T A L E N T - D E V E L O P E R

Explaining Organization Design

2014-01-31T12:17:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year 2014 to you all! Tobi is back to blogging! Yipeee!!!! :)

I've just been selected to be a presenter at the Organization Design Forum's (ODF's) 2014 Conference schedule for Charlotte, NC, United States in from April 29-May 1, 2014. Having commenced the writing of my first book sometimes last year with its first Chapter titled "The Concept of Organization Design", I decided to share an excerpt of this chapter of my book with you. Hope you find it to be an interesting and insightful read. Peace!

During the pre-colonial era, the rural and traditional economy of the Yoruba people—an African tribe that inhabited the West African rain forest—was centered on farming, hunting and fishing. These were the major activities people engaged in to earn a living. Due to the difficulty of cultivating land in the rain forest thick with roots and the strain of clearing trees held in place by jungle vines, it was common to find the Yoruba people practicing cooperative farming among extended family members. Thus, families located their plots of farmland side by side in order to maximize available manpower by working on one another’s farms together.

Not all the men were farmers as some took on other professions including hunting and fishing. The hunters were known to be the area experts due to their exceptional familiarity with the remote rainforest locations and were also experts in forest vegetation. Because of their knowledge of the forests and their vegetation due to the large amount of time they spend in the deep forests, hunters often doubled as herbalists, medicinal specialists, protectors of the village and border guards[1].

The women had their specific role as well. Their duty was to clothe the family, complimenting the men’s role of feeding the family. Thus, women and their daughters would spun raw cotton, dye the resulting threads and weave them into cloth for clothing. However, in times of imminent famine or related instances necessitating the need for more hands, women were often called to help with farming.

Bearing on the narrative above, one can infer that the setting or structure of the Community’s workforce is tailored to meet the various needs of the Community as a whole. By structuring their local economy in a way to achieve desired results, these locals seemingly took into cognizance the abilities and interests of the different individuals—thus, there were farmers, hunters and fishermen. Remarkably, those with additional skills (in this case, the hunters) filled other roles that were of importance to the Community—including being herbalist, medicinal specialists, protectors of the village and border guards. Thus, the Community had found a way to organize such that all basic societal needs—food, shelter, health and security—are met, guaranteeing the continual survival of the Community for many generations to come.

As crude as the setting described above is, it exemplifies the Concept of Organization Design. Organization Design is narrowly defined as “the process of reshaping organization structure and roles, or….the alignment of structure, process, rewards, metrics and talent with the strategy of the business”.

Jay Galbraith and Amy Kates built on years of work by Galbraith and affirmed that attention to structure, process, rewards, metrics and talent with the strategy of the business, is necessary to create new capabilities to compete in a given market. This systemic view is expressed in Galbraith’s original work called the "star model"[2].1

Figure 1: The Star Model

The Business Dictionary explains that “organization design is the manner in which a management achieves the right combination of differentiation and integration of the organization’s operations in response to the level of uncertainty in its external environment.” It further expatiated by stating that “differentiation”, in the definition above, refers to the process of subdividing functional or departmental units, with each of them focused on “a particular aspect of the organization’s operations”. Whereas, “integration” happens when the previously-identified differentiated units are linked in a bid to achieve unity of effort in working towards organizational goals.[3]

Therefore, in doing organization design, a step-by-step methodology is followed with the basic intention of “identifying dysfunctional aspects of work flow, procedures, structures and systems, realigning them to fit current realities or goals, and the development of plans to implement the new changes”.[4]

Future of Organization Design: Organizing Driods

Organization design would hardly achieve the desired result unless it is able to translate the strategic goals of an organization into an array of effective organizational structure and culture, implemented by the right people, in the right position at the right time. Since it is intended to achieve the alignment of structure, process, rewards, metrics and talent with the strategy of the business, the process of any organization design project must consider external influencers (industry best practices, emerging trends etc.) alongside the internal needs (structure, culture and processes) in order to attain gainful outcomes.

In his book titled “The Future Is Fluid Form”, Ord Elliott described the process of creating an organization capable of outpacing the competition. He named it “the Fluid Organization”—where the right people are in the right place at the right time—a new way to organize the organization’s people, its business and its future.

Elliott downplayed the traditional conception of organizational structures as the pyramidal charts “with ever increasing boxes as you move downwards”, with work “seen as a set of activities that belong to an individual or to a unit/department”.

Canvassing for a new way of conceiving work, Elliott painted a scenario.

“Suppose you started a new business. Instead of hiring humans as employees or contractors, your organization would be populated by Driods[5]. Think of Driods as employees that perform only the work required when it is needed. What sort of organizational structure would you require to support this? Would a traditional hierarchal system make sense?”

Humans are different from Driods. Yes! Humans have emotions—they feel the need to move-up the hierarchy as a sign of progress or success— Driods don’t. Human have societal needs—feed self and others etc.— Driods don’t. So, it’s insensible to compare Driods to humans? No, it’s not! Why? The Workplace is evolving.

The future workplace will be mostly populated by a generation of workforce who is more task-oriented and less concerned about hierarchical progress. In fact, these new crop of workers (also termed “knowledge workers”) have less emotional ties to the organizations they work for, having greater ties with tasks contracted to them within the agreed time-frame—quite similar to how a “Driod-staffed” organization would function.

The implication for Organizations Design Experts of the future lays in the need to increasingly consider networked rather than hierarchal work relationships within organizations. Expectedly, this will lead to more vertical than horizontal relationships. Interestingly, work processes are conventionally vertically charted processes, signifying the ease of creating network-type of organization flat structures.

[1] Source: www.prfdance.org

[2] Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_design\

[3] Source:

[4] Source: Centre for Organization Design: What is Organization Design; www.centerod.com

[5] Driods are robots or could refer to a person regarded as lifeless or mechanical.

WHEN IT'S NO MORE TRENDY TO FACILITATE LEARNING: LEARNING 3.0 IS HERE TO STAY!

2013-04-01T07:46:00.000+01:00

It's stale news that the major factor that gives companies the competitive advantage is the quality of their people. It's certainly no more news that majority of the global workforce are knowledge workers. The organization's people, rather than the hugeness of capital owned, is what makes the difference.

Ever wondered how many versions of the iPhone 5 Apple churns out in a year? Just few weeks after purchasing the iPad 3, I felt slighted when I learnt that Apple was about to release the iPad 4 and indeed phase-out iPad 3. "What effrontery!", I'd thought. But really, who cares? So it's obvious that organizations that would survive the fierce competition in the global market are those that are able to attract, retain, develop and engage the smartest crop of employees who have the ability to anticipate the future desires and aspirations of customers and deliver just-in time products that would wow these customers.

What is new, however, is the fact that the way people learn is now different and we cannot continue to depict significant energy in the former ways of learning. Here is what I mean: Some ten years ago, there was a big hype on facilitation as a more effective approach rather than instructor-led learning (often referred to as " Classroom Learning"). Experts emphasized the need to allow learners gain knowledge at their own pace and "teachers" were advised to "guide" the process. It then became usual to go for training sessions where there'll be group discussions, group presentations etc. Teachers prided in being seen as Facilitators rather than Instructors. They were happy to emphasize the phrase "we are all learners as well as teachers".

Organizations went ahead to bring technology on-board and the expression "e-learning" was birthed. Using technology, learners could learn anywhere via their devices. Courses were designed to be taught through computer systems. Individuals could go through an entire course, attempt assessment questions to test for knowledge-acquisition all on computers. More recently, mobile learning (or m-learning) came along as a version of e-learning on mobile devices.

Whereas "Classroom Learning" is also known as Learning 1.0 and e-learning as Learning 2.0, the newest form of learning is Social Learning, alias Learning 3.0.

In their book "The 2020 Workplace", Meister and Willyerd (2010) defined Social Learning as "the acquisition of knowledge and skills through methods that are collaborative, immediate, relevant, and presented in the context of an individual's unique work environment". They went ahead to explain the distinctions among the different evolutions of learning stating that "whereas Learning 1.0 relied heavily on classroom learning and Learning 2.0 added computer- and Web-based training, Social Learning incorporates social media, gaming, real-time feedback, and advanced on-the-job methodologies.

A significant lesson to learn, in my opinion, is that learning seemed to have gone "wilder" by the years. It's no more confined, it is boundless. And therefore, the approach to making Social Learning happen and ensuring it thrives has to be totally different from previous approaches to Learning 1.0 and 2.0.

Mere facilitation of learning is insufficient in a sphere where learning is in itself without borders. In Social Learning, learning in its entire process (from comprehension to application of knowledge and skills) is largely unstructured and not confined to a particular environment, set of individuals. It's wild, boundless and uncontrollable.

So what is the ideal approach to promoting social learning amongst employees? Is it enough to create social media apps, games and the various social platforms? I doubt if that's sufficient. It is important to creat the social learning culture amongst employees.

My Master's degree was taught using an Action Learning approach--a process that aided my appreciation of taking responsibility for my own learning and the learning of other "fellow-travelers". One of my Professors (Judi Marshall) wrote a book titled "Living Life As Inquiry". The book emphasized the importance of sense-making our life-experiences in order to maximize the learning opportunities therein.

Thus, it appears that in "facilitating" and promoting Social Learning-considering its "wildness", realizing it is not restricted to a physical gathering, walled up in a particular setting but occurs via mobile devices, among several people (colleagues, friends and strangers alike), day or night-the role organizations have to play is in culture building. Whereas we once had the opportunity to physically facilitate learning, the necessary approach now is promoting the ideal learning culture of sense-making in our employees.

When employees learn to make sense of their experiences, the ideas they stumble at or share with others on Social Platforms, learning opportunities are unleashed.

Thus, promoting sense-making is the new way to facilitate Learning 3.0!

Sent from my iPad

The Tyranny of Job Search in Nigeria

2012-04-27T17:01:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago, I asked a number of young people (on National Youth Service Corps programme a.k.a. NYSC) who currently work with me how long they think a job search takes in Nigeria. The question emanated from my probing into knowing if they currently have updated CVs, realising it’s just a few months to the end of their “service year” and invariably, the end of their contract with the organisation I work with. They, thereafter, will be job searching probably for the first time in their lives!

In response to my question, each of these young people gave the duration they thought it takes to get a job in Nigeria—ranging from a few weeks to maximum of about two months. I further enquired how they came about the duration they estimated, making them describe the process of job search using the scenario of a fresh graduate who commences his/her job search right after the completion of NYSC. Their responses all sounded like a movie script to me: You get your CV ready, search for job in the company you like to work in, they get back to you in a week to invite you for an interview and bum! you get the job in a few weeks. “Seriously?”—I’d thought.

Then, I asked another question: “How many jobs (on the average) do you think someone will typically apply for to get a first invite for an interview? “A few jobs, I think!”, “Maybe five”, “Why won’t they get back to you when you apply for a job?”—where some of the responses I got.

