Ryland Fisher
On Tuesday, 14 July 2020, I was a panelist in a webinar hosted by Resolve and Change Systems (RACS). The topic of discussion was: Leading in turbulent times: charting a new direction. Below are my prepared notes for this discussion:
First, let me thank RACS for giving me this opportunity to share my views on a very important topic.
I would like to start with the definition of leadership, not in terms of what you find in dictionaries, but what I have learned from my experience at the university of life.
My rough definition of leadership is when someone, through their words and actions, show others what to do in particular situations, and convince the others to follow. Leaders can be found in many situations and places, from huge corporations or government departments, to community organisations, NGOs, religious groups, sports bodies, etc. But leadership is also found in homes, where it is often the most critical.
I would like to talk about leadership in all these areas in the next few minutes. I will share with you 10 lessons in leadership that I have learned from watching those in government, and in the corporate and non-profit sectors, among others. Most of these lessons are based on observing government, but they can also easily apply to corporates or other sectors of society.
We all think we know what government is doing as the leaders of our country. We wait with anticipation every time the President is supposed to address us and we express our anger when he announces a greater curtailment of our freedoms or he ignores certain areas that we deem important.
A case in point was President Ramaphosa’s televised address to the nation on Sunday night in which he announced a new curfew and that alcohol sales would be suspended with immediate effect. All of this would be done with the aim of curbing the spread of the coronavirus, which has caused havoc with health systems and economies throughout the world.
Of course, not everyone is happy with the President’s announcement: there are those who upset about the exceptions made for the taxi industry; the lack of acknowledgement of teachers and learners who are being forced to go to school; the lack of practical support given to health workers; and the fact that no mention was made about helping the most vulnerable in our society.
But such is the burden of leadership, that you are never able to please all the people all the time. This is the first lesson in leadership during turbulent times that I want to share: you must be prepared to make unpopular decisions based on what you think is right.
The second lesson in leadership is that you have to communicate your position clearly and logically. Even people who might disagree with you, must be able to understand why you have done it. This has not always been the case with the lockdown regulations and the way it has been communicated by the President and his ministers.
The third lesson is that the buck has to stop somewhere. In the case of government, the buck has to stop with the President, even if he has delegated some of his responsibilities to the Coronavirus Command Council. The President, as the leader of government, has to take credit where it is due and criticism when it is warranted.
While the President gives an overall picture, it is up to his ministers to brief the nation on the detail, and this is one area where there have been different levels of performance from ministers – some passed and some failed. It appears that not everyone in the Cabinet is singing from the same hymn book.
This is the fourth lesson: you have to convince those around you of your arguments so that they can all go out and speak with one voice. There are still too many factional and sectoral considerations with regards to the work done by some ministers. For instance, the Minister of Basic Education’s insistence on schools reopening and the concessions made for taxi drivers by the Minister of Transport, seem to fly in the face of the supposed commitment to contain the spread of the virus and to safe lives. There have been other examples of where the actions of Ministers appeared to have been at odds with that of the President.
The fifth lesson in leadership during a time of turbulence is to keep your eye on the ball at all times. It is when you lose focus that things can unravel. There were times during the past four months, and especially when the decision was taken to reduce the levels of lockdown, that there did not appear to be clarity of what was meant to be achieved. In many ways, there was a feeling that government was getting too involved in trying to curtail the activities of citizens as opposed to trying to contain the virus.
The sixth lesson, from the perspective of reviewing government’s leadership performance, is that you need to be able to take the majority of citizens along with you on all decisions, to convince them to buy in even when it looks like they will be inconvenienced. Government has failed to get its message across to the bulk of South Africans. It is either that or the people of South Africa are not prepared to listen to anything about the pandemic. I have no other way of trying to understand the disdain that exists in many quarters towards the attempts to halt the spread of the coronavirus. In the same way as government has to convince most of the people, corporates have to convince most of their stakeholders, which include staff and customers.
The seventh lesson, and this is something that applies to government as well as corporates, is that one should always try to lead by example. The President tried to do this by announcing early on in the lockdown that he and his Cabinet would make salary sacrifices. A few CEOs of major companies followed suit, but I don’t believe that there was much of a sacrifice among the heads of major businesses, especially in an environment where entire industries, especially those consisting mainly of SMMEs, such as tourism and hospitality, had been decimated. We have also seen how a major company like Naspers announced a major payout of hundreds of millions of rands for their CEO and CFO, among others in leadership and then, a week or two later, they announced the closure of several newspapers and magazines, leading to the retrenchment of more than 500 people.
The eighth lesson is about giving in a time of turbulence. Too many people in charge of big organisations – from whatever sector – are only prepared to give if their act of kindness is recorded or acknowledged. The best leaders are those who do not expect anything in return for giving, knowing that, somewhere along the line, they will receive something in return for their good deeds, even though they do not necessarily want it. This reminds me of the mantra that I grew up with during the struggle years, and which I was taught by people such as Johnny Issel, who was my political mentor. I was taught that, if you help somebody, they will be able to help somebody else, who will then also be able to help somebody else. At some point, it will come back to you. Leadership should never be about short-term gratification, but about long-term commitment to changing society for the better. If society improves, all of us eventually benefit. From a business perspective, it should be simple to understand that the more people you uplift, the better it is for the economy.
The ninth lesson is about adaptability. Government has had to adapt its strategy as it goes along, because it has never had to deal with a pandemic such as the one we are facing at the moment. They got some decisions right, like the one to have a hard lockdown initially to try and arrest the spread of the virus, giving us time to get our health resources in place.
But government also got many things wrong, some with legitimate reasons, while others were just strange.
But government has not displayed enough dexterity in their handling of the crisis. It should not only be about lockdowns and providing relief packages. They had a wonderful opportunity to completely reimagine the kind of society we want to live in and fashion their responses along those lines.
The 10th and final leadership lesson that I want to share is one of compassion. Compassion means respecting people irrespective of where they might find themselves in society. The people who are at the bottom today could find themselves at the top in a few years’ time. But the contribution that you can make should never depend on whether you are a minister, a director-general, a CEO or a director of companies. I have learnt many lessons in life from people who would be called “ordinary” by people who think they are more important.
My earliest influence, and probably one of the most important influences in my life, was my mother, who was a domestic worker. But she understood the importance of education as a way of escaping from poverty and she read to me from even before I can remember. This is why, when I finally went to school, I could read much better than many of the children in my class.
Up until today, I can never disregard the wisdom and knowledge of life that one can receive from people who are domestic workers or other supposedly unskilled workers. One of the things that the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us is the importance of people who were always considered not important in our societal food chain, and that has probably not changed. I am talking here about people such as cleaners and shop workers, etc. I do not need to point out the importance of health workers and others who have been at the frontline of fighting the virus.
Compassionate leaders will not only pay lip service to their contribution, but will look at ways in which they can be better remunerated, as well as how their views can be better expressed and appreciated by all in society.
Like Covid-19 has given us an opportunity to reimagine the nature of our society, it has also given us an opportunity to re-evaluate things like leadership. We can never go back to the way things used to be. Society needs to adapt to our new realities and leaders need to be able to show them the way.
