The Coming Gale: Inspirational Leadership as Social Responsibility
If you’re privileged to chance a corporate leader’s bio, you are apt to find courses he/ she took on leadership at Ivy places such as INSEAD, Harvard, Yale and the rest. Sometimes, it would seem those are the courses that validate their place at the head of the table. As well, when you scan CVS of candidates seeking top jobs, they invariably have the leadership course pegged somewhere in there. If it’s not, you can be sure it would be one of their main answers for what they plan to tick off in the next few years, usually five.
Obviously, as with most other things, there are different schools of thought on the subject of leadership. But they are all agreed, be they of the servant leadership persuasion or the despotic leader inclined, leaders lead; full stop. And at no time is the role of leadership more critical as in this crisis period when people are in between every shaky thing and not sure where or how they stand. Leaders it is who give strength, spine, and a sense of direction.
But the real thing leaders do especially in a time like this is the ability to inspire, to help people see beyond the travails with which they are confronted and to make a beeline for the direction that keeps them grounded despite the shakings. It falls to the leader to point in that direction where hopefully, there’ll be salvation or the foundation to start all over.
Like John Maxwell never tires of saying, “Everything rises and falls on leadership”. It’s the same for nations as it is for organisations and for households. So, even as we all look to the national leadership, which has not been especially inspiring, it falls on the broad shoulders of organizational leaders to help inspire their men and women to see beyond the bleakness that all the indices of the day seem to portend.
The work of hope building must begin from within the organisations. The general who leads his troops into battle, (where some of them are most likely going to meet their end), still needs to keep them enthusiastic and focused with regards to the venture. What do they gain by winning? For those who do not make it out, what is their lot aside the keenly told stories of their valour in battle? Those promises must be made and with a mind to keeping them.
It’s not enough to want to cut your losses as most organisations are going to be doing shortly, or have already begun; what’s even more important to folks invested in your leadership is that they not be left unanchored one way or another. The brutal decisions regarding staff retrenchment should not, as much as possible, be so ungloved as to leave the leaving battered and without after care. One of the major issues of the day, I believe, is for leaders to ask the searing questions: what’s going to happen to my men and women after now? What can I do for my men and women?
This might sound like unnecessary mushy sentiments to the hard charging characters who, having been served well throughout their career by the Machiavellian principle of survival of the fittest have bruised and bloodied their way to the top. And doubtless, many will have no time for such considerations. However, leadership best practices require that the leader feel the pulse of his people; that he/she wear their shoes and know where they pinch. That guidance be rendered for those to be let off. We are not here asking that people not be let go. The realities are rather stark and that’s the only option open to many corporate leaders, worldwide, not just in Nigeria. But it can’t be done in the cavalier fashion of old where staff are cast in the mould of the negligible dispensable.
And whether there be precedence or none in business literature, leaders must engage with their staff, both those who are going to be retained and those who are being let go, at different levels but for the same purpose: to keep them inspired and to yet believe in the dream from which they are tragically been cut off. Attention to such delicate details can only come from leaders who believe that they are running a critical leg in the relay race to the overall corporate objective. Such a sentiment doesn’t always come layered in facts and figures; they come in dreams and the ability to persuade followers to buy into the dream.
Now if after having bought into it, management deems it fit to pencil down their names as surplus to requirement, what should be the pitch to them? That they just go gently into the dark night? That the dream is too big for puny individuals like them to run with? That they slow down the rest of the team with their lack of pace? That they are better off as cheer leaders in the stands rather than the field of play?
How the message is couched might be of utmost importance even if a go is a go. A leader would know what chord to pull and that would resonate across board. One of these, no one being let go should leave without being dealt a good measure of hope. What can the company do for them in the short term? Say in the next two/three months as they struggle to find their feet? Is there some promise of reabsorption should things improve? Can there be some outsourcing opportunities for which they can consult for the company?
Ultimately, people tend to find their way at the end of the day, after the shock gives way and a man’s survival instinct kicks in. But a leader soulless and unsympathetic to the plight of his people is not a leader. They are his people. They should remain his people. The company should remain their company. The dream should remain their dream. That should be the goal. No way is everyone ever going to align with the same idea, but the effort must be made to keep as many people as possible enthusiastic. That just might be the competitive edge the company has in the long term over rivals
Early this year, Jennifer Ramatu Etuh, succumbed to cancer, an ailment she had battled for years. She was known, alongside many other kind hearted Nigerian ladies, as a Florence Nightingale. She strove with her husband, Thomas Etuh, to cobble together an ever growing businesses empire that straddles agriculture, chemicals, real estate, amongst others. She was only 45 when she passed on, but she had made a mark especially in the FCT, where her family was domiciled; in not adept at deploying emotional intelligence in dealing with staff, severed and serving.