I then had to share a few examples of job-seekers I knew. The first is a friend of mine who at the time of his last job search, has had six-years of quality work experience in Nigeria and Europe. He’d worked with a top-European Bank in The Netherlands, worked at the Nigerian operation of one of the world’s biggest breweries and also worked at a leading Telecommunications in the United Kingdom. On his return to Nigeria after the stint in Europe, he had to job hunt. The process from job application to obtaining his offer letter took the duration of approximately four months. This was someone we could consider a high-profile candidate!

A second example is someone closer to me. On completion of his NYSC at an international organisation, he worked with one of the world’s biggest Information Technology Consultancies in India for one-year. Since returning to Nigeria four months ago, he’s been on a job search and has not clinched an offer letter as yet (although he has participated in a number of selection processes).

These examples and the reality they point at, simply indicate that many job seekers have the wrong perception of how long the job search process actually takes.

Many job seekers are disillusioned about how long a job search quest could be. Worse still, many are clueless about the actuality in organisations with regards to their pursuit to attract and select the right people into job roles in a bid to grow their enterprises. That is why job seekers fail to prepare appropriately to fit the profile of that “exceptional candidate” that is able to prove why he/she is the right one for the job amongst many others.

Let me share a few facts that could help job seekers realise the possible reasons the job search process usually takes long. More importantly, I will also mention a few leads to how job seekers can ensure that the efforts they invest the job search process are not rendered futile in the end.

· The Increasing Hunt for Talents….Looking Beyond The “Graduate” Title.

What do companies want in the first place and who are they looking for? …A graduate? I beg your pardon! Not just a mere graduate. Companies are interested in succeeding amidst a fierce competitive environment where they contest for market share—and if they must succeed, their huge capital and assets alone cannot achieve success…they need the RIGHT people. So, in simple terms, to keep surviving, companies only need and are interested in the right people; and if you do not appear to be one of those, they would not waste their time to get back to you.

· Increasing Tediousness of The Selection Process: Companies Increasingly Under Pressure to “Get it right!”

Lately, many companies do more than interview in a bid to select the right candidate. With the ethics and competency issues that have recently emanated from the leadership of some large organisations including Fortune 500 companies, the Human Resources practice has adopted other methods of predicting future performance of potential employees. Thus, companies have introduced multiple selection tools. These include psychometric tests, competency-based selection and Assessment Centres—comprising a mix of selection methods, amongst others.

To ensure, therefore, that the candidates who eventually get the job offers are the best in the skills and attitudes required to succeed in the job, companies are ready to “do it properly” and this invariably makes the process pretty long.

· Recruitment is not all they do!...Companies Have Their Core-Work.

Why do they often keep you waiting, even when you’re their right choice? Job seekers rarely remember that recruitment is not the core work of many of these companies. They have their core business and recruitment is only a way of bringing in new staff into the company to contribute to the core business. When job seekers pass through the individual stages of the selection process, they often expect an invite to the next stage as soon as possible. However, the Human Resource teams in those organisations have other things to attend to besides the logistics of recruitment in itself.

· Global Financial Crises Resulting in Increasing Over-Head Costs. Yes, we need you…but can we pay you?

Would you be surprised to know that there are companies who take a number of candidates through the selection process, choose the best candidate from the lot and at the point of giving the job-offer, management announces a freeze on recruitment! Oh yes! Such incidence occurs quite often. Thus, the Human Resource teams are usually forced to keep the offer letter till the freeze on hiring is lifted.

My little advice to job seekers:

· Make sure you’re the right person: Stay focused on a particular career path, gain quality experience as much as possible, related the experience in the most explicit and captivating way on your CV (For tips on CV writing: www.editmycv.com)

· Prepare to prove yourself: Get to know about selection methods and their purposes. Find out what Competency-based Interviews are, research how Assessment Centres are run and get to know the tricks to do well in Aptitude Tests.

· Prepare to wait: More often than not, it takes a long while for companies to make the right decision, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

When You Are "Under-utilized" At Work

2011-10-24T18:20:00.000+01:00

She looked back and said good-bye, “see you next week, sweetie”. “Sure, we’ll see on Monday”, her colleague replied. However, deep down inside, these two ladies knew they won’t be at work for the next couple weeks. Agor and Sandy work for a consulting firm and have been on a project at a client’s office for the past three years. The consulting firm recruited both of them as members of the Project Team for this particular client. Due to administrative bottlenecks, work at the client’s has slowed down in the past months. There has been little or no work to be done and of course this “questions the relevance of coming to the office at all”—they thought. As they individually got into their beds after an eventful Friday evening, Agor and Sandy wondered about their plan for the coming weeks. “No work, anyway—so what do I do?” The immediate reaction to keep busy [while the client and their employer sort themselves out] was to spend a lot of time at the mall, meet with friends, simply have mad fun—"until they’ve got work for us again"…“Until we are no more under-utilized at work!”

In order to get my point across, I refer to “under-utilization at work” as a situation where your work responsibilities are not in sync with your innate areas of interests; and as such, the knowledge you possess [or desire to possess], is not directly related to the work responsibilities you are saddled with. A range of factors may lead to under-utilization at work. You may not have enough to do at all, or you may have enough to do but not have enough relevant tasks to do in relation to your innate areas of interest.

A nice gentleman wrote me an email about a week ago seeking for career advice. He believes there is a huge mismatch between his area of interest and the responsibilities he has been given at work—and that has “almost killed” him. In diagnosing his situation, I realised there is a little difference between him and someone who loves what she does but has not got enough work responsibilities due to varying reasons. And so, they wonder how this free time can be appropriately channelled to other relevant and profitable activities that would give them a greater advantage in our increasingly competitive work-world.

Having pointed out these unpleasant situations, the most pressing question is often: “what do you do when you are under-utilized at work?” The workplace is changing and so is our response to the various challenges we face at the workplace, this inclusive.

Let me share a few views that might help you to rightly respond when you find yourself in a situation similar to this.

“Knowledge is power”: What happens to a club-house bouncer who stops to eat well and get built-up? One important thing to note is that organisations who seek talents, in actual terms, seek knowledge in talents. What makes talents who they are is based on what they know! So, if my advantage lies in what I know, the right question to ask is: “how do I ensure I keep knowing what I need to know in order to remain competitive as a top-talent?” Seeking and getting knowledge these days is no more far-fetched. There is a huge knowledge resource right on your hand. Yes, I'm talking about your internet-enabled mobile phone! You can learn from your social-network friends, connect with people around the world who do the same thing you love to do. Do you have a Twitter account? Ever seen the UberSocial Twitter App? Ever explored its "channels" and you'll find-out that it is possible to search for people based on your areas of interest and also connect with them instantly? As “texting-like” as Twitter is, people tweet many links that can be viewed on your phone (and of course, computers and laptops too)—and these are great learning resources. So, build your knowledge about what you love doing. Therein lies your competitive advantage!

“Translate your knowledge into work experience”: You got me wrong! Yes, I'm sure you did! I am not necessarily referring to you getting the traditional work experience [getting employed by a company] because this is perhaps difficult to come-by these days [following economic recessions and down-turns in employment rates]. Let me share with you another way of translating your knowledge into experience. Start by transforming your knowledge into a virtual learning project. You can do this by getting involved in blogs, wikis and other learning community platforms, to share the knowledge you possess while contributing to other people’s posts and views. Remember, we learn more when we share what we know and open up our minds to other arches of learning. As you gain more knowledge, you can use social networks to build virtual communities around your area of interest—run a Facebook campaign around your area of interest and seek people’s views; run advertisement of products using social network platforms to build your sales skills etc. These do not only help you turn your knowledge into experience while gaining more knowledge, it also helps to promote your personal brand within global communities of practice.

“Showcase your new experience”: Do you know that your involvement in virtual learning projects and communities of practice is not inappropriate when it appears on your résumé? Of course, yes! You need to showcase these [virtually acquired] experiences and successes on your résumé. The 21^st Century fact is this: when companies source for knowledge-workers, they only need people who can apply their knowledge and experience in a bid to give the company competitive advantage regardless of how the knowledge and experience is gained (whether through physical or virtual learning environment). And for all you know, gaining that work experience through a virtual rather than physical learning environment might be your competitive advantage in getting a new job opportunity.

In conclusion, there is a constant need to keep inquiring and responding to these two questions: Do I know the new global best practices in my area of interest? In what new ways are people doing the things I do [or wish to do]? And how much do I know about these?

Our new work-world now reveals that we are not rewarded for the time we spend at work; we are rewarded for the value we add. Time is cheap, but knowledge is power!

Your Future Employer is now #ffing you!

2011-10-21T04:07:00.001+01:00

A few days ago, I was speaking with a good friend of mine who works in a Senior position at GE. We were talking about the impact of social network and GE's use of these to build a Talent Community. Then he mentioned: "...this guy is one of the global leaders in GE. He recently started following me on Twitter! I have to be extra cautious of what I tweet in there".

Welcome to the new world of our integrated social network; a world where our social activities is being viewed by others to make an impression of who they think we are--and these "others" cover a wide range of nodes within our network--friends, family, colleagues and even strangers!.

It's no more news that many of the common social network platforms have features that help you integrate your different accounts. You can make your tweets can appear on Facebook as well as on LinkedIn in real-time, although most of us did set-out to use the different platforms for distinct purposes--LinkedIn for professional networking, Twitter for real-time "reporting" via short messaging and Facebook for sharing life experiences in pictures, videos, notes, connections etc. with our network of contacts. What we seem not to realise however, is the ease of accessibility that so many "strangers" have to the loads of information we place on social network platforms--and these, they feel, could give them an idea of who we are.

These are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Increasing integration of social networking platforms is gradually eliminating the "one platform for one purpose" arrangement we usually keep on the various social networking accounts we have. The only exception (as it stands) are Instant Messaging (IM) platforms e.g. BBM, WhatsApp, gtalk etc. that give a higher level of privacy.

When you tweet via Twitter (or any of its related Apps), it could appear on your Facebook page (if you so choose under the settings). Many people see the integration of social network platforms as advantageous in that, one would not need to repost messages on different, sites keeping in mind that we have varying audiences in our different social networking accounts. The danger, however, is in what we share and the impression that people form based on how our "updates"/"tweets" portray who [they will think] we are.

2. Your "follower" on Twitter might be your prospective employer. Better still, your prospective employer may find your "handle" [and thus, view all your tweets] after searching a particular "hashtag". How many [more] organisations will be using social network platforms for recruitment purposes INCLUDING BACKGROUND CHECKS by the end of 2012? Yes, its no more news that companies use social network sites to brand themselves as employers of choice, attract and select the scarce talents they need to ensure they stay afloat the competition; however, it may no more be news in the next year, that companies now use social networking platforms for some form of background checks at any stage of the hiring process [which could also be just before the final decision]. Would a candidate whose Twitter handle reveals her frequent participation in #tweetfights have lesser chances of getting the job? Would hiring managers be able to determine the candidates' areas of interests from what is contained in their social networking accounts?

