W. de Klerk and Jan Smuts in the same box as P.W. Botha, Verwoerd, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and Charles Taylor?
If, however, “African Leadership” means an approach to leading, a leadership style, a competence and quality that is most likely to work in Africa and results in enthusiastic - even passionate – followership, then that is much easier to define and teach.
The starting point on that journey is to understand Africa; its history, its culture, its beliefs, its diversity and how it is developing. That understanding provides clear pictures, or paradigms, which seem to determine followership behaviour in Africa.
What are the predominant pictures of Africa, and are they common to all who live in Africa? I am fascinated by two clearly different clusters of pictures, each profoundly affecting leadership and followership behaviours in Africa.
One cluster emphasizes practical, merit-based, bottom line effectiveness. What is important is to be independent, transaction-driven, time-efficient and successful. And “my success” is not “our success” – a largely Western point of view.
The other cluster is interdependent, communal, relationship-aware and respectful. A society in which “belonging” is more important than “becoming” and success is “ours” not “mine” – essentially African.
To be successful, leaders of Africa have to earn followers from both clusters – from across a wide, almost opposite, spectrum of beliefs about society. Such leaders would have to live comfortably with paradox. They would have to understand, respect and really enjoy operating in a complex environment. They would then have the capacity to mould passionate followers whose pictures are different, even opposite, into one team, one network, and one country.
Nelson Mandela has earned followership from an amazingly wide spectrum of Africans; Desmond Tutu and Thabo Mkebi from a narrower base – the jury is out on Mugabe.
What we can contribute is our definition of African Leadership and how we teach it.
Living comfortably and confidently with paradox enables leadership in Africa. That is what Learning to Lead teaches best.
