LEADERSHIP
Leadership lessons from combi drivers part 2 By Dr. Wilbert R. Mutoko (PhD, FHEA) Dr. Wilbert R. Mutoko (PhD, FHEA) is a business doctor, financial wellness speaker, business strategist, researcher and senior lecturer at undergraduate and master’s degree level for business management and entrepreneurship & business leadership at the Botswana Accountancy College School of Business & Leisure. Dr. Wilbert is the author of four books entitled: 15 Secrets for Personal Financial Success – A Simple Step-by-Step Plan for Financial Freedom | 16 Mistakes Singles Make Volume One – A Guide to Successful Dating & Courtship that leads to Blissful Marriage | What you have is Enough - How to become wildly successful in finance and business starting from where you are now. | The fourth book is a free pdf - | Financial Freedom – It’s your turn for financial success. You can get the free ebook by emailing or sending a WhatsApp message to the author. All the books are available at Exclusive Books (Riverwalk) and Bala Books (Rail Park Mall). Dr. Mutoko writes in his personal capacity. For feedback, you can contact him on email: wilbertmutoko@ gmail.com. Or WhatsApp: +267 71 824 591.
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eadership can be learned. Whether you were born a leader or not, you have an equal chance to learn how to lead. One of the ways in which leaders and potential leaders can learn is by looking at the way good combi (minibus or taxi) drivers lead. In this article, we will extract some leadership lessons from combi drivers. This is part two of the series on the leadership lessons to be learned from good combi drivers. In the first part, we looked at vision, reputation, multitasking, calmness, focus, and marketing/sales. In this series we look at patience, delegation, customer care, and being good with numbers. Patience Good combi drivers are patient. At the taxi rank, If you pass by the taxi rank, combis operate in queues. The drivers wait patiently for their turn to load either by sleeping, or playing games. They also have to be patient while loading until the combi is full or has enough people to do more than breakeven. Similarly, good leaders develop patience in planning, implementing strategy, building a winning team, and attaining organizational goals. Any impatient leader will easily become a patient. This is so because and impatient Strides Magazine
leader is more likely to develop emotional turmoil, which affects the business and performance negatively. The other day I was talking with one CEO of a large enterprise whom I will call Tim. Tim told me that if he goes to negotiate funding from a financial institution and the manager don’t fund his company, Tim recourses to other financial institutions. If he still can’t get the funding, he will be patient enough to either fund the project internally or shelve it until a year in future when the problem manager who declined to lend the money either retires or moves to a different company. Thus, he will go back to the financial institution to start negotiating 26
February 2021
with the new manager. How many leaders do you think are that patient? Many people would give up completely if a bank manager refused to give them money. However, Tim has a different mindset. Another example of patience with leaders is that sometimes it takes time to recruit the right people in your organization. If you lack patience, you end up hiring the wrong people who will give you headaches in the organization. Furthermore, as a leader, you should acknowledge that change management is not easy and it needs patience. This is so true especially when you decide to change the organizational culture. You cannot wake up one day