This could bring up the debate of "privacy features" and one could argue that if these features are well used, "strangers" would hardly have access to your "privacy" [FYI: this is hardly possible on Twitter. You cannot restrict views on "mentions"]. Albeit, it is important to note that putting the "good stuff" that creates the right impression of you via social network is increasingly becoming advantageous. People who have shared their skills, appropriately branded and marketed their competences on social networks have landed amazing jobs! Rather than not add, you'd better of adding the right stuff that sells you.

For all you know, your future boss might be the last guy that's just started to #ff you!

Just before that Interview (II)--What Happens Backstage

2011-10-18T20:09:00.001+01:00

The Interviewer

When preparing for interviews, most candidates wonder what goes on in the minds of the interviewers. If only they can perceive the expectation of the interviewers, it will be a lot easier to know how to answer the interview questions. For this reason, this post will enlighten you on the preparation process taken by the interviewer and the intent of the interview.

The Interviewer’s Objective

For most organisations, the interview panel is drawn from employees of the hiring department and representatives of the Human Resources department. More often than not, the HR professional’s role is to help the hiring department use job-related interviewing techniques to find that right individual who fits the current job-opening.

Owing to the fact that people are different in their perceptions about other people and their abilities, managers approach the hiring process in different ways. Mike Deblieux explains that managers use either traditional or inventive approaches in selecting the right candidate to join their team.

The traditional manager is one who goes by the book. He writes a job description and bases the interview questions on that description. Every candidate is asked the same questions, and the best candidate is the one who can do the job described in the job description.

The inventive manager, on the other hand, doesn’t have a job description. In fact, she may not even have a job opening. She just wants to talk to people to see if they have something unique to offer to her team. If she finds someone, she’ll hire him. If she doesn’t, she won’t.

However, on the long run, both types of managers are particular on getting the individual that can carry out a set of tasks effectively in order to obtain the desired results. “A task is a process that includes following the steps that need to be followed to get the job done. These steps may include drawing an engineering schematic, building a spreadsheet or making a sales call.

Tasks are important. The successful candidate must be able to perform them and the interviewer must ask questions about them. But in today’s world, results are more important than tasks.

A result is measured by the success of the effort, not by the steps involved in getting that result. Many employees, for example, are required to answer the phone. Answering the phone is a task. A few people can answer the phone in a way that makes the customer feel wanted and appreciated. Making the customer feel wanted and appreciated is a result. Interviewers often assume that a candidate who has performed certain tasks can also produce the desired results, but often they are disappointed”. (Deblieux, 2004 –SHRM)

Therefore, the ultimate aim for the interview panel is to plan an interview that focuses on the candidate’s ability to perform not only a set of tasks but the tasks that produce the desired results.

The Interviewer’s Checklist

You might be surprised but interviewers do also prepare for interviews—they have a checklist of things to do to ensure they carry-out a good and fair interview. As a candidate, being aware of how interviewers prepare for the interview can help you anticipate questions that could be asked and for what reasons they could be asked.

Below is a sample of the recommended checklist for every member of an interview panel (Source: Society of Human Resource Management- www.shrm.org):

ü Familiarize yourself with the duties and requirements of the job you are filling.

ü Make sure you can answer general questions about the company and the benefits provided.

ü Formulate questions that will focus on job-related aspects such as asking about situations that may have occurred in previous positions (see reference form for ideas).

ü Write down and organize the questions in the order you will be asking them

ü Review applicant's resume and/or application:

o Review the job description(s) for the position(s) you are attempting to fill. Note minimum requirements needed and refer to them often as you review resumes/applications.

o Check work experience for applicability to the position for which they are applying, length of time in each position, promotions or awards received, reason for leaving each position.

o Note gaps in employment but do not assume they were caused by negative reasons.

o Check educational background for qualifications necessary to successful job performance.

o Note special skills (i.e. computer software, office equipment).

o Note on a separate piece of paper any pertinent questions that arise when reviewing the resume/application

o During selection, screen the top group to further narrow down the candidates. On average, about 10 resumes per open position should be sufficient.

Typical Interview Questions and Why They Are Asked

For every question an interviewer asks, you can be sure that it is meant to find out something about your competence or personality, both of which are important to your performance on the job. The reason why most seemingly qualified candidates fail interviews is however centered on the fact that they do not know what questions to expect at interviews and when the questions come, they do not know for what reasons the questions are asked.

This chapter elaborates on why some particular types of questions are asked and what the interview could likely be out to know when such questions are asked.

Categories of Interview Questions:

I. Behavioral:

These types of questions are asked by the interviewer with the intent of perceiving the candidates personality and values. The questions are mostly situational questions that are posed to know how you behave in certain circumstances or conditions.

In answering this type of questions, there is never a right or wrong answer. Remember that the intent of the interviewer is to find out if you have the right behaviors that fit the job-role you are applying for, the company’s culture and values. It is important you know the type of individual the company is seeking to recruit for that job so that your answers shows that you have the required behaviors to thrive on the job.

The best approach to answering behavioral questions is by sharing past experiences. The premise behind behavioral interviewing is that the most accurate predictor of future performance is past performance in similar situations.

Although it will be more difficult to prepare concrete answers in advance to these interviews (as opposed to traditional ones), you can and should take some time to review your understanding of yourself, your past successes and concrete examples of your accomplishments. Work on honesty, sincerity and candidness. When you start to tell a behavioral story, the interviewer may try to sort out the details by understanding your behaviors.

The interviewer will probe for more depth, detail or understanding with questions like: “What were you thinking at that point?” or “Tell me more about what you discussed with that person.” If you’ve told a story that’s anything but totally honest, your response will not hold up through these probes

Examples of Behavioral Questions:

- Describe what you would say if asked to talk about yourself in a group of 15 people

- If someone told you that you had made an error, describe how you would react and what you would say in your defense.

- If someone asked you for assistance with a matter that is outside the parameters of your job description, what would you do?

- You are a committee member and disagree with a point or decision. How will you respond?

- Describe what you would classify as a crisis.

- You are angry about an unfair decision. How do you react?

- Suppose you are in a situation where deadlines and priorities change frequently and rapidly. How would you handle it?

- How do you know when you are stressed? What do you do to de-stress?

- Tell me about a time when you were a part of a great team. What was your part in making the team effective?

- It’s 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. Your supervisor gives you an assignment that needs to be finished by 8:00 Monday morning. You have already made plans to be away the entire weekend. What would you do?

II. Interpersonal:

When interviewers ask this type of questions, the intent is to know more about the candidate’s competencies by hearing from the horse’s mouth.

The mistake most candidates make is that they try to over-sell themselves by exaggerating and trying to paint themselves as perfect people. What you must know is that interviewers already know that you are not a perfect person who makes no mistakes; you are human and so they are not surprised when you express your human limitations. Always remember that for this type of questions interviewers know when you are exaggerating or telling lies- your answers will be illogical.

You should however be cautious of being seen as having a nonchalant attitude towards your weaknesses, therefore, whenever you talk about a weakness whilst describing yourself, make sure you also talk about the steps you’ve taken to improve yourself (i.e. overcoming the weakness).

Below are some examples of interpersonal questions:

- What are your strengths?

- What would your last boss say about you?

- Describe how you like to be managed, and the best relationship you’ve had with a previous boss.

- If I asked your previous/current co-workers about you what would they say?

- Describe what you see as your strengths related to this job/position. Describe what you see as your weaknesses related to this job/position.

- Explain the phrase “work ethic” and describe yours.

- What kind of people do you find it most difficult to work with? For example, assume you are in a situation where you have to deal with a person very different from yourself and you are finding it difficult. What would you do?

- What methods do you use to make decisions? When do you find it most difficult to make a decision?

- Describe a difficult time you have had dealing with an employee, customer, or co-worker. Why was it difficult? How did you handle it? What was the outcome?

- What do you do when others resist or reject your ideas or actions?

- What do you think are the best and worst parts of working in a team environment? How do you handle it?

- Under what kinds of conditions do you learn best?

III. Creative Thinking:

These questions are asked to examine the candidate’s intelligent quotient (IQ) level, his/her thought-process, and the mind-set, perceptions of issues and how conclusions are reached. It is simply to know how smart the candidate is.

Like the behavioral questions, there is no right or wrong answer to Creative Thinking questions. In answering the questions, you need to be objective about the issues discussed, however, be cautious of drawing conclusions that makes you look dogged to your perceptions and views- It is better to show a bit of flexibility here.

Some examples of Creative Thinking questions are:

- What's the best book you've read in the last year? Please take a minute and tell us what you liked about it.

- What was the most creative thing you did in your last job?

- What is your interpretation of “success?”

- Describe an ideal work environment or “the perfect job.”

- In what way(s) do you express your personality in the workplace?

IV. General:

This category of questions is mostly job-related questions. They are meant to check up the candidates’ understanding of the responsibilities that comes with the current job-opening and how it relates to his/her past job experiences (if any). The object is to know if the candidate is aware of how he fits the job and the culture of the organization.

The key to giving the best answers to these questions is for the candidate to know as much as possible about the company as well as the job he/she is being interviewed for. He/she should be able to explain how the job fits into his/her career path and what skills, knowledge and abilities he/she possesses which can ensure high-performance on the job.

Typical examples of General questions are:

- Could you share with us a recent accomplishment of which you are most proud?

- What would you have liked to do more of in your last position? What held you back?

- Tell us a bit about your work background, and then give us a description of how you think it relates to our current opening.

- What are your qualifications in your area of expertise, i.e., what skills do you have that makes you the best candidate for this position? Include any special training you have had (on-the-job, college, continuing education, seminars, reading, etc.) and related work experience.

- Why have you applied for this position?

- What skill set do you think you would bring to this position?

- Tell me about your present or last job. Why did you choose it? Why did you/do you want to leave?

- What was your primary contribution/achievement? Biggest challenge?

- What are your short-term and long-term goals?

- In what areas would you like to develop further? What are your plans to do that?

- What are some positive aspects of your last employment/employer? What are some negative aspects?

- What are your career path interests?

- What do you know about our company?

- Why should we hire YOU?

- If the position required it, would you be willing to travel?

- If the position required it, would you be willing to relocate?

- If you were offered this position, when would you be available to start?

- After learning about this opportunity, what made you take the next step and apply for the job?

- If you are the successful applicant, how would you expect to be different after a year in this position?

- Tell me anything else you would like us to know about you that will aid us in making our decision.

- What questions would you like to ask me?

FOR MORE GUIDANCE ON PREPARING FOR INTERVIEWS, I WOULD RECOMMEND: www.editmycv.com amongst other resources you can find on-line.

All the best!

"Just before that Interview" (I)

2011-10-17T21:56:00.000+01:00

Why do companies conduct interviews?

The 21^st Century company has a lot to deal with- increasing marketing competition, rising shareholder-expectations, customer satisfaction etc. This is why there is an increase in the hunt for talents (i.e. individuals who can help a company increase its productivity); companies seek for people who have the knowledge, skills, attitudes and competence required to add value and guarantee company-growth.

Interview sessions are a part of the selection process that company managers (or their consultants) conduct to find the right individual(s) who can help their teams to be successful. It could be physical or virtual. Physical interviews could be oral or written face-to-face interviews whilst virtual interviews are conducted via electronic means- telephones, instant messaging, voice conferencing etc.

