PEOPLE MATTERS, BY SEGUN MOJEED

I’m still smiling or rather laughing out loud as I punch the first letter on the keypad to start the Part 2 of this title. Reason for this particular laugh-out-loud was that a friend and fellow football fan got back to me after reading Part 1, trying to defend his favourite Premiership Manager and arguably the most successful one in the premier league era so far who I alluded to ‘provocatively’ in last week’s article. He actually accused me of not ‘minding my own business’, short of calling me a ‘busybody’ for not talking about my own favourite manager who could not win the Champions League after several attempts before he was sacked early this year. I told him he spoke too soon because part of what I had pencilled down for Part 2 of ‘Growing People, A Leader’s No. 1 Job’ is to delve a little into the case of Arsene Wenger (AW) as a matter of he that must come to equity must come with clean hands.

The jury is still out on my darling AW who, after so many years at the helm of affairs at Arsenal FC, could not be said to have had so much say in the choice of his successor and, of course, he did not grow anyone for leadership succession at the club. However, let’s give it to him, he was a specialist in transforming obscure, young, unknown players into stardom, a grower of talents and a firm believer in the future rather than total reliance on established players, or being an outright ‘specialist in failure’. I can’t just stop wondering how come none of these fine players, Tony Adams, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Freddie Ljungberg, Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires, and so on was groomed as a worthy successor over the years to take over as manager even as late as early 2018. Even AW’s assistant, Steve Bould, could only go that far, an assistant manager.

Meanwhile, we concluded last week on a note of feedback, the breakfast of champions. Do you know that a feedback can either be a constructive and effective one or an ineffective one or even worse, a destructive feedback? Your feedback is effective when it makes a positive difference. It is ineffective when it does not make a positive difference, and it is destructive when it makes a harmful difference. The CRACC model contains a robust feedback toolkit worth testing. Growing people comes in various forms, shapes and sizes. It could be an outright holding of hand, rolling up your sleeves kind of, showing a protégé the way to go. It could also be through cheerleading. This is a process of encouraging someone all the way, being by the side line cheering her on in whichever way legitimately possible, with the aim of achieving set goals.

A case in point is the head of the focused family in the Part 1 of this essay. He was not particularly studying for any examinations, yet he woke up practically every night to cheer me on, to show me it was possible to study at night and then go on passing your exams in flying colours. I’ll love to add here that this his mentoring gesture started circa 1975 and till date I still wake up in the night to read. As a matter of fact, that period of the 24-hour day has become my most productive time to do quality preparations, reading and writing. It may interest you to know that this piece is about now being concluded around 3.00a.m. A good habit implanted in me by a grower!

Growing people is bottom-line and life impacting, outwardly by way of massive investment, spending huge resources on training and performance, grooming and excelling. Inwardly, these investments must also yield results in due course it terms of the availability of right people in right roles at all times, improved revenue, profitability and top-line growth. It is adrenalin-pumping, and gives a self-esteeming satisfaction.

Growing people starts from the heart, the passion, and then the commitment. You make up your mind to trust people enough to invest enormous resources in their growth. Resources like money, men, moment, machine, material, etc. It takes visionary leadership, looking beyond today and its encumbrances. Mentoring is a cost-effective route to growing people. My favourite description of mentorship is – “a partnership in which a mentee or protégé (the person being grown) is assisted by a mentor, a grower to make significant advances in knowledge, career, perspective, family and life matters, and vision” that would enable her or him to grow to achieving purpose and realising full potential, and potential is a terrible thing to waste. “The mentor’s/grower’s wisdom is utilised by the mentee/protégé to facilitate and enhance new learning and insight in her growing people journey.

