Leadership Guest Note: Dudu Msomi

By Dudu Msomi, Chief Executive, Busara Leadership Partners

Ihave always known that I would use my passion for thinking, strategising and making situations better as my contribution in the world. Since I was a child, I have deliberately built up my knowledge, diagnosing and thinking skills to bring a refreshing lens to the way I see the world. I just did not know what form my sharing of my expertise would take until I entered the corporate environment. I fell in love with business, organisations, strategy, and leadership. From about 1996, I have been passionately accumulating skills to assist me to develop the strategic advisory and consulting expertise that inspired the establishment of Busara Leadership Partners.

One of the biggest challenges for South Africa, and globally, is that the demand for certain skills, qualifications and experience exceeds supply. There is a dearth of leadership, strategy, communication, and governance skills. Busara Leadership Partners is a research and execution orientated strategic advisory company with competence and expertise to facilitate the development and effectiveness of leaders to achieve their desired goals. We strive to offer a real option for leaders, namely board members, management, and entrepreneurs, of necessary scarce skills that is better than the status quo.

The magic of Busara Leadership Partners lies in the trans-disciplinary and multi-sectoral experienced delivery team which brings into projects innovative way of thinking and seeing the same issues from different vantage points and knowledge systems. The various insights that the team brings to client challenges and problems ensures that the approaches and the solutions are always fresh, relevant, and effective.

It is a South African stereotype that white people are the teachers, are experienced and competent and that black people are politically connected, need to be trained and to be ‘empowered.’ African people are often, approached for BEE partnerships for their business, personal or political ties, or else for their ability to add symbolic lustre to a company, whilst their value to contribute at a strategic or operational level is de-emphasised. The fact that Africans have not really been known and valued for their strategic knowledge and input in organisations, but for their networks and political influence, further inspired me to influence and shape the quality of leadership in our country and beyond because Busara Leadership Partners believes that effective leaders and managers have credibility because of their technical competence and their personal integrity.

Under-representation of women in top management positions continues to be a focus globally. Though a few women have succeeded in breaking the glass (the white women) and concrete (the black women) ceilings, women are still fewer in higher ranks than in lower levels of organisations. According to Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa (BWASA) 2017 census, in a country where women comprise 51% of the population, only 20.7% of directors and 29.4% of executive managers are women. At the very top leadership level, the number is significantly lower with women holding only 11.8% of chairpersons’ positions. Though laws are in place for the advancement of women. Women encounter difficulties in combining family and work responsibilities in a society still structured on patriarchal norms and practices.

Women have feelings of obligation and commitment to others, at most times to their own detriment. Sheryl Sandberg, the author of Lean In, said: “Give us a world where half our homes are run by men, and half our institutions are run by women. I’m pretty sure that would be a better world.” Women must realise that no one is going to give them that world. They need to create it. The women carry a disproportionate burden of physical work and emotional labour in the workplace and in the home. It may require South Africa to adopt the Nordic Region practices where there is shared participation in childcare, a more equitable distribution of work at home and a better work-life balance for both women and men.

Progressive workplaces are taking steps to equip women with the necessary tools and skills to gain confidence and skills to be ready to take up promotions should they choose to do so when opportunities become available. As forwardthinking players in the leadership development space, our company Busara Leadership Partners, believes in not just developing specific programmes for women for leadership only, but to develop both men and women, side by side, to provide them with skills to face their workplaces and dynamic global challenges by having the difficult, but enriching conversation working as collaborators and facilitating their own personal leadership through complexities and real-world experiences.

In the diversity and inclusion strategy field, Busara Leadership Partners designs workshops to facilitate the transformation of work environments to seek and embrace diversity and to foster inclusive cultures and workplace environments from lower levels to the boardroom. We also give talks about navigating workplace bias and corporate politics. Diversity and inclusion initiatives must be led and championed by the leadership of every organisation to find fertile ground and to be sustained. Thus, getting the buy-in and support of leaders, both men and women, enhances women participation and inclusivity in leadership positions.