To understand why companies conduct interviews after making a short-list of individuals whose résumés they’ve assessed, one need to understand a bit more about the entire process of recruiting a new employee.

The Selection Process

After a company identifies the need to have a new employee or set of employees, a job request form is filled ideally by the recruiting manger. The job request form elaborates on why the department or business unit needs a new employee (a summary of how it fits into the organisation’s overall strategic plan), the role of the new employee, the tasks of the new employee, who the new employee will work with and report to, and most importantly (to you) the skills, knowledge and competences required for the job.

The job request form is then forwarded to the Human Resources Department, to a Recruitment Consultant or the Department could decide to handle the selection process in-house. When an HR professional receives the job request form, his/her main responsibility and intent is to find that (or those) right individual(s) who fits the job as well as the role. The receipt of the job request form is followed-up by an internal and/or external advertisement of the job-vacancy, résumés are received and the Pre-selection process starts.

Pre-Selection:

It is important to state here that your résumé is your first selling point to your desired employer. It could be compared with a Sales Brochure that a car manufacturing company produces to show and explain the special features of their product to an intending buyer. There is an obvious need for this sale brochure to be attractive, explicit on the unique features of the car all in order to ensure that it catches the attraction of the intending buyer. A good sales brochure makes an intending buyer willing to test-run the car just like a good résumé gives the recruiter the willingness to test-run the candidate’s knowledge, skills and competences through interview sessions.

Once you have been invited for a job-interview, you can be sure that the recruiter already has a feeling that you possess the requirements needed to fill the job. The interview session(s) is your one-and-only opportunity to convince the recruiter that the “unique-features of the car” (i.e. the competences you possess as reflected on your résumé) actually exist. At the interview, the intent of the recruiter is to select the best candidates from the pool of candidates who have been shortlisted to fill the job opening.

Interviews:

As explained by Mike Deblieux in his article- A Conversation With A Purpose, “an interview is a special conversation. In a sense, it is part of a research project to find an individual with specific knowledge, skills and abilities. A successful research project requires a carefully defined hypothesis and an objective researcher”. Ideally, interviewers seek to use job-related interviewing techniques to find people who can help their teams to be successful and “job-related techniques involve collecting and using specific information to predict whether or not a candidate will be successful on the job”.

NEXT: I'll be talking about "the Interviewers"--what do they do to prepare for the interview and what will they be looking out for?

SIMPLICITY OF LEADERSHIP: THE “LOGGER” LEADER

2011-10-13T18:42:00.000+01:00

[This is an article I wrote in December of 2006. Wondering how true my claims are 5 years on]

INTRODUCTION:

Leadership is fast becoming the most discussed management issue in the political and corporate governance sectors of the world’s economy; gaining a wider and wider listening-audience over time. However, as much as leadership is being talked about, there seems to be insufficient solutions or principles which when practiced, assures of effective leadership for “whosoever” holds a leadership position: these wide principles of leadership work for some individuals and do not work for others.

In my view, leadership surpasses a set of guidelines or principles; it rather requires a particular personality which can only be built over time by the difficult art of Personal Leadership. It could require an entire reconstruction of one’s personality, attitude to life and set of beliefs about people and their potentials.

This article looks at leadership from a common, yet uncommon, view. It looks at the role of a leader as the team-member who does not necessarily need to have the highest number of the competences required to achieve team goals but must have that single and needful competence -“leadership”- the ultimate guarantee for team success.

As the first article of the Virtual Leadership Series, it is necessary to state here that the views expressed in this article are applicable to both Physical and Virtual Leadership styles. Subsequent articles will however dwell more on issues peculiar to Leadership in a Virtual Environment.

LEADERSHIP RE-DEFINED

Numerous highly skilled leadership experts have defined and explained leadership using various approaches. Nonetheless, for the purpose of this article, I will define leadership in my own words which expresses my personal prior experience of leadership.

“Leadership is the ability to give what you don’t have, produce what you don’t possess, and succeed where you don’t have the expertise, all because you’ve learnt to effectively manage the “better” talents at your disposal” -Tobi Odunowo

Note the words: “better” talents! Many people in leadership positions feel threatened when they identify a more knowledgeable team-member in an area of speciality - such people could be said to be locked-in to a “leader’s-ship” practice rather than the real practice of leadership.

“LEADER’S-SHIP” OR LEADERSHIP:

“Leader’s-ship” occurs in a situation where the team-leader works under the assumption that “the buck stops with him/her”. Such leaders try to become the central point of the team but without the needful purpose of sharing or being generous with the decision-making power they possess as the “number-one”. This type of leader-attitude drives team-members to a state where they do not see their team responsibilities as their own work, but rather see it as the leader’s work (don’t be startled when you hear employees say “I’m going to the office to do Mr. Boss’ job!”).

People holding leadership positions should see themselves as a “Logger-Leader”- a leader who centralizes himself, not as the focal point of the team’s decision-making process and success-determinants, but as a facilitator and constant communicator of the team’s vision; the “hidden-force” that makes team-members to see team-goals as the drivers of their personal goals; and the one who doesn’t necessarily need to have the best skills but has the unique ability to place and utilize the available skills in each team member; someone who believes that the buck rather stops with “us”-the entire team!- that is Leadership!

ILLUSTRATING LEADERSHIP: HERDS-MAN AND LOGGER’S APPROACH

The Herd’s-Man Leader

Thinking back at school-days whilst studying at the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta in Nigeria, I had the privilege of learning about the nomadic herds-men who do not have homes but perpetually travel across the Sahara looking for pasture for their followers- the herds of cattle, to graze on. Remember, these cattle leaders have a goal- to find pasture for their cattle.

Let’s take a look at the styles and trend of leadership and “followership” as shown by the herds-man and his herds of cattle.

The herd’s-man is the leader of the team:

- He tells them what to do and where to go at every point in time

- They always wait and look-up to him for instructions, they are not allowed to use their own initiative, the buck stops with the herds-man: their leader
- They have an idea of what the team-goal is (getting pasture) but it is only the leader that tells them how to get to the goal (the particular pasture where they will graze), they don’t think of a best approach to achieving that goal; decisions lie with the “boss”
- The team doesn’t have a defined goal- they look for pasture wherever they can find it; no definite destination, no periodic evaluations, it’s simply a visionless venture; an endless voyage.
- The leader leads and the herds of cattle have to follow; they don’t know exactly where they are going, and so they cannot plan nor do they require any special strategy. They just have to follow the leader!

The “Logger”- Leader

I also remember learning in school, from one of the courses on “Forestry”, about

Loggers living in riverine areas who fell trees at one side of the river and transport the felled logs to the other side of the river using the course of water-flow. The team-goal here is to move the felled logs to the other side of the river- but it is not just a vague goal, it is defined- the other side of the river refers to a particular “well-known” place which has only been seen by the leader – it is the leader’s vision that is ready to become the team’s shared-vision. The Logger is the leader and the felled logs are the followers.

Taking a closer look at the leadership style and trend of leadership and “followership” as displayed by the Logger and his logs, one begins to note that:

- The leader starts by arranging the logs in a way that is compactable with the water-flow; this requires that he fits the log in a position where they can display their in-built potential. Large logs have their place; small logs have their place; he also needs to consider the weight of the logs. In simple terms, he identifies the potentials of each log and keeps them where they fit: he realizes the fact that this part of the task could make or mar the achievement of his team-goal of getting all the logs to the other side of the river. We can describe this exercise as: “Strategic Selection and Placement: Right Peg in the Right Hole”
His next task is to watch the course of the water-flow and identify how they (he and the logs) must trail the course in other to get to their destination (team goal) This stage could be described as “Team-Goal Setting and Systems & Process Definition”. We also need to note that the water-flow may change at any point in time thus it is required of the leader and his/her team to be responsive and flexible enough to use the changes in water-flow to their advantage if they must remain on course in achieving the team goal. These types of leaders are not “systems-rigid”! (they are systems-fluid)
- At this stage, 80% of the task is done! The systems and processes have been set in place; team-goal defined. The leader takes a back-rest and watches his logs transport them (he and the logs- the entire team) to the other side of the river (team-goal).
- However, that is not the end of his task. There could be a log-jam! But the Logger is skilled well enough to know the log that caused the jam. He simply repositions the log and the flow continues.

Isn’t it so simple to be a leader? Simple to be a “Logger”-Leader!

COMPONENTS OF LEADERSHIP

Permit me to give another Agriculture-biased illustration. For my Bachelor Thesis, I worked on the project topic: “Effects of Selected Cover-Crops in Hoe-Mechanized Maize Plantation”. This afforded me the opportunity to inter-crop different types of legumes (mostly cover-crops) with maize whilst observing their diverse ability to add nutrients to the soil as well as prevent weed emergence through the canopy formed on the top-soil.

This perfectly illustrates the four factors that I consider as the main components of effective leadership. The first three represent the different crop-seeds: maize (main crop), legume (nutrient “generator”) and the cover-crop (weed controller). The last component represents the soil (the foundation on which team-goals will or will not thrive). All of these work hand-in-hand in ensuring optimal crop performance and productivity; and in this case, optimal team performance and productivity.

Component 1: The Team Vision & Strategy- (main crop seed)

The Team Vision and Strategy are the major drivers of the team. They are those goals that the team commits themselves to achieving. It is only when the Vision and Strategy are fulfilled that the fruits of the team’s success are seen by the outside world. A well-defined Vision and Strategy partially guarantees team success- “when we know where we are going and how to get there, the problem is half-solved”.

Component 2: Talent Utilization within Team-(leguminous crop seed)

A major characteristic of a good legume is that it adds nitrogen to the soil, thereby increasing the nutritive value of the soil. Leaders need to realize that the more they utilize the talents and expertise of team-members (especially those talents and expertise that they personally don’t have) the more they develop themselves through re-learning and subsequently team members are developed. It is important to allow all your team-members shine- when they shine, your team shines and when your team shines, you shine. Remember that the team is always called by the name of the leader- (e.g. “Mr. Brittle’s Team”).

Component 3: Leader’s Generosity with Power- (cover-crop seed)

Every individual loves to be the top-, if not sole-, decision maker. As the traditional management system seems to portray, the leader can step into this privilege as the sole-owner of all team decision-making powers. However, the modern model leader should learn to share his/her power to ensure that a good team environment is retained.

When, as a leader, you allow your team-members to have asses to decision making process, this gesture kills the “weeds” of complacency that usually arise from feelings of “not-being-among”; it kills the “weeds” of distrust and fosters team growth and productivity.

Component 4: Personality of a the Leader- (soil)

This is the last but obviously not the least component of leadership- the leader’s personality. As earlier stated, ideal leadership is not achieved through adherence to a set of principles but rather through the development of a personality that produces the “leadership competence”-a unique ability to be a leader, no matter what position you occupy!

