Business as we know it in South Africa is modelled on best business principles derived from Western culture and Western thinking. An in important question is what kind of business solutions we will discover if we embrace principles from the East and Africa as well?
The case study below offers one such example:
Coaching was recommended for a young black manager employed at a Eurocentric chemical company because he ‘is perceived not to be assertive’ enough. His superior is concerned that he will not be able to show his potential to its fullest and represent his team optimally unless he is more assertive. The manager willingly complies. A first puzzle in understanding his perceived lack of assertiveness is his Enneagram personality profile which indicates a highly competitive nature which is ambitious, places high store on achieving and being perceived as the best, or at least, as very competent. A trait that one would expect fosters high levels of assertiveness.
Exploring his working relationships, the manager relates the innate Eastern business values of respect, dignity and trust he learnt at his previous employer, an Asian company. He reflects on the type of leadership actions these values lead to, and also how it corresponds with his own culture’s value of respecting elders.
The manager, a chemical engineer, indicates that most of the members of his team are older than him, with more experience in the company. It is difficult for him to issue instructions to them, therefore he prefers to have meetings where strategies and directions to be taken are shared and debated. He indicates that he still have challenges in motivating team members to trouble shoot problems as they occur, and take responsibility for solutions, but that their growing motivation and cooperation is increasingly evident. (He provides abundant illustrations of the difference this approach has made)
Thus, the manager’s own cultural beliefs, as well as what he gleaned from his first employer’s Eastern philosophies, has shaped his leadership in a particular manner. His leadership style, which appears unassertive to the Western observer, is strategically embedded in his value system, with the positive results one expects to come from good strategies. Only, the strategy is invisible to the Western eye!
These values are not exclusively African or eastern, but wholly corresponds with the rapidly emerging philosophy of Theory U, conceptualized by Otto Scharmer from MIT. This world renowned change agent believes our best chance of meeting ever more complex challenges is by tapping our collective capacity. To do so, Scharmer emphatically holds that things cannot get better, or real creative innovation cannot happen, without deep listening to one another, an act which originates from curiosity and real respect for the other’s insights, perspective and wisdom. This process, he says, births the potential for fresh creative solutions to challenges.
Yours in curiosity and respect,
Hanna