“If you are planning for a season, grow rice. If you are planning for a decade, grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow people”

Talking of mentorship, quoting a little bit of Greek Mythology would suffice here. “In Homer’s Odyssey, Mentor was a friend of Odysseus. When Odysseus left for the Trojan War he placed Mentor in charge of his son, Telemachus, and of his palace”. That is where the word came from and embedded therein is the purpose of mentorship. The Holy Book is replete with people growing people. The disciples were under the tutelage of the Master for years. In second Timothy chapter two, verse two, Apostle Paul admonished the young Timothy that having been thoroughly mentored, he must pass on the baton by growing others who would in turn grow others. This has been done for about two thousand years, still counting.

Mentoring has no limit, cutting across fields like business, politics, religion, military, entertainment, etc. I once read a catalogue of Mentees who went on to be as great, may be as successful as their mentors, if not more successful. They have themselves become mentors. For an example in business mentoring, it was said that “Freddie Laker, the British Airline Entrepreneur, the man who pioneered the no-frills-low-cost flights mentored Richard Branson”. In politics, it was said that “Aristotle mentored Alexander the Great”. In entertainment, we have it on record that “Mel Gibson mentored the late Heath Ledger”, while in sports, “Eddy Merckx, a five-time Tour de France winner was hailed for his mentoring prowess on Lance Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France winner” before the cookie crumbled.

It pays so much in the long run when we invest in growing people. The trouble is leaders often lack the stamina for that long haul, either they are too crowded with ventures of less value or they are too busy bean-counting, clouded by thinking of cost alone, being outright stingy or being impatient. Permit me to borrow an expression from my brother and good friend, Tunde Ojo to say that growing people “is not a hundred metre dash, it is a marathon”. Years ago, I read Jim Collins’ ‘Built to Last’, a classical business book on enduring and visionary organisations that have existed for more than a hundred years and are still going strong juxtaposed against their contemporaries that had gone under. Great companies like Disney, GE, HP, PG, Sony, Wal-Mart, just to mention a few. At the heart of their successes are people, their core values and purpose.

The import and the relevance of the Chines proverb “If you are planning for a season, grow rice. If you are planning for a decade, grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow people” must not be lost on anyone privileged to be in the position to grow future leaders or who herself or himself is a potential leader. Some of the ways I have learned over the years to align myself with this belief is that at every turn and opportunity, I have been taught to instill the value of self-esteeming in my team members, younger generations and high potentials. That I do consistently, and it is the essence of this column week in week out.

Another bright route to growing people is self-esteeming affirmations and validations. Affirming your protégé’s self-esteem, and may be one’s own too, is a critical success factor in growing people. It was the late MKO Abiola, who said no one shaves your head in your absence. This dictum is further elucidated by this saying of Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission”. Your people need to hear it that people who feel good about themselves produce great results. Self-esteem does not mean there are no areas you still need to work on in your life, it is just that at your very core, you are solid and that your self-esteem in not negotiable. Someone said courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to act in spite of one’s fears. Self-esteem has two interrelated practical components. The first is self-efficacy, self-confidence – this is a sense of basic confidence no matter what. The other is self-respect – a sense of being worthy of happiness.

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission-Eleanor Roosevelt

Let me hasten to mention here that part of my own growing was to be quickly reminded that success is not forever and failure is not fatal. During my A-levels at the Lagos State College of Science and Technology (now Lagos State Polytechnic), I came across teachers who were great encouragers and growers of people. I remember my Economics teacher, the Ghanaian Mr. Torsu. He made me love the subject and there was also this God-sent teacher who taught me a part of the History curriculum. Can you imagine, I can now only remember him by the alias we called him, Femooo! He saved my life. I was so much into campus politics, engrossed by it that I almost forgot that it was WAEC (West African Examination Council) that would mark my papers. I was the president of the Association of Basic Studies Students (ABASS), a pseudo students’ union with its own parallel apparatus, first at Isolo campus before the movement to Surulere campus as the pioneer sole tenant. I was also into full blown social life showing up at every of the Kegites’ gyrations (I later became a chief in UNILAG). I was a ‘straight Fs’ candidate-in-waiting. Then Femooo! showed up in the students’ union office, engaged me in an eyeball-to-eyeball crucial confronting, warning that if I failed the A-levels examinations, shame would not let me come back to re-sit or repeat the classes and that I may thereafter end up a frustrated A-levels dropout. As he left our students’ union office that day, he left a bombshell of an expression that has remained indelible, in a Yoruba adage which roughly translates thus: “The left over sunshine in the horizon is enough to dry your wet cloth”. Ha! That was the wakeup call. That was a people growing sermon, a legendary one-liner. That same day, I packed my things off campus and went into hibernation to start a highly intensive three-month rigour to atone for my previous months of nonchalant preparations for my A-levels examinations. Indeed, the remaining sunshine was enough. The month of May 1982 came, I sat for the examinations and passed. The rest is history. One of these days, we would share my very eventful sojourn at UNILAG being grown and growing people.

My thirty years career and professional journey (how time flies! To our great God be all the glory) commenced after graduate school. I have been blessed with growers of people. I’m forever indebted to those teachers and managers who prepared me early. As a management trainee and Personnel Officer in BAGCO under the tutelage of managers like Biodun Ogunkoya, S. S. Oyedele, Gabriel Ayinde and Paul Gbededo, I was handed over by S A Oluwo to S S Oyedele and Gabriel Ayinde for a three-month intensive training on the company’s revenue generating and procurement processes. That was the foundation before I was sent to HR. These were all growers of people! I was quickly groomed to take over the industrial relations portfolio for the Workers’ Union. Whenever we had good joint consultative meetings, Biodun Ogunkoya would urge me to be focused and prepare for the next meeting which may be hotter. When errors were made he stood by me and encouraged me often not to take it personal. Guess who was leading the Textile Workers Union at this period. It was Adams Oshiomhole (Oshio Baba!). Paul Gbededo, our young and athletic Production Coordinator was always on my case to ensure that the workforce’s HR matters are given priority attention. That guy could as well have done a Lagos-Abuja trekking miles daily within the production floor in those years. You remember my ‘management by waka-about’ (MBWA) I mentioned last week, don’t you? I cut my HR teeth under these gentlemen and I owe them loads of gratitude. A very successful American football coach was said to have a twenty-four-hour rule to manage either winning or losing. Everybody in his team had twenty four hours either to celebrate a win or bemoan a loss as euphorically victorious or as deeply saddened as possible. At the expiration of this period, it is history and everyone is ready to focus on the next game. Keep things in perspective – do not get too high when you win or too low when you do not.

I re-joined the financial services industry at the turn of the century as a senior manager at Wema Bank. Posted to the training school I had a team of dedicated faculty who were ready to tap into my experience and grow. We had bosses who believed in us, starting with Tunde Lemo, the Managing Director/Chief Executive. Initially, I was reporting to Bisi Omoyeni and later to Isaac Olayanju, both of them Executive Directors. They are managers of managers; and growers of people in their own right.

Tunde Lemo, an excellent facilitator of the ideation process, gave wings for our ideas to fly and held me accountable every inch of the way. He birthed a conducive atmosphere for excellence especially in the area of talent development. I can still vividly recollect some of his tête–à–tête urging the team to excel reminding me of the enormous opportunity to add value as head of training. Bisi Omoyeni, a listener extraordinary! This bossman could listen to you forever, so, you must be prepared, and know your onions. Listening is the best art of communication. Isaac Olayanju, a stickler for excellence.

Working with this team, we were able to successfully launch a few learning and development initiatives including the first ever comprehensive entry-level training for fresh-graduate joiners, in the then sixty-something years old bank. This programme was so successful that management had to practically ‘conscript’ those who joined the bank some two years before I joined the bank to enrol for the programme. Some of those young graduate trainees are today big boys in the banking and allied industries home and abroad. Growing people pays, and this continued into my telecoms years.