A careful look at the illustrator- the soil, shows some characteristics that drips from an ideal leader. The soil is sacrificial in nature- it owns all the nutrients, water and air that the three other components need to stay alive. However, the soil is never reluctant to give it all up. A leader gives up the knowledge, power, time, exemplary life and all it takes to keep the team motivated. As the soil is the most unnoticed component in this illustration (the other components can be easily seen because they are above ground-level), a true leader is always ready to go unnoticed. He/she puts team first and the-self last!

This unique personality is not a natural attribute that every human is born with; some people have to re-construct their personality through Personal Leadership, to become that Ideal Leader! - “The “Logger”- Leader”- that is why some are born leaders while others are made-leaders!

Author: Tobi Odunowo

Tobi Odunowo holds a Bachelor of Agric. from the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria and is a Global Internet Member of the Society of Human Resource Management. He has had prior experience in leading global virtual teams whilst working for AIESEC International- world’s widest networked leadership development and exchange organisation. He’s also got experience in Change Management as a Consultant with The Capital Group, Ghana- a leading indigenous consultancy specialising in HR Services, Management Training and Financial Advisory Services. Tobi has a flair for Virtual Leadership and Strategic Management and is currently nursing a virtual consultancy initiative.

Living life as Inquiry* [excerpts from my upcoming book: "3Cs"]

2011-10-11T18:35:00.000+01:00

“Whosoever can think deep will know how to give thanks”- Yoruba proverb [Literal translation]

Unfortunately, I am not able to tell you the exact steps to take in discovering your purpose in life. However, I can share with you the single thing people fail to do which makes it extremely difficult to discover the unique attributes and abilities the Creator has placed in them. Here lays the secret: People ask questions, a lot of questions, but not to themselves. People spend their whole life asking questions about others! “Oh, why did she act in such and such a way?” “Oh, why did he say this or that?” “Oh, they should not have had these things they have”; but they fail to sit still, reflect and question their own actions and reactions while making-sense of them.

*Professor Judi Marshal of the Management Learning and Leadership department at Lancaster University wrote a great piece published in the System Practice and Action Research Journal. She titled it “Living life as Inquiry”. The aim was to show how she “applies notions of inquiry as a method to many areas of her life space”. Judi explained what she meant by living life as inquiry. She says it refers to:

“a range of beliefs, strategies and ways of behaving which encourage her to treat little as fixed, finished, clear-cut. Rather she has an image of living continually in process, adjusting and seeing what emerges, bringing things into question”.

Get this! The beliefs you hold in your mind determine your ability to rightly inquire your life experiences. There are people who blame others for every ill they experience in life. They continually believe someone somewhere is against them. Such people never inquire their life; rather they spend their days judging the life of others.

The big question is: When things happen in your life, what sense do you make of it? When you pass through an experience, what does it mean to you as an individual? The act of Sense-making is defined as “a process by which people give meaning to experience”.

When gold miners in South Africa dig deep into the rocks, what they initially find is not pure gold. In fact, it is a mixture of gravel, sand and gold. Gold miners therefore go ahead to extract the gold through what is termed “gold ore processing”. Typically, you cannot get the most out of your experiences until you get those experiences processed through inquiry with the purpose of extracting the senses those experiences make to you.

Your ability to effectively inquire your life experiences and learn from them requires a conscious resilient effort to work on your behaviours. You will have to hone your mind-set until you find it normal, natural and seamless to continually question what you know, feel, do and want. You then develop a keenness to keep knowing.

Let me introduce you to a process of inquiry that ensures you are able to make sense of your experiences. It is centred around three basic words that start most questions: Why, What and When.

Asking the “Whys”

When you go through experiences, it is important to make out time to reflect on your actions and those of others. When you do, learn to ask the “Why” questions. Such questions as: Why did I fail to pass Physics while I easily made good grades in Sociology? This is best used in kick-starting an inquiry process. Asking the “Why” questions exposes the inner and outer arcs of attention. It influences your thoughts (inner) and actions (outer) based on the experience you are inquiring and subsequently, the sense you make of the experience. Asking the “Whys” enables you to analyse situations from diverse perspectives thereby boosting the richness of your learning.

Asking the “What questions”

After the “Whys” have been answered, the next is to get to know “What the answers to the Whys mean?” Using the previous example, you’ll be asking: “If I failed Physics because I realised I’m not inclined towards science subjects, what does this mean to me?” Finding answers to the Whats reveals the action steps you could take hereafter. These answers simply help you make sense of the experience

Asking the “When questions”

Most people repeatedly act the same way not because they did not realise their past mistakes but because they failed to plan a change in behaviour—and therefore, their learning is incomplete. They might have realised their mistakes, but fail to learn from them by not taking new actions.

If answering the “What” questions helps you make sense of your experiences and exposes action steps, there is a need to set-out plans on when to take action; and this is by no means the least important thing to remember. Indeed, your learning is incomplete without this.

Travails of the “Rejected son”- Transactional Human Resources (HR)

2011-10-10T19:00:00.001+01:00

Folks, kinsmen and fiends,

I cry and wail!

I make lamentations of my travails

Laid on me by my mother

The one who, in her care, I am placed.

I might not have been your first

But for long I remained your darling.

And when you were infamous,

I brought you the best of fame.

When you lacked relevance within the organisation

When all your efforts were mere routine

And you earned far less than the epitome of earnings

I, was all you knew!

Alas, the boom arose

All and sundry followed after his fame

He became the most loved in all fields

Everyone loves “strategy”! Oh! everyone does!

Does this massage their ego? I know not!

Would they regard as dumb those that care not about “strategy”?

I have been kept aside, but not left alone

And one of my own, my little brother

Has stolen my fame

Were it for a while, I would have held my peace

But for years, this might linger on

My mother rejecting me day by day

Putting me up for adoption

By those that know me not—Line Managers!

Yea, the ones who have more interest in their version of “strategy”

Than in me, the “rejected son”

- From “Transactional HR” to you [HR Practitioner], my mother!

In a bid to capture the history of Human Resources Management field, I decided to borrow a summarized account from Wikipedia, well laid out in layman’s language:

“Human Resources is a relatively modern management term, coined as late as the 1960s. [1] The origins of the function arose in organisations that introduced 'welfare management' practices and also in those that adopted the principles of 'scientific management'. From these terms emerged a largely administrative management activity, coordinating a range of worker related processes and becoming known, in time, as the 'personnel function'. Human resources progressively became the more usual name for this function, in the first instance in the United States as well as multinational or international corporations, reflecting the adoption of a more quantitative as well as strategic approach to workforce management, demanded by corporate management to gain a competitive advantage, utilizing limited skilled and highly skilled workers.”

From the 1960s up until the end of the 20th Century, the strategic potential of Human Resources Management was not quite discovered. Following the turn-around in the industrial sector where competitive advantage began to lie with human capital rather than financial capital, scholars as well as practitioners started to view the field from a different lens. They realised that if the people that make up the organisation made the difference, our approach to attracting, selecting, developing and retaining these people must be the new competitive advantage.

For those wondering if the “fad” about competitive advantage lying with the organisation’s people is true, my simple explanation to this has been a reference to the automobile industry. In the 1970s and 80s, Peugeot car brands were famous in my part of the world. These were French automobiles known for durability and because the company had greater financial capital than the upcoming Asian car manufacturers, they were able to make more sales. However, one would note that car manufacturers retained the same model of a car brands for many years—design, body-style, features remained the same. All they had to do was to keep their “men at work”, routinely producing the same cars they produced the year before. Research and Development was infamous—and if there was at all, it did not have the zeal to respond to consumer fantasies as at the present. Thus, the “richer” companies won because the consumers in that generation were more contented than us.

Then the tables changed! Consumer aspirations grew. Producers soured while options and alternatives prevailed; and so did the role of Human Resources within organisations—we became relevant; we got invited to making important decisions related to charting the “strategic direction” of organisations. Yet, we are still held back by the responsibilities of our “now-crippled first son”—transactional HR.

Describing transactional HR as a “now-crippled first son” is not to undermine its relevance to Human Resources Management today. However, it is important to note the presence of technology has transformed the way we do transactional HR, otherwise it could be regarded as “crippled” in its original form. The facelift afforded transitional HR through the enablement of technology is the very reason we could opt to put him up for adoption—by Line Managers—albeit, we still struggle with doing this successfully.

A question most often asked is whether Line Managers are ready to take-on the responsibility of our improved transactional HR? Are they ready to use the technological aids to request for new job positions, run shortlists, schedule interviews, conduct competency-based recruitment, carry-out performance agreements and appraisals, conduct performance feedback sessions, simply take full ownership of the transactional spheres of attracting, selecting, developing and retaining talents; while HR practitioners focus on the strategic dimensions of these?

Reflecting on my past experience as a Talent Management Consultant for a leading telecoms company, I had the responsibility of guiding Line Managers through conducting feedback sessions for their direct-reports. One complaint that came out clear could be summarised in the phrase I so often heard: “you are making me do HR work for you! I have my own deadlines. I’ve got my own work”. As true as this may be, Line Managers refuse to be convinced that managing their direct-reports (the ways it is defined by HR—expressed by transactional HR) is actually part of their work. They consider such tasks as developing a marketing strategy, implementing the financial strategy and the various other ways by which we “do strategy” in organisations as the core [and perhaps the whole] of their responsibilities.

As everyone seeks to concentrate on “doing strategy” in their different cubicles within the organisation, the solution perhaps lies in convincing Line Managers that transactional HR is a strategic approach to strategically getting their work done within the various ways through which they contribute to the success of their organisations; for without the right people, success is not guaranteed!

Power of #tweetgum- Staying Awake at Work

2011-10-08T12:32:00.000+01:00

Picture this. You are attending a high profile meeting sitting in the midst of senior colleagues. You work in a traditional hierarchical organization where you are expected to “respect the bosses”. Being assigned the task of sitting by a projected laptop, you are expected to make changes to a set of documents being reviewed at the meeting. Suddenly, your eyes start closing-up; mouth attempting to slightly open up; head refusing to retain its vertical position; you suddenly realize that sleep has set in! This was my situation a day ago.

Having stayed up late to watch movies with the wife previous night, I certainly did not have enough sleep; my body needed more sleep. My usual approach to keeping awake on mornings succeeding nights I go late to bed was skipping breakfast to ensure I do not feel heavy and thus sleepy. However, yesterday morning was different. I could not resist the complimentary breakfast buffet offered by the hotel we were lodged in. And so, I had to bear the consequences of my action.

Amongst many options that played in my head as possible remedies to my sleepy feeling, I strangely picked up my blackberry, browsed through blackberry messenger while dosing in-between glances of past messages and contacts’ updates. And then, I decided to open the twitter app and tweet about my situation—the difficulty to keep awake at this important meeting that had me filling an important [better said, conspicuous] role. Truthfully, I have previously criticized people who tweet about any and everything that’s going on through their day. I felt they said too much than “we” needed to know; who cares about their “hurting shoes”, “annoying siblings”, “nosy bosses”, “new clothes” and the various [hitherto deemed] irrelevant talks people bring up on twitter. But right there, I found myself doing what I’d always criticized. I posted a tweet about sleeping at the meeting—and more so, I was eager to get people’s responses. In a few minutes, I got a “mention” notification by a friend of mine—@Shomade, who advised that I chew gum to stay awake. Right after reading and replying to her tweet to let her know I did not have access to chewing gums, I discovered it was important to let her know that the sleepy feeling was gone anyway. And, what did it? #tweetgum did it where there was no chewing-gum?!?!