And in communicating this well, retrenched staff begin to see the world as it truly is; a place chock full of opportunities where in being let go they are being released from their tether and allowed a free range of advantages in stark contrast to the adversity they imagined.
Stepping outside of their respective businesses, Nigeria’s inspirational corporate leaders should keep weighing in on where we find ourselves as a nation. We are at a crossroads, clearly, but this is not the first time we’ll find ourselves here. Nigeria has been a lesson in crossroads. Whenever we have somehow managed to get back on track it’s only to quickly lose track again and wander off until we hit another cross roads. Taking on the role of champion of ill-conceived government policies therefore does the country no good, although it needs be said, there are consequences for being considered adversarial by an allpowerful government capable of vindictiveness when it feels itself crossed. But leadership takes courage, doesn’t it?
Not courage that’s tactless, however. There’s a need to imbibe some diplomatese even while delivering unsavoury messages. Those who consider themselves influential need to keep speaking up: how we got here, how we can escape it, what we can do as individuals, as a collective, etc.
And while we are at it, we can’t, for the life of us, forget that our young people are listening in. What’s in this country for them? Why are they going to school if the place is all messed up, if their patrimony is up for grabs by Chinese land grabbers and miners, amongst others? The leader’s first responsibility is to the next generation. Without their buy in he/she is an abysmal failure. Unfortunately, Nigeria has run all these years by trampling down on the hopes and aspiration of this critical group. And that is why, until we rectify that bit, they will keep running away to everywhere else.
How is it so hard to convince young people to the wealth embedded in their country? That brings in foreigners in droves. Foreigners empowered by their own home countries, and ironically, by the Nigerian government. We know it is rarely by individual might or power that wealth is created. The strategy must be in place to empower the young folks so that even when government is talking about how young Nigerians can harness the potentials, they are also sufficiently empowered to do so. Until this happens, those who can pool greater funds together and supported by superior intel will keep getting away with the goods.
Inspirational corporate leaders need not join politics to have an outsize influence. They have a good enough niche already from their corporate pedestals and the accompanying mass media derivatives. And now, with Covid 19, coupled with a lack of predictably good revenue from oil, and a general tanking of the world economy, it’s a good time to deploy their acumen in giving a broad vision and a sense of direction pertaining the possibilities outside of the safety of a salaried job. Let’s hear it from them.
This week, amid global panic surrounding Covid-19, financial markets took the worst hit of any single day since 1987. Investors and portfolio managers began preparations for austerity and continued belt-tightening as governments grappled to respond to the growing crisis. Both publicly and privately, philanthropy began to wonder whether it should hold off on making grants or liquidating investments.
We will say this plainly: As markets collapse and nonprofits face drastic drops in government and private support, it is no time for philanthropy to think about cutting back. Instead, we must give more. We must give more to address the public-health crisis while continuing to fund existing social and systemic change efforts.
There is a real risk that philanthropy will be tempted to cut back on its investments and grant making. After the 2008 market collapse, for example, philanthropic gifts dropped by more than 15 percent. This left $30 billion sitting in private coffers instead of being used to further the public good.
Our tendency in philanthropy has been to continue making the minimum legally required payout instead of thinking first about maximum impact to prevent long-term societal damage. In the midst of this crisis, too many foundations will be tempted to continue that practice — but this moment is both a mandate and an opportunity to fundamentally question that approach. The virus will eventually dissipate, but its effects will be longstanding and will exacerbate the social inequalities we already face.
What’s more, we are already dealing with a number of existential threats that will not evaporate and that will require long-term changes. Philanthropy must use this moment as an opportunity to fundamentally rethink past practices and upend the status quo.
Nonprofits are already facing a drop in donations, and many are increasingly concerned about their ability to pay and support their staff, and have incurred losses from canceled fundraising events and program-related travel. Within nonprofit organizations themselves, most lower-level employees — often the first to be let go when finances get dire — come from marginalized communities themselves.
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