Why one-size leadership model does not fit Africa

Excitement mounted around the office. The entire operations team at a manufacturing firm in Athi River planned for the past month to attend a motivational talk in Naivasha given by one of Kenya's most admired CEOs.

The team looked forward to getting out of the office, bonding in a new environment and learning key life and career lessons by the renowned speaker.

Upon arrival at the lodge, the team hurriedly made their way to the main conference room firmly intentioned not to miss the start of the CEO's speech.

The group felt the energy in the room from many participants from other companies and the thrill of anticipation from expected boundless wisdom to roll forth from the podium.

The famed executive did not disappoint. He weaved together fascinating themes besides riveting stories of his life along his own personal ladder towards success and triumph.

The awe-inspired employees left the retreat to head back to Athi River. Moods within the staff bus along the highway back to Athi River stood initially markedly higher than even on the way to the event.

Eventually, discussion amongst the team centered on how to actualise and implement the CEOs steps in their own lives in order to boost their careers.

The conversation became less animated. The group struggled to recall specific action steps that they should take themselves.

The youngest member in the back of the bus, Juma, blurted out loudly some clichés from the speech “believe in yourself” and “follow your own path”. Everyone nodded in agreement.

Then a few seconds later, Adhiambo, a long-time employee of the firm, called out “but what do those sayings actually mean and what should we actually do?”.

The conversation continued for the two more hours to reach Athi River. The workers ended up feeling let down. While the group enjoyed their time together and the enthusiasm of the CEO's talk, they felt bereft and realised that they lacked anything meaningful to actually follow-up on.

As stated repeatedly in Business Talk, life is full of variables. Life carries multitudes of causes and effects. What works for one person may not work for others. Inasmuch, do not live in a world of anecdotes.

Live with scientific realities.

Listeners to any CEO or other inspiring business leader amongst the many across the Kenyan landscape may hope to mimic the individual career paths of these storied executives by following in their footsteps.

Do not trust people who try to convince you about a course of action you should take by providing you one-off stories about how it worked for one specific person or another.

Instead, ask them where is the research that shows if 400 people tried the same actions, what proportion of them would get the same results as their one specific example.

We must not fall victim to a medieval way of thinking. Doctors in the middle ages would prescribe cures to vast population based on one observation that it worked a certain way with only one patient.

In the modern world, we do not tolerate such minute data in our medical professions. Extensive trials must take place with numerous patients and well thought out controls established before any new medicine or procedure receives approval for the general population.

So why in our management and leadership discussions and practices do supervisors and executives tend to adopt the medieval approach by modelling their own actions based on limited anecdotal observations?

Mountains of research from tens of thousands of social science studies and analyses show what managerial practices lead to what specific performance outcomes within businesses.

Researchers know the answers, but business practitioners rarely tap such knowledge and make mistakes over and over again that stand as entirely preventable.

Now, the issue gets more complicated when looking here in Africa. Over 99 per cent of the research studies into management and leadership business practices were tested outside of Africa and have never been validated on the continent.

Prolific African researchers Fred Walumbwa and Samuel Aryee alongside Bruce Avolio highlight the dire need to test Western and Eastern concepts of management and leadership within our African context.

Want to know whether motivational talks work amongst employees in a retreat setting? Look up dozens of tests to see if such scenarios result in long-term performance and profit improvements.

But African academics and researchers must still validate these to our local environment.

Kenya's very own Micahel Muchiri, based at CQ University in Australia, explores the explosion of leadership research on the African continent in the past 10 years, but mammoth gaps still exist.

Ken Kamoche ponders the effect of power distance, paternalism, filial piety, collectivism, and deference to authority in many sub-Saharan African cultures and to what extent those differences might impact the successes or failures of our managerial and leadership efforts.

So let today's Business Talk article endure as a call to African researchers. Do not make assumptions about the world around you. Prove it. Figure it out. Let us not approach social science with the pretence that Western or Eastern causes and effects will translate into managerial or leadership success for us here on the continent.

On the other hand, CEOs and other executives should not leap through life making decisions with gut feelings. Know the science of causes and effects and what the power of knowledge can do to your business.

The Business Daily regularly through Business Talk highlights interesting cutting edge research from the world's leading journals.

But managers may read the Journal of Management, Journal of Finance, and Academy of Management Journal, among hundreds of other choices, with intense regularity themselves and put science to work in your organisation.

Discuss and debate business research in Africa with readers through #100MisconceptionsAboutAfrica on Twitter.

Scott may be reached on [email protected] or follow on Twitter: @ScottProfessor.