Puzzled by my recent experience and curious to know what happens within our anatomy when we take certain actions to keep awake at work, I surfed the internet to find how chewing-gum helps us stay awake. This perhaps could lead to the discovery on how the newly-found #tweetgum works. From my mini-research, I learned that “chewing gum stimulates muscles in your face, increasing blood flow to your head, helping you stay alert and awake”-Wikihow.

Could posting a tweet, being in expectation for a reply and then getting the reply have stimulated the muscles in my face [perhaps, the excitement as a result of receiving a response to my tweet] thus increasing the blood flow to my head??!! Can’t answer! Let’s the Doctors worry over that! However, my experience reinforces the increasing impact social networking, and its resulting new ways of conversing, is having on our generation.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting a friend in Manassas, VA, United States. At the dining table, we got into a conversation about an aircraft crash that occurred at a US Air-force base in West Virginia. We had attended an air-show at the same base earlier that day and the crash occurred after we had left. I reached for my blackberry, got on my twitter app in a bid to retrieve the news intending to add cream to our conversation. My friend felt disgusted about my “addiction” to blackberry. Virtually scolding me, he pointed-out the need to detach from “blackberry addiction” as this poses a great threat to time spent with family and friends.

I hope to dwell on this in a later article while I leave you to droll over my newly discovered #tweetgum [highly recommended for folks that can’t stay awake at work due to night-crawling or night-time insomnia :)]

Gender Dichotomy in the Workplace: Reflections on my Stories of Three Nigerian Female Managers

2011-09-23T13:43:00.000+01:00

1. Introduction

In some of the most common subjects in management, it is not rear to come across terms such as gender; gendering; or doing-gender. Over the past decade, knowledge on gender has evolved since it became identified as a social phenomenon that has impacted how we think of politics, management and other social affairs. Gender is a social practice and it is influenced by cultural beliefs (Ridgeway and Correll, 2004). It could refer to characteristics that are seen to distinguish between male and female (i.e. biological sex) or a social role or a gender identity; and indeed, "gender" could be defined in various forms.

Over the years, gender-related issues has found its way to the workplace as female managers all over the world are said to frequently face various challenges at the workplace due to widely accepted beliefs on what managerial behaviours are—which are largely related to masculine traits. Despite the progress women have made in the career-world and the increasing rate of leadership positions held by women in the corporate as well as non-corporate work-life, male colleagues still perceive leadership positions as requiring what is considered masculine traits (Schein et al, 1996).

As expressed by Antal and Izraeli (1993), the greatest difficulty women in management face is the persistent stereotype that relates management abilities with masculinity. Around the world, our societies are largely patriarchal where men historically have always had greater power, privilege and wealth than women did (Davidson and Burke, 1994). This seems to limit the extent to which women could climb the leadership ladder in the workplace—relatively assumed to be equal to a glass-ceiling scenario. In response to these systemic and psychological barriers faced by women in management, these women are forced to act like men in order to preserve their distinctively female characteristics (Gherardi and Poggio, 2001) and protect the success of their managerial roles.

The Tyranny of Gender Dichotomy

What makes social perceptions of gender dichotomous? Prokhovnik (2002) explains dichotomy as creating a situation where the definition of the subject is either A or not-A. In relation to gender dichotomy, one is about not being the other—being male is same as not-being-female and invariably, only two possibilities can be envisaged—an “either-or” situation. Dichotomy provides the conceptual basis for dualism where differences are promoted over similarities.

Gender is done and performed; it is not what we are born with (West and Zimmerman, 1987; Butler, 1990). Everyone can perform gender; however, we are constrained by what personae can be performed as there exist impunity to specific gender behaviours acceptable in the society (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003).

In distinguishing sex and gender, Powell and Graves (2003) described the study of sex differences as focused on the differences between males and females while difference is derived from the society’s belief on how masculine and feminine behaviours differ. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) defines sex as a “biological categorisation based primarily on potential, whereas gender is the social elaboration of biological sex” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003:10).

Amidst societal perceptions about gender differences in relation to sex, there are in existence individuals who cannot exclusively identify with the “acceptable behaviours” of the dichotomously defined genders. The word “transgendered” is an expression used to describe people who are supposedly of a particular gender but they do not perform or form identities with that gender. Rather, they take particular temporary or permanent actions to present the “other gender” (Valentine, 2003).

As such, words like “tom-boy” [referring to the feminine gender exhibiting behaviours regarded as masculine; or “sissy” [referring to the masculine gender exhibiting feminine traits] reiterates the fact that social norms label individuals in the dichotomous space of gender and sex. In describing the tyranny of gender dichotomy and the apparent social labels, Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000) explains that:

“labelling someone man or woman is a social decision. We may use scientific knowledge to help us make the decision, but only our beliefs about gender—not science—can define our sex. Furthermore, our beliefs about gender affect what kinds of knowledge scientists produce about sex in the first place” (:3)

Therefore, it is evident that gender dichotomy has a significant effect on sex differences. For instance, when parents hold a belief that their male children require more development (e.g. educational) than the female ones—as prevalent in many African countries—they tend to raise their children in a way that reinforces their belief and thus male children become more successful as a result of self-fulfilling prophesy—which occurs when expectations from others promotes behaviours that makes the expectations come true (Powell and Graves, 2003). This has reinforced the belief that leadership ability is masculine and therefore the few females aspiring for the unlikely leadership positions often prepare to demonstrate what is perceived as masculine behaviours in order to be successful leaders.

This paper intends to make sense of the stories of three Nigerian female managers through a narration of my observations. In studying organisations, storytelling has been recognised as a dimension of organisational action, due to its ability to highlight various situations in the workplace bringing to light how people interpret and represents situations in the workplace (Murgia and Poggio, 2009). Thus, this writing seeks to tell stories of each of the women at their workplace [and in some cases at home] and an exploration of their managerial identity in relation to social interpretations of practising gender. With each of these women, I have [in the past and/or present] had personal and/or working relationships and therefore my recorded observations could be considered as primary data. My choice of their stories lies in the fact that apart from being managers, they seem to have practised gender in disparate manners depending on particular situations, bring to question their real identities in the light of socially acceptable dichotomous behaviours for their feminine gender institution.

2. Research Methodology

2.1. Action Research- First Person Inquiry

“Action Research is simply a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are carried out”

(Carr and Kemmis 1986: 162)

When we undertake Action Research, we source for practical solutions to the issues that are of concern to us as a group of people, by acting and reflecting on our actions—and so we discover the relationship between theory and practice through collective participation (Reason and Bradbury, 2001). As a qualitative research methodology, Action Research helps researchers to discover practical knowledge that is useful for everyday life because it approaches researching in a manner that seeks to improve the social well-being of humans.

Action Research comes across as participative due to the fact that, to discover practical knowledge and liberating ways of knowing, we need to work with people in their everyday life. Thus all participative research must be action research (Reason and Bradbury, 2001).

As captured by many writers, the methodology finds its origin in the social experiments of Kurt Lewin in the 1940s. Embedded in a deep relationship between a motivation to change and action, Lewin affirmed that if people are active in the decisions that affect them, it is more likely to they adopt new ways and therefore, “rational social management” proceeds in a spiral of steps, “each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action” (Lewin, 1958: 201).

Another remarkable attempt to explain Action Research came through when Stringer (1999) introduced a simple but highly effective model for approaching action research called Community-based Action Research. Enacted through an explicit set of social values, it is seen as a process of inquiry that is democratic, equitable, liberating and life enhancing. The model simply explains action research as a process of: Look - building a picture and gathering information; Think - interpreting and explaining; Act - resolving issues and problems (Stringer, 1999).

2.3 How does First-person Inquiry fit this research?

Inquiry promotes participation, demonstrates political and epistemological attributes. It upholds the right of people to have a say in decisions which affect them and emphasises the fact that knowledge is subjective and objective and rooted in our experience with the world based on the accounts we give—articulated in our theories and models and expressed in the way in which we engage in action.

In this writing, I seek to make sense of my experiences and perceptions of three Nigerian female managers with who I had (or current have) close relationships with. The objective bears on an inquiry into their leadership styles, especially those I found strange for their feminine gender institution, as I try to find reasons for my perceptions in the light of past literature and an analysis of my past and present thoughts.

Given that learning has a human-factor and is action oriented, to acquire factual knowledge about learning, an experiential approach is most useful—and this means that we stand to gain understanding from exploring our past, current and future experiences. To explore and learn from our experiences, there is a need to “question” our past and current actions, make-sense of it to determine future actions that will be in our best interests individually and collectively.

The first-person inquiry thus stands clear as a useful approach in achieving my objective to make sense of these stories from my past and present. Its epistemological attributes guides my inquiry of my past and current perceptions of the behaviours I observed helping to question the views I had, why I held those views and its implication in the larger society.

3. The Stories

3.1 Home and Workplace: Living two personalities?

This is the story of Marilyn Harvey (not real names.) I have known her all my life—being my aunt. However, in my penultimate year in high school, I knew Aunty Marilyn all over again when I became a student in her school for three months.

Marilyn was born to a disciplinarian. Her father (my grand-father) was brought up in the traditional Western way where principles were instilled in their minds right from the cradle. He had a hard-life through childhood and barely got an opportunity to be educated. But once the chance to go to school surfaced, he never allowed it slip away. He gave his best to education and subsequently gave education to many others later in life. He was Principal of many high-schools for many years within the 1950s and 1960s.

Without a doubt, Marilyn had watched her father lead the schools where he held the leadership position of School Principal. She had watched him display his leadership deeds, stamping his authority at every needful instance. We all grew up to know him as the “no-nonsense grandpa”—a trait he almost successfully passed on to all his children.

In the summer of 1995, my Dad informed me of their plans to have me school at my Aunty Marilyn’s school for three months to enable me take the high-school leaving certificate examination, one year before I was due to take the examination. To ease my commuting to school, I moved in with Aunty Marilyn’s family opening up an opportunity for me to experience her motherhood role from a closer range and true to what I had always known her as, she still remained the very caring mother that could almost sub whenever she scolded any of us.

On my first day in school, I was taken my new class and at 8:00 am, we had to all file out to the assembling ground. As traditionally done in most elementary and secondary schools in Nigeria, we sang and prayed. Then, it was time for the Principal’s address. I stood on my toes (compensating for my height) to catch a glimpse of Aunty Marilyn and to my surprise, she appeared to have a fierce look. She mounted the podium and sounded extremely authoritative. Speaking like a Roman Warrior giving orders to a battalion, she chided the disobedient acts of some students who had been tyrants and threatened to punish them.

