Driving the 4g revolution Great Organisations ѻ Great Persons ѻ Great Processes & Structures ѻ Great Visions
CULTURAL VARIABLES IN THE AFRICAN LEADERSHIP CONUNDRUM The Leadership process presents an interaction between three sets of essential components the quality of which stands as a measure of the quality of leadership available. These three components are:1. The Leader/Leaders 2. The Group which is led - which could be a community and organization or even a nation 3. The environment upon which the group makes its impact and derives its relevance or mandate for existence. This interactions are easily described in Fig. 1 below.
Culture on the other hand and similarly is an outgrowth of an individual and group interaction with one another resulting in the development of certain beliefs, assumptions and practices which then become the norm. In other words culture like leadership derives and impacts upon the individual and the groups that exist in the same cultural environment. As individuals within the same environment interact with each other and with the external environment it has been found that a pattern of behaviour deriving from perceived wisdom and based on formal or informal assumptions, beliefs and behavioural patterns become the accepted way of life leading to what we call culture or the way a people behave. This can be observed to be consistent regardless of the type of In the light of this it becomes obvious human organization. that the impact of culture is multifaceted on the leadership interaction. The assumptions, behaviour and belief are bound inevitably all 1. patterns Attribution Patterns - The to linkaffect between cause and effect Three factors which 2. Value systems - What we celebrate affect this interaction are: 3. Our WE VS ME relationship - our sense of group Breaking News
Adetokunbo and Associates nominated as one of two consultants recommended by the Commonwealth Network in Nigeria
Team Building June 27 to 29 Goshen Abuja
Ty Danjuma Foundation
Attribution Patterns Attributions are an essential component of the way we assess the environment and our role in it. What we think is responsible for an action is a determinant of our reaction to it. It seems that an essential and universal part of human behaviour is the need to explain observed. The African belief in the pervasiveness of the supernatural produces a pattern that believes that explanations of happenings whether positive or negative are never based on the logical issues such as hard work, creativity and opportunity but rather on the intervention of the mysterious Value System There is a value system that values very highly Legacy and Posterity two words which seem to be differently looked at in THE African cultural system. Our system values celebrations and ostentation which implies a lifestyle of today rather than tomorrow. A second effect of value system is the value put upon titles. These value systems then tend to link to the short term rather than the long term which can negatively affect sustainable leadership The Me/We Continuum Some studies reported as far back as 1948 clearly indicate that the leader must be in front of a group but not too far away from it. Western culture with its emphasis on the individual tends to lead to individual with so much focus on personal issues that the ability to motivate the group can be challenged. African culture on the other hand tends to have the reverse problem. Here the problem seems to be the tendency to get immersed in the group so that group cohesion and harmony becomes more of the issue than performance. In other words conformance and not performance is the norm whereas real leadership is measured by impact not position