Last week in Part 1 of this three-part article of my address to incoming students of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business, I described the es-sence of leadership and the commencement of my search for the roadmap to leadership development. Today I continue the search.I left the university to become the managing director of the consultancy company, Kairi Consultants, which took me on a wild and exhilarating ride across the Caribbean and internationally before depositing me in South Africa to establish our first overseas office. Things did not work out as planned, but South Africa helped me to find a new level of mental clarity that changed my life.In South Africa I found the diversity and problems of the whole world condensed, and sharply displayed within the borders of this historically troubled country. South Africa represented a microcosm of the world and laid before me all that is good and evil about our humanity. I saw the best of our humanity and I was witness to the worst. South Africa woke me up.
Folks, in this South Africa:I found all the races of the world jumbled together, but tragically disconnected, frightened and silently, and sometimes not so silently, longing for racial harmony. The word peace was like a daily mantra.I found the major religions of the world-all disjointed, morally compromised, dissipated and displaying little unity.I found class differences as wide as the continent of Africa within all the major racial groupings.I found the First World in Sandton City-a city of opulence, grandeur, prestige and "a place where the dollars of millionaires are frittered away."And right next door, I found the Third World (or Fourth World) in the township of Alexandra, an urban slum of half a million people occupying just eight sq km with poverty that can rend your heart apart.
I found myself in the company of sartorially-dressed businessmen and politicians, who mostly turned out to be armed thieves (yes, most carried guns), many of whom now occupy some of the highest offices in that land and a few are doing jail time.I lived in Zululand for 18 months and for the first time was able to observe the highly oppressive nature of tribal culture.I heard the thundering hooves of the marauding wildebeest as I explored nature's wonders in the vast game and safari parks.I saw some of the most breathtaking landscapes in the world, including the majestic Table Mountain of Capetown, the rolling sand dunes of Jeffrey's Bay and the snow-capped peaks of the Drakensburg Mountains.I was introduced to the concept of the Big Five-the lion, the leopard, the African elephant, the buffalo and the rhinoceros-the five ultimate trophies for disappearing big game hunters.I visited the Cradle of Mankind and its famous Sterkfontein Caves where hundreds of the earliest of humanoid fossils have been unearthed and in a strange way connected me to our human past.
I came to the conclusion that the biggest constraint to human development in the present is the indiscipline of the human being and not money, natural resources or technology.With the help of my newly found South African friends, I established two leadership laboratories to help me to unravel the elements of leadership and human development. It is in these laboratories that I found the fertile ground to plant the seed that I had carried with me from St Augustine.I embraced the spirit of Nelson Mandela who is the subject of my microscope as I seek to understand why he is such an inspirational figure and the de facto leader of our modern-day humanity. I stand in awe of his accomplishments.I became more conscious of the great development potential and the true moral nature of the hu-man being; and here I coined the phrase, "Leading From Above The Line: a Principled-Centred Approach to Leadership Development."
I discovered another group of five-the Five Sources of Our Inner Power-as the nourishment for the seed to help us to better display a more positive leadership aura. And finally, the philosophy of "Leading From Above The Line" came together around a clear roadmap for leadership development.South Africa was like a primordial crucible that gave me the opportunity to strip life down to its various micro components and then to repackage them with a much better understanding of the cross functioning of its various components.I went to South Africa confident that I had a good understanding of humanity-after all I had already travelled to over 70 countries around the world. But South Africa stopped me in my tracks, leading to my withdrawal from the hustle and bustle of life and to the rediscovery of the seed of understanding of leadership that I took with me from St Augustine. It was in South Africa that I learnt how to nourish that seed by tapping into the five sources of our inner power.
My search revealed that the roadmap to leadership begins with self-discovery through which we achieve a greater conscious awareness and a heightened understanding of where we are in rela- tion to the moral line. Introspection aids the self-discovery pro-cess and results in a better under- standing of our strengths and weaknesses.With this knowledge of our inner selves we can set about to correct our weaknesses and vulnerabilities through the strengthening of our positives and thus our inner power. When we are strong internally we project a more positive leadership aura as we unconsciously display the characteristics that win us the admiration, respect and trust of others. Leadership follows as a consequence.This, in brief, is the roadmap to principle-centred leadership development.
Next week in the third and final part of this article, I will furtherelaborate on the roadmap and how we can strengthen our inner power