A few hours after, I had a cause to go to her office. She was standing outside her door supervising the castigation of a disobedient student who was getting cane strokes laid on his back. I looked to see if Aunty Marilyn felt any emotions but to my surprise I found no she felt no remorse. In fact, she almost appeared cruel. “No way! This cannot be the same person I have known all my life”, I thought. Well, she was but this was a different, distinctively different, side of her.

For three months, I kept observing Aunty Marilyn. I could not comprehend the disparate personalities she displayed at home and in school. Was she been hypocritical or she was just responding to a need—a need for survival in her leadership role?

3.2 Sweet “Motherly” Interviewer Turns Fierce Manager

It was probably one of my easiest interviews. I was initially agitated having been told my next interview was going to be with the Managing Consultant—the boss! The previous interviewers had insinuated that I was going to be interviewed by a “tough” woman and that had sent some adrenaline down my spine.

Linda Brown (not real names) is the Managing Consultant of a Human Resources Consultancy in Lagos, Nigeria where I worked a few years back. I met Linda for the first time at my third interview with the consultancy during my lingered selection process. Linda had a calm look as I entered into her office at about six o’clock as she politely offered me a seat as I approached her desk. She seemed to have had a busy day with fatigue written all over her face.

The interview started, she asked about my personal and professional life and I responded as calm as I could. Instantly, I felt she was impressed with my past work experience and really wanted me to join her firm. She was comfortable with telling me about her long-term plans for the firm and why she needed “top-talents” like me to join the team. She sounded like a mother as she advised me about my career future. She came across as someone so caring and my entire impression of her was that she was the sweetest manager anyone could ever wish for.

Linda did not change her personality after I joined the company, I probably only had the opportunity to see her display a leadership style that was surprisingly not in sync with the sweet motherly personality I had earlier experienced. At the first Monday-morning meeting I attended, Linda (based on my observation) worked very hard to stamp her authority as the leader of the team and spoke harshly to team members—most especially to male Consultants who tried to give excuses for not meeting set targets. I quickly realised the overall performance of the firm had dropped over the past few months, and Linda was probably expressing her frustrations by being harsh and making extra effort to affirm that she was the boss.

All through my two-month-and-a-half stint with the firm, I was not going to experience the ‘sweet, caring, calm, nice’ Linda anymore. I was stuck with the ‘pretty harsh’ manager who snapped at every little mistake and did all she could to drive team members to better work performance by making it very clear that she was the boss and everyone needed to realise that what she said was law and order. She had the authority and no one else could speak against it—at least, not always.

3.3 An” Iron-Lady” Manager who Shuts Door to Weep

She has a huge physique that comes across as intimidating. In her forties but still single, people who know her are often opined that Christine Brown (not real names) was a “tom-boy” as a kid—an impression that could have resulted in the self-fulfilling prophesy of a conflict between the sense she made of her gender and the outward impressions of her behaviour as the “other-gender”.

From her own stories, she was brought up by a “disciplinarian-of-a-mother” who had shown high levels of aggression in bringing up her “stubborn” flock of four daughters and a son under control and discipline. When her temper raged, she would scream on top of her voice to impress her command and control for the umpteenth time. She was the original “Iron Lady” and as Christine often admits, she took after her mother.

Christine Brown is a perfect example of a professional who loves what she does till it is almost impossible not to detect her passion for the job within half-an-hour of interacting with her. Top of all her leadership capability is her knack with identifying and placing talents right—a round peg in a round hole. She often shows a lot of commitment and concern in the growth of high-performing subordinates under her reporting-line as the Director of Human Resources. To her low-performing staff, she usually has a chunk of disgust and frustration to throw at them when they “just-don’t-get-it”. At such instances, she yells at them displaying aggression and vehement. Her huge physique intimidates her victims as everyone usually scrambles for cover. She is widely dreaded and subordinates pray “she’s having a good day” before they have a cause to walk towards her office to discuss a work activity.

Three male-Managers report to Christine in her current job, a situation that is not unprecedented in her decade-and-a half managerial career-life. Indeed, her ability to seemingly bring these men under her firm command and control often impressed me. But there came a day I witnessed another side of the “Iron Lady’s” personality. One of her direct-reports had kept her in the dark about an assignment she was meant to oversee the next day. Pouring out her frustration over what was a costly oversight by the subordinate, she started to yell at him and all of a sudden, she burst in tears. I was perplexed by this strange display of emotion. “She came across as too strong to weep”, I thought. How could one possibly place these two extreme displays of emotions? On many more accounts, I learnt that whenever she experiences a bad day with her subordinates or her boss, Christine would often shut the door of her office and weep and other times even wail. Yet, she is the sweet but fierce manager everyone would hate to go wrong with.

4. Discussion

Having narrated these stories, expressing my notion of the female managers’ behaviours in relation to doing gender, I am conscious of the possible presence of bias being that I am the “other gender”. However, my aim is to make this inquiry process as explicit as possible seeking to learn from the forms of the stories and raise questions rather than prove connections (Marshall, 2007). As much as I am aware of the presence of my masculine voice, I seek to utilise as much neutrality as possible perching in the middle rather than living in the comfort zone of my masculine position.

4.1. If These Were Men: Challenging My Perceptions of Gender Dichotomy in Management

Views on sex and/or gender differences have evolved over time. These, however, have been centred largely on the capabilities of men versus women. Differences in the behaviours of both genders have been examined in diverse social behaviours “including aggression, altruism, inflentiability and non-verbal communication” (Powell and Graves, 2003: 43). Apparently, more women than men have written about issues relating to gender and leadership citing societal perception of leadership as “man’s work” and challenging such notions under the feminist-approach umbrella. However, the big question is: have past efforts been able to change the society’s perception (including the female gender) of the leadership ability as masculine? Schien et al (1996) in their account titled “Think Manger—Think Male: A Global Phenomenon?” recorded that in a global study carried out, “Japanese females see no similarity between women and managers, sharing closely the view of their male counterparts” (Schien et al, 1996: 39) thus these women and men obviously rejected the manager’s role to be fit for women since the required ability of “being a manager” are non-feminine.

In my opinion, the male gender—societally perceived as synonymous with leadership—has taken possession of certain “leadership behaviours” and these have been widely tagged masculine. As explained by Martin (2001), masculinity are those “practices that are represented or interpreted by actors and/or observers as masculine within a system of gender relations that gives them meaning as gendered in a masculine way” (Martin, 2001: 588). This has compelled the feminine gender (observers) to accept these practices as masculine leading to a societal perception that these behaviours (and subsequently the related organisational role of leadership) are not fit for women—a notion that is repeatedly being challenged by feminist theorists.

In my inquiry of these women’s stories, I recognise a glaring tone of my displeasure with some of their behaviours as leaders in their workplaces. I felt my aunt, Marilyn, had no right to act as a disciplinarian in school while being the sweet, calm, understanding mother at home. Those were extreme behaviours. As a matter of fact, I believed she was an intruder on the behavioural space of the masculine gender—being disciplinarian was meant for men and men alone. I believed, my ex-manager, Linda should have remained the nice caring lady I met at the interview. She was out of place being “bossy” and standing her ground to ensure things went right in the organisation. After all, she was not a man but of the “other gender”. Christine, I perceived, was wrong having on her the “strong-lady” facet when right behind that was her real self—the emotional “soft-lady”. Albeit, I realised that if these stories were about men, I would have found these behaviours as acceptable, needful and the sole-approach to leadership success.

In my inquiry journey, however, the question arose: Are these meant to be acceptable male behaviours or acceptable leadership behaviours (that could be acted by either gender)—consequently, challenging the existence of gender dichotomy within the management practice in the first place.

4.2. Societal Perception of Leadership as “Man’s Work”- Workplace Constraints for Female Managers

Gender classification and differentiation has far more effect on organisational life than widely represented. Some researchers argue that gender holds a central space in the core processes and activities of an organisation including motivation, decision-making, culture, identity and strategy (Mathieu, 2009) and as such, the “disadvantaged gender” faces enormous constraints in living up to the demands of her organisational (leadership) role stereotyped to be characteristic to the “other gender”.

As known in social dynamics, it is our tacit knowledge that informs our practice of gender and as such, gender is practiced with liminal consciousness—referring to knowledge that is below the level of consciousness (Martin, 2006). Since tacit knowledge is teachable through the observation of behaviours or actions (Raelin, 1997), it is right to say that some of the behaviours of female managers—which are socially interpreted as masculine—are usually acted out with liminal consciousness. Of the three stories narrated above, two of the women had built perceptions of leadership (or control) based on their observations of a disciplinarian father and a disciplinarian mother over many number of years. These behaviours were embedded as tacit knowledge in them and cannot be consciously perceived as gendering when practiced as these behaviours (just as their “feminine behaviours”) are usually acted out non-reflexively. The discrimination of the feminine gender in leadership roles can therefore be said not to be based on the ability of women to exhibit certain acceptable leadership behaviours—perceived as masculine; rather, it is based on the assumption that those leadership behaviours do not depict the feminine gender and as such, women are not expected to have the ability to act such behaviours.

Faced with this constraint, women are further compelled to act as men reflexively. In this instance, women in leadership roles consciously identify themselves with masculinity while suppressing their feminine identities in order to demonstrate competence and capability (Wong, 2005). With leadership ability reinforced by a masculine-biased definition, women are constrained to “reposition themselves with a more empowering identity” (Denissen, 2010) causing them to “over-do” masculinity. As narrated above, Christine, in identifying with masculinity, frequently displays a level of aggression that produces pain—a behaviour that is perceived as more characteristic of the male than the female gender (Powell and Graves, 2003) and when societal resistance to such behaviours are shown by male and female colleagues alike, she resorts to her supressed feminine identity of softness and emotionality—habitually crying her eyes out.

4.3. Is Leadership Truly “Men’s Work”? – Revisiting Leadership Competencies of the 21^st Century

Lombardo and Eichinger (2006) captured a long term study at the Centre of Creative Leadership in their book titled For Your Improvement. In this book, they explained in details, a list of 67 competencies which are were utilised by successful leaders in a number of successful organisations. Reviewing this list of competencies, it is interesting to discover that as much as none of these competencies were gendered from their account, it is very easy to relate most of the competencies to masculine rather than feminine abilities. Competencies such as Business Acumen, Intellectual Horsepower and Command skills—all traditionally appear to be characteristics of the masculine gender. A few of these competencies invariably appear as feminine rather than masculine based on societal perspectives—Caring about Direct-Reports, Compassion and Approachability seem to be characteristics of women.

Gendering leadership ability may not stand the test of time in the 21^st century. The dichotomy of gender is losing its grip with increasing societal acceptability of the intersexed and transgendered population. Doan (2010), expressed an unconventional view of gender differentiations in her very recent article titled The Tyranny of Gendered Spaces- Reflections Beyond the Gender Dichotomy, expressing her personal experience of how the rigid categorization of gender ignores the intersexed and transgendered population; arguing that this segregated population experience a tyranny of gender that has a negative effect on their private and public lives.

Although the women whose stories where narrated in this article may not be described as intersexed or transgendered, they acted in ways that could have suggested they were. Christine was judged as someone who must have been a “tom-boy” as a kid—owing to the outward impressions of her behaviour as the “other-gender”—operating in the gender space reserved for the male as defined by societal norms. In their managerial roles, some of the leadership competencies which these women displayed—for example, command skills—were perceived gendered by men and women within their environment judged inappropriate for their gender institution.

As we come to the realisation of the growing transgendered population who occupy leadership and management roles, a new approach to viewing leadership and gender might be needful and apparently a compulsion to disperse the relationship between leadership competencies and gender dichotomy in the coming years.

5. Conclusion

Sex became gender when the society tagged acceptable behaviours to the binary sex-types. Women in leadership have faced discrimination from men’s actions based on cultural ideologies that insinuates women as an inferior gender (Denissen, 2010) and therefore not competent for their managerial roles. These women had been conditioned, or in other instances, were constrained to act like men in order to meet social demands of leadership behaviours, however men and women alike found their masculine leadership behaviours strange and unacceptable.

While the society wakes up to the reality of an imminent heterogeneous gender classification that goes one-step beyond the binary classification of sex and apparently gender—prepared to welcome the new terms: intersexed or transgendered as new additions to the original gender dichotomy, what is the future of research work on gender dichotomy in organisational learning? Are researchers already responding to the paradigm shift on the society’s standpoint on gender classifications?

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India and the Nigerian Solution [a note from the past]

2011-04-05T16:32:00.000+01:00

This is a piece I wrote in 2007

...that there is still Hope for Nigeria

The past few months have been of a unique experience for me. Not necessarily and entirely pleasant; but various happenings around me have often sent me sometimes into reflective moods and other times to exciting moods. In this note however, I want to share those moments when the happenings around me got me thinking. I got thinking about something that is as large as life...What I cannot be detached from....My nationality...The fact, the pride...that I'M A NIGERIAN and I will always be.

For those that are not aware, I got an internship opportunity through AIESEC with Deloitte Consulting India Pvt. Ltd (a.k.a. Region 10) - the ninth region (offshore office) of Deloitte & Touche USA LLP. I work for the Talent Development function- a part of the Talent Management team consisting of one hundred and twenty people all dedicated to managing the 5,500 employees who work for the Region 10 offices in Hyderabad and Mumbai.

India is described as one of the world's fastest growing economies and in about a decade, it is been predicted that India will be the world's second largest economy next to the United States. These facts were undoubtedly motivating factors that aided my decision to go for an internship in India. I could remember the disgust some friends expressed when I intimated them of my decision to go live in India for half-a-year. "India?..why India?"..My reply was simple: "Why not India?...India is one of the world's fastest growing economies. Nigeria is dreaming to be amongst the World's 20 Biggest Economies by 2020. If India has done it, why can't we get curious and ask ourselves how they got where they are today?".

Nigeria has diverse similarities with India. We are the world's most populous black nation- one out of every four persons in the black race is a Nigerian; similarly, India is the world's second most populous countries after China. As typical of populous nations, we've similarities in relation to poverty issues, health issues and crime--[I've got some personal insight on this issue called crime having lived for a couple of years in Lagos where incidence of crime is highly-rated. Surprising enough, I got so used to being conscious of criminals in Lagos--especially pickpockets, that I believed I could never be robbed anywhere in the world. Little did I know that I was so wrong! I only needed to spend less than two weeks in India before my phone was stolen- I still can't comprehend how I was outwitted. My conclusion after a lot of reflection on the comparison between these two great countries: "Criminals in India do the unexpected, Criminals in Nigeria do the impossible"- This discussion is for a later date.]

If we get the opportunity to ask "Mr. India" the question- What is the secret of your success? I am sure we will get answers that are not far from these.

The Indian Advantage:

1. Large Population:
Needless to repeat, but for emphasis sake, India's population is the world's second largest which keep growing fast each-day with a probability of becoming the world's largest population in the near future. From a layman's perspective, a country with a huge population simply has the potential to have a high buying power. If you sell a product in India that is useful for many Indian's you definitely will make loads of sales since you've got many buyers.

2. High Poverty Rate:
This sounds like a negative advantage, notwithstanding in a world being dominated by globalization, a country with a high population coupled with high poverty rate can easily turn the poverty disadvantage to an advantage. Poverty contributes to the low-cost of living, cheap cost of labour and thus foreign investors can spend less to produce more in the currency of the host country- India in this case.

3. Skills Building and Self-dependence:
Having lived in Hyderabad for almost 10 weeks, I sometimes feel like living here forever (if I have to consider this single fact) - things are so cheap here especially food-stuff and other "daily-needed" stuff. Why?..It's a simple reason. India at some point learnt to depend on themselves. They'd rather produce things here than import them from other countries. This gave the people a chance to learn...a chance to try their hands, become creative. Little wonder India produces everything you can think of today- cars, wears, etc. Little wonder India has become a country with one of the world’s largest pools to find IT talents. You walk on the streets of Hyderabad and see loads of IT training schools. People come from Africa to get IT training for much less than 20% of what would be paid for the same training at home. Little wonder, I decided to use this opportunity to get training on SAP-HR- an opportunity to become a Functional SAP Consultant.

My views are not technically inclined, neither are they based on any in-depth research. They are purely layman. Purely from a heart who believes there are lessons to be learnt from others. A heart that simply concludes: If it is possible for India, it is surely possible for Nigeria!...Nigeria can join the League of the World's 20 Largest Economies come 2020! My faith is stirred! IT IS POSSIBLE!...we only need to learn and get our minds open... and perpetually (with action backing) make and commit to the solemn pledge...
..."AND UPHOLD HER HONOUR AND GLORY...SO HELP ME GOD!"

The Immensely Beneficial “30-year old Social Network”

2011-02-17T14:51:00.000+01:00

Social networks existed in 1982. You reckon they didn’t? Yes, they did! I know they did because I’ve got a proof. I saw it close to me; right in my house; grew up knowing it, seeing it work and experiencing its benefits—first hand! Albeit, it existed in a different form than how it does today—it existed outside the spheres of technology (or the Web 2.0)—yet, it existed!

In the summer of 1982, my Dad had just established his own business. He was only 28 years old and had become the Founder/Chief Consultant of the first private Physiotherapy Clinic in West-Africa’s largest city—Ibadan. Moving into a four-bedroom apartment rented from his best-friend’s father-in-law, the Clinic started full operations just about the time my immediate younger brother was born. A proud father of three had also become a Director of a new establishment with the desire and determination to ensure its growth and create a laudable social-health impact in the couple-millions populated ancient-city. To become cutting-edge and a center of excellence, it was important he sourced relevant knowledge beyond the territory of the “usual, popular, local expertise” in Physiotherapy. Dad started growing his network of contacts by subscribing to International Professional Journals (via a more tedious process compared to modern-day) by mailing-back subscription post-cards to the various bodies-of-knowledge who disseminated relevant knowledge through periodic Magazines and Journals. Each of these Magazines and Journals were sent and received through the post-office—taking several weeks from point of distribution to receipt. I can remember how important it was, growing up, to frequently commute to the post-office in a bid to check the post-box for new letters. Dad would excitedly react to the receipt of any new Journal as he added to his number of subscriptions year in, year out.

In the course of time, we realized Dad had a good friend we reckoned he’d never met. In the morning prayers, he usually mentioned his patients’ diseases and afflictions to God for intervention—signifying his belief in the Clinic’s motto: “God Heals, We Care”. We noticed he’d started praying for someone else’s patients—a professional friend called Dave. Dave? That sounded strange! We knew about all of everyone in his professional network—an old-friend of his (who also went into private practice a few years on), his network of past colleagues at the University College Hospital, and old-classmates who taught at a couple of Universities, at that was all—we thought. Who then was Dave? We later got to know that Dave was Dad’s new professional buddy who is American and lives in Kentucky. Amazing! Dad had a professional friend from America?!

Their friendship grew stronger; they would exchange series of letters discussing and sharing ideas on patients’ conditions and various approaches they had applied and are applying. Dad was gradually becoming more renowned in his practice sequel to the success being achieved as regards patients’ faster recuperation rates at the Clinic. He learnt from Dave; Dave learnt from him. However, the flow of communication will be described as painstaking (in today’s world)—several months required to exchange letters on a single issue; a few telephone calls (sometimes once in several months)—albeit, they were both committed to sustaining their connection as they continually drew immense benefits from it.

After five-years of keeping in touch virtually, Dave wanted my Dad to come-over to the United States for a month or two as a Consultant in his Clinics. Due to the bad reputation of Nigerians in the late-80s and early-90s, Dad was denied visa to the US. And therefore, this professional relationship had to be continuingly sustained via post-office-delivered letters and periodic and expensive phone-calls.

Ten-years after Dad’s visa denials, Dave had the opportunity to meet his friend’s son, born the same year the Clinic was established—1982!— who incidentally studied Physiotherapy, is a practicing Physiotherapist and is posed to take-over Dad’s Clinic when he retires. My immediate younger brother had gone to the US for training and had scheduled his trip to accommodate a short stint at Dave’s Clinic. Recounting his experience of the moment they met, my brother said “he (Dave) hugged me like a long-lost son he had just found”. That, to him, was the offspring of a friend he had never met in person; however, they had spent the past 30 years as professional buddies—having met and kept in touch through the “30 year old Social Network” system—post-office-delivered letters and the “plain-old-telephone-service” (POTS) box [that had the “screamy” bell-like ringtone]. A year after, Dave offered my brother a two-year job experience in his Clinics inviting him to come learn and share professional expertise.

It’s 17^th February, 2011. I’d just checked my LinkedIn profile. It tells me I have 538 Connections and a whopping 24,689 new people in my network since February 14! At least 50% of my Connections are professionally relevant to me and I perhaps have not met 20% of the 50% in person. It’s unlikely that I’ve made contact with 90% of the 20% within the past year; and yet, these are the people who are my potential professional contacts who possibly hold the future opportunities I or my kids might desperately desire years ahead. Wonder what would have happened if Dad’s commitment to his professional buddy was this lax!

Just like I did, many of my friends have linked their Twitter accounts to LinkedIn such that anytime we post tweets, it appears on our LinkedIn page and updates our Connection on our new posts. That, in itself, is not worrying! What gets me worried is the content of our tweets. We are totally and usually unaware of the impression it proclaims to our world. Those tweets tell our professional network—potential employers, potential professional buddies etc.—who we are! And subsequently, influences their decision on how and if they will like to be intensely committed to us as contacts. Wonder how carefully Dad had to frame the content of his letters and phone conversations in a way that gave Dave a great impression of him—and by extension, his Physiotherapist son who is immensely benefiting from “the 30 year-old Social Network”!

Wonder, wonder, wonder how effectively and appropriately I and you are utilizing our “Techly-Sophisticated and Instant” 21^st Century Social Networks!

"I'm not a social person"--You Are! Real Facts!

2011-02-08T17:49:00.000+01:00

Two days ago, I attempted something that turned out to be insightful. Wanting to test my popularity on the internet, I typed my first and last name in the search page of Google and hit the "enter" key on my laptop. In a second, there laid a list of search results including: Tobi Odunowