SUCCESSFUL LEADERSHIP Is the Ability to Think and Act at the Edge

By Prof. Dr/ Halimu Shauri

Email, thecoastnewspaper@gmail.com

Leadership or the ability to influence others to dedicate their energy and resources, soft and hard, towards achieving a certain goal is not a walk in the park.

I have been walking in the leadership path and everyday is a lesson for me. I have learned from many of the organisations I have been entrusted with leadership roles.

One of the greatest skills needed in leadership is how to manage people, compliant and noncompliant staff. 

While it maybe easy to lead the compliant personnel, many leaders have challenges to deal with the noncompliant lot.

As a result, many leaders have failed to lead those noncompliants. Majority of this lot has been sacked or subjected to disciplinary measures that did not build but probably destroyed them completely.

I want to put it straight here that great leadership is a delicate balance of the formal and informal engagements with the staff.

Many leaders score almost 100% on formal engagements with staff but score below average when it comes to informal engagements. 

If I may tell you a successful leadership tip is that:

“Many formal decisions are reached at informally in informal engagements and only brought to the boardroom for ratification”

Now you know and must engage as a leader both formally and informally. 

How do you expect the low cadre staff to share their tribulations and even ideas formally when that space does not exist in our formal arrangements and structures!

If I have to steal for you a secret:

“In most organisations the leader is not the Chief Executive Officer [CEO] or the managing director but a member of staff, mostly not even in management, that most of the staff consult or reach out to him or her for work related challenges and solutions to issues, personal or official”

My many years of leadership have taught me to think at the edge. 

Thinking at the edge is to struggle for the “aha!” feeling in your thoughts. 

Specifically, I would say:

“That state of mind beyond the formal expected limit into the realm of informal but unknown terrain of thoughts.”

This mix of thoughts as a leader transcends you above traditional, religious, metaphysical, and science into a realm of inclusivity of thoughts where everyone matters and decisions must be collectively binding.

Indeed, an example can be seen on how thinking at the edge in fostering leadership is on display when I represented the Board of Management of The Bahari Girls, as the chairman, in a wedding ceremony in Tana River County [004]. 

Tell me when we dance to wedding songs as a group, can you tell who is who as staff, PTA or board members of Bahari?

I guess you cannot because we are all equal and free to be ourselves, “twajiachilia” they say in Kiswahili.

“This way we learn from each other, and are able to tap on our collective strengths to the advantage of the school, and positively synergize each other out of our individual and collective weaknesses.”

Just like in UBUNTU, the staff, management and the board know that they are because we are.

— Writer is Dean and Consultant Sociologist Pwani University