During the morning session of the development seminar for the Secretaries’ Association of the Legislatures of South Africa on Wednesday, Dr John Tibane of John Tibane Consulting presented a seminar on shifting leadership consciousness to achieve transformation.
Dr Tibane called for a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of leadership methods to deal with the rampant change, financial constraints and revolution in customer-relations that characterises the modern world.
Leaders influence people at four levels, according to Dr Tibane: in the way people think; feel; act; and interact. “The quality of our actions will always be the way we think. If we failed to influence the way people think that means, we have failed in leadership. He said: “For instance, Nelson Mandela influenced us the way we think about peace, forgiveness and reconciliation.”
A good leader must be able to influence the way people feel by creating a positive organisational climate. Furthermore, a leader must encourage all forms of interaction and should also ensure that change is driven by strategy. There must be strategic reasons for doing things, he said.
Dr Tibane drew a comparison between transactional and transformational learning. Transactional learning is the acquisition of knowledge and skills to cope with the present. It encourages probability thinking (creating followers) and in/out-of-the-box thinking, which creates the instruments of change. Transformational learning is the acquisition of knowledge to create the future. It encourages possibility thinking and no-box thinking.
By Zizipho Klaas
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