‘Listening is the best art of communication’

“As we move ahead…, true leaders will be those who empower others”, so says Bill Gates. Growing people, developing people and empowering them is not such a hard thing to do. In other to be listed among the elite corps of people who grow others, I will like to point you to what John C. Maxwell wrote in his book, Failing Forward – “Get over yourself, everyone else has and start giving yourself.” This is what I have come to know, practice and teach as the imperatives of having an ‘Outward Mind-set’, a subject for another time. Maxwell counselled that if a selfish streak has been keeping you from getting over yourself, examine your attitude, and make up your mind to make meeting the needs of others a priority in your life.

You can emplace a process whereby you start your day or end it by asking yourself such conscience-searching questions as ‘Whose life am I touching for good?’ ‘Who am I pouring my life into?’ ‘Who am I helping who cannot help me in return?’ ‘Who am I lifting who cannot help herself?’ ‘Who am I encouraging daily?’ According to Maxwell, these questions boil down to the fact that if you will act with the interest of others in mind every day, you will soon be able to answer these questions in an affirmative evidence-based manner.

The entire process of growing people and talent development is a learning curve. It is a continuous never-ending journey into self-discovery and significance because the day man stops learning man stops growing and woman starts to decay or starts to die. Learning and leadership excellence are interwoven and indispensable. The world we live in is changing so rapidly. People, especially the Generations after the baby boomers are changing faster, the baby boomers are ageing, and the whirlwind effect of change is constant. Organisations also are forever evolving so it is wise to make continuous learning your top priority and constantly strive to adapt to new demands on your time, space and energy. Growing people is not an added task or job enlargement for the leader. It comes with the responsibility of leading and it is one of, albeit the main key performance indicators in the leader’s performance evaluation and review process.

A few years ago, a client placed a managerial vacancy announcement in a couple of national dailies and on the social media platforms. The company I work for, BezaleelConsulting, facilitated the placement. One of the requirements was that the successful candidate must be a ‘learning/learner leader’. I got a couple of calls, one from a student of mine and the other from a very humble Ph.D holder friend I have great respect for, wanting to know exactly what or who a ‘learner/learning leader’ is. I gave a straight forward answer. Leadership skills are learnable. There are far too few born leaders, if any at all, therefore, a performing leader is a learning one. She is constantly seeking knowledge, an avid learner who is not afraid to ask for help and he is humble enough to know that he does not have all the answers. He seeks out those who know and dig deep for sources and resources for ‘know-how’. He taps into the global realm for ideas and he is not bugged down by the ‘not-invented-here’ syndrome. He bucks the lure of the comfort zone as he ventures often into the unknown and takes calculated risks.

In a nutshell the learner leader stoops to conquer. In our kind of industry, the people management consulting world, you would need such attitudinal development to succeed. An open-mindedness to learning places one in good stead to handle clients fully demonstrating a wide range of emotional intelligence skills. If you are not yet there, a dose of attitudinal restructuring is possible.

If we agree that born leaders are few, and that leadership skills are therefore learnable, that is my motivation for growing people! Those to be grown must be willing to be grown. Humility and a contrite spirit are requisite attitude for growth. The grower and her protégé are constantly learning and growing together. The icing on the cake is that growing people is so rewarding. Your protégé keeps remembering and using you as reference point, you become an endearing role model. Don’t you remember your good old teacher? Those fond memories are what make growing people so attractive. As Maxwell would say, get over yourself now and start giving yourself.

As I conclude on this week’s essay, let me close with John Quincy Adams’ illuminating definition of leadership. Hear him: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader” and you are into growing people.

Acknowledgement/Sources of Resources for this article:

1. Several clip arts and snippets from the Internet to drive home my points.
2. A compendium of over 25 years of manuscripts of my thesis and lecture series in talent management and development (unpublished yet)
3. ‘Built to Last’: James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras. HarperBusiness, 1994
4. ‘Failing Forward – Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success’: John C. Maxwell. Thomas Nelson, 2000
5. BezaleelConsulting Group Library bezaleelconsultingrw.com