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LEADERSHIP
PLATFORM:
Panel
Discussion following Adriaan Groenewald's interview with Thoko
Mokgosi
Copyright
© Adriaan
Groenewald
Used with
permission of the author:
Author: Adriaan Groenewald
www.leadershipplatform.com
24 September 2007
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Panel
Discussion
Panel
Members - Adriaan Groenewald (Leadership Platform, Coach and
Author); Sean Donnelly (CEO of the
Moditure Group) and Nicola Tyler (CEO Business Results Group)
| Adriaan: |
Moving
on, we have Thoko Mokgosi, CEO of Hewlett–Packard and Businesswoman
of the Year. Firstly, this competition Sean, Businesswoman
of the
Year - is it worth it, what role does it play?
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| Sean: |
In
the context of the leadership buzz that’s going on, I know
this "Businesswoman of the Year" award is based on hard
numbers - it’s not just that we like the way she looks or
anything else – it’s based on performance and it’s got
some real hard measurables.
I think it’s great, I like the way she responds and
has to fit that into everything else that she does. It’s positive so why not?
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| Nicola: |
I
am vaguely cynical about competitions, but l do think that
the corporate side of the Businesswoman of the Year
Competition has got a very robust assessment process. The submission process is very comprehensive - I have
seen what has to be submitted - you get nominated generally
by a peer and then the assessment process is rigorous so l
think to get there, to win. Maria Ramos won, l thought that was a great thing, Futhi and others.
Thoko is there with all of them, so, yes, l think it’s a
good thing.
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| Adriaan: |
What stood out for you, Sean, in the interview with Thoko, you know
her fairly well too?
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| Sean: |
I like the story of the Boardroom at Telkom -
meeting your team - it illustrates this balance between the new
generation of a leader and the new currency of leadership, which
is to do with intuition and the level 5 leader that we hear about
a lot. It doesn’t
mean they are soft and pushovers, it doesn’t mean they are
wimps, she can take a stand. Rule
number 1 that l learnt many years ago from Norman Swortskaft the
General from the Desert Storm Campaign - he talked about when you
are given command, take charge, and what people want you to do is
to lead them, so the first thing you need to do is to get on the
table and take charge. As
she walked into the board room and the guys didn’t respond she
did something very symbolic that took charge. The minute you take
charge people will follow, in my experience people want to be led. What stuck out for me was a level 5 leader, fairly humble,
but also able to take charge and stand her ground and again what
is it born out of - it's born out of quite a strong value system
and l admire that in her.
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| Adriaan: |
Nicola, if she did the same thing in the
boardroom now, in 2007, same conditions versus 1995, it’s a
different ball game don’t you think?
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| Nicola: |
That’s a good question. l think there are two scenarios -
one scenario is the command of respect would be different, so l
doubt that people will carry on the conversation in another
language today. If
that did happen and she had that response I think the reaction
would be swifter.
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| Adriaan: |
It sounds brave. l like what she did and that’s for the record,
but did she have to do that, because there will be situations,
there are leaders looking back and saying "Should l have done
that, or should l not?"
Could
she not have just said excuse me, l like the Zulu thing, and say
“Gentlemen, l am Thoko Mokgosi - can we please have a meeting,”
and then start the meeting?
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| Sean: |
She mentioned a couple of times that there were
times when it hadn’t worked and you didn’t necessarily probe
her on those. I have heard her speak about those, they were very
difficult lessons were she made a decision.
It just brings me back to the buzz word for me today, which
is "intuition", perhaps
a woman has a little bit more of an edge on us fellows on this
currency called intuition. She
used that intuition to her right, she had the gut feeling that it
was right and she used it and as you trust that gut feeling it
actually grows and your strength and capacity to use it gets
better. My feeling is
in today’s pace we’ve gone away from the left and right brain
- we are moving away from the heart - and motivate and industrial
age stuff, the military stuff and l think we have to do and think
differently. I mean,
why is she the Businesswoman of the Year? Many will be cynical but
I think its because she is illustrating a new currency of
leadership in practice and l think the new generation likes it.
Us guys, the boomers, we are kind of struggling with it a
little bit, we want Norman Swortskaft, we want Desert Storm. She trusted her intuition and l think we must learn to use
that currency more, and the more we can, well, that’s what we
call inspired and if you are inspired you will inspire others, the
question about inspiring and all that is all so relevant.
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| Adriaan:
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Nicola, l want to ask you if she could have done it differently?
And then let's move on to some other points. Her attitude stands
out very strongly in life. Nicola, what do you think?
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| Nicola: |
Intuition, l like what Sean said around intuition because a
lot of the research today is about trusting your gut. There is
research around second brain and all sorts of theories, Harvard
studies etcetera. l do
think that trusting your gut is a process of experiencing or
testing it out. How do
you get to know whether you are making the right decision or not
until you make one - often we will act out of an intuitive
response and then in hindsight be able to assess if it was the
right or not. Should
she do it differently is almost an unfair question because she did
what was right for her at the time.
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| Adriaan: |
That will affect her intuition today, it builds,
and if she came into that situation today she will act, maybe
intuitively, but differently. What do you think of her attitude in life?
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| Nicola: |
It’s hard not to like someone
who says those things. l
was making notes about “life is not about having problems,
it’s about how you deal with them”, “you are always in
control, no one can really touch your soul.” Sean mentioned Victor Frankel, l found it quite refreshing
- it’s what you said right at the beginning, about the
level 5 and the humility that goes with that. l think compassion is about being passionate and taking
action and a lot of that came through in her attitude. It’s
about execution, it’s about getting things done, it’s about
engagement, what we called transformational leadership at one
time.
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| Adriaan: |
You speak of intuitive leadership but she’s got
this very strong
structured approach as well and that came out very much in the
pre-interview as well as on the show, Sean!
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| Sean: |
I have worked with her a couple of times and she is quite
meticulous in her preparation, so l might call it informed
intuition, in other words there is a process she goes through
where you evaluate the positives and the negatives. You then get into what you really want to have happen, but
you haven’t just decided what you want to have, you’ve thought
through the positives and the negatives. I think that’s a very logical process and it moves you
into a very intuitive state of mind, an aspirational state of
mind, and that’s when you make the best decisions.
I think there is a way to model intuition, a way to
understand aspiration, and I think once you have gathered that,
you can harness that. It’s
extremely powerful and her attitude drives that. l liked her feelings of positivity and how she seems to me
to be someone who stays the course, who sticks in there, takes
charge but just keeps going, gains the respect. She called that
"doing your time". The other powerful
principle that she epitomises is this thing that we can all learn
in a country which needs it and that is this compassion.
When you are having a tough time, lose yourself in helping
others and your tough time disappears, it's how you find yourself
actually, by losing yourself, it’s a universal principle. I admire that in her and as a leader. I think of the people
we work with in our line of work, the people we coach and so on -
people are struggling out there and they need a new kind of
leadership and l think the opportunity is there to give it, and as
you do people respond and it's powerful.
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| Adriaan: |
Nicola, any comments on that?
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| Nicola: |
The science side of her personality intrigues me
because l have worked with quite a few senior people who either
have got a scientific, medical or engineering background and there
is a thoroughness of analysis that has to be applauded when you
are in that role. I
was recently reading some work by Richard Feynman
who was one of the great scientists.
He has passed away now but he did some great writing,
research and reading in the field of science. What he said is
"a scientist is comfortable with ambiguity" because science is all about uncertainty not
certainty, when you hypothesize you are making the best possible
guess. The way you
make the best possible guess is by doing a robust analysis of the
environmental factors and factors that have gone before and then
you execute with confidence. When
you execute you have actually made the best possible guess with
the information available at the time and l see that trait more in
people that l work with who have a scientific, medical or
engineering background than l see with people who have more of a
general commercial background.
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| Adriaan: |
Is that needed today more than ever before, do you think
with the complexity of society?
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| Nicola: |
Is it needed? I guess that is dependant on the
role that you are playing and the decisions that you are making at
the time, l don’t know whether l can assess if it’s needed or
not. I can comment
that l can applaud it because there is a level of patience that
those leaders take in understanding something before the decision
is made.
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| Adriaan: |
Yet society kind of pushes one to forfeit some of your
analysis because of speed etcetera - this comes back to the instinct
issue again, Sean! You must deserve your instinct perhaps, earn
that moment in which you receive inspiration or in which intuition
communicates to you, if I can put it that way.
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| Sean: |
I keep thinking about informed intuition. l think
we need to learn how to do that better and we will be better, but
on this topic of her moving from Pharmacy Chemistry into IT
services and Telkom – it's an interesting concept on career
management. In
businesses we forward integrate or we reverse integrate, which
means you make pizzas and buy the flour maker or you buy the
delivery van so you can deliver yourself. She integrated her career - she went from being a services
business person to being an IT company that supplied the services
industry and l think to the people listening out there you must
think about ‘Me (Pty) Ltd’ - don’t think about yourself just
being an employee working in this grind. You are a company in a market and you can think differently
about yourself and how you integrate forwardly or backward in your
career and she did that extremely well. She epitomises someone who
went forward and backward in her career to expand her "T"
skills so that she could have this broad depth. She is now a CEO of a very successful, highly profitable
company and the Businesswoman of the Year.
|
| Adriaan: |
What is an inspiring leader? I think there are
misconceptions out there perhaps of what an inspiring leader is.
Nicola, describe an inspiring leader for me?
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| Nicola: |
That is a good question - in fact this question
came up in a session l
was doing recently because it seems that the level 5 leader is a
lot calmer than something you would imagine.
An inspiring leader - you almost think of somebody who is
going to jump up screaming. There
is a Microsoft video that’s going around circuit of someone
screaming and jumping up and down on the stage going "l love
this company". Now
if you ask me is that inspiring? Maybe it is for the people
working for Microsoft but it didn’t make me feel remotely
motivated to follow someone who was vaguely overweight jumping
around the stage. Inspiring
is perhaps more related to your own set of values and you will
determine who inspires you, so if you have a set of values that l
am inspired by then l might find you inspiring.
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| Adriaan: |
I see what you mean so it’s not necessarily charisma.
Sean?
|
| Sean: |
There is nothing boring to the right audience but
the word inspiring has as its root the word spirit. When a leader
can stand there, like our friend from DAV, Ingrid Kast - she
inspires her group in a different way and the style of her
inspiration is different from that of an engineering organisation.
The whole point is that when you listen to that person, no
matter who they are, you feel the spirit touch you and they
connect with your soul and the hairs on the back of your hands
stand up. It could be
a birdwatcher explaining ornithology in a new way or it could be
Martin Luther King standing on the stairs or it could be the quiet, gentle Mother Theresa so it’s exactly what you heard.
|
| Adriaan: |
Thank you to
Sean Donnelly
and Nicola Tyler for being with us - great comments. Next week we have Mark Lamberti as our guest. You heard the results coming out - probably a reflection of
Mark’s last few moments at Massmart. Brilliant results today and he is the Chairman of Massmart,
former CEO. Trust me it will be a great interview - just make sure
you tune in and of course take part in the pledge competition -
for more information go to www.leadershipplatform.com.
You
have listened to The Leadership Platform, every Thursday evening
at 7 pm and Friday mornings 8am on Summit TV, presented by Moditure
– Inspiring leadership confidence, only on Classic 102.7 FM.
|
Adriaan
Groenewald is the presenter of the Leadership Platform
Radio Show, which broadcasts on Classic FM every
Thursday evening between 19:00 and 20:00 and on Summit DSTV
twice the following week. He is also co-author
of the 'CEO Leadership Handbook', the author of a weekly full page
article in the Star Workplace and Executive Director of Moditure
Group. Adriaan has interviewed on and off air top
leaders like Paul Harris, Charles Nqakhula, Mark Lamberti,
Phuthuma Nhleko, Gill Marcus, Mbazima Shilowa, Tony Leon, Wendy
Lucas-Bull, Thoko Mokgosi, Adrian Gore, Herman Mashaba, Patrick
Lekota, Russell Loubser, Ian Cockerill, Alan Knott-Craig, and many
others. In 2005 Adriaan was one of the 8 Judges on the prestigious
Boss of the Year panel. On the sporting front Adriaan proved his
discipline and drive by achieving his junior
provincial colours
and later on a second
Dan Black Belt in Karate. He
completed a Bachelor
degree in Psychology as well as diplomas in
various other fields of interest, including a Post Graduate Diploma
in Strategic Marketing from the University of Hull in the UK.
He has also studied business
on a Masters Degree level.
Because of his leadership abilities he was appointed
as a manager in an international organisation
within two years, despite competition from several individuals
that had been in the organisation for many more years. He was then
head hunted by an international consulting firm where he consulted,
trained and coached nationally & internationally
in organisations such as Vodacom, Standard & Poors,
Investec, HP, Huntsman Petrochemicals, and so on. Subsequently
he has consulted in many other organizations such as Nestle,
Siemens, SABC, Standard Bank. Adriaan has published
articles in CEO
Magazine, Management Today, Leadership Magazine, Succeed
Magazine, Journal of
Marketing, Argus, Star Newspaper, Business Day, and Sunday Times.
Short summary
A discussion on the leadership qualities that Thoko Mokgosi spoke
about in her interview with Adriaan Groenewald. To view the
interview, click here.
Keywords and relevant phrases
Accountability, action, ambiguity, attitude, award, "best
possible guess", Businesswoman of the
Year, change management, charisma, commitment,
compassion, corporate culture, courage, decision, empathy,
employment equity, engagement, ethics, execution, guts, humility,
implementation, innovation, insight, inspiration, intuition,
involvement, leadership, manage, morals, motivation, positive
attitude, preparation, problem solving, responsibility, skill,
strategy, transformational leadership, trust, understanding,
vision, working environment.
Back
to ... Workinfo.com Human Resources Magazine Volume 1 Issue 10,
2007
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