Opinion Piece:
We talk often about a VUCA world. For those who have not heard the watchword, it stands for Volatile/ Uncertain/ Complex and Ambiguous.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend a “Set Ablaze” conference, which was a conference for NPO’s within the Durban and surrounds space. Coming from a Corporate environment, I realised the VUCA environment in the Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) space is a real area of risk and stress. NPO’s work on the premise that the monies will come and they need to continue to progress plans to help their stakeholders/ Partners based on this premise. Their working capital pipelines are at best hazy yet they continue regardless, managing their operations in an ever changing and never constant environment (Typical of VUCA).
While listening I thought I would conduct a little check box exercise on them insofar as leadership styles they possess. (I wish to note clearly that leadership in itself is not a check box exercise, and any who think so, may be delusional):
1. Purpose Leadership: The leaders of the NPO’s have this ingrained in them. They are strong in their belief regarding what they do, and this permeates from them in waves. They need to believe to remain steadfast in their cause.
2. Committed and Passionate Leadership: Just hearing about a few small VUCA items they have to deal with daily, weekly makes me understand that one has to be uncommonly passionate about your purpose to do what they do and retain their sanity and will to continue.
3. Communicative Leadership: I realised as I walked around and spoke to some of the attendee’s and exhibitors, that their ability to express their purpose, path and direction was par excellent. I began to understand that while they are dealing with community, volunteers, partners they learn to speak in such a variant of communicative speech patterns it would make diplomats envious.
4. Inspirational Leaders: So many plans are derailed and changed due to cash flows changing continuously, that the leaders of these organisations have to inspire all those involved to keep the momentum of their cause moving all the time while ensuring that in the face of probable defeat they will still win through – and they do. The world around them is ever-changing but they continue to achieve inspired purposeful goals.
5. Innovative leaders: I listened with some interest at how they use the world around them to continuously innovate within their organisation. Stagnation is the death knell for them, so they need to understand how the world around them is changing to maintain sustainability. This is realised in looking for partners or innovatively changing the project scopes to best meet their purpose and their ability to help those they were designed to help.
6. Empathic Leaders: This they should have in spades, but with regulation. Those I met seemed to have an innate ability to “feel” the moods of those they affected and served. This was necessitated by the need to survive with the help of volunteers to help those most in need.
I could certainly go on as in itself most of them possessed all of the above just to be able to function.
I saw that listening to both the speakers as well as the NPO’s present, more of these leaders should be invited to Leadership classes; corporates and other stakeholder functions to talk about how they manage to survive in an everchanging landscape, the need for a seamless change between leadership styles within their organisation in order to lead successfully, and how they cope with this.
These are incredibly self-driven persons, who believe in an ideal which when translated into a purpose can be a force for transformational change.
Well done to you all, and for those starting off on this journey, I urge you to talk to those who have walked through the valley already and faced their demons. They have experiences to share.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 New International Version (NIV)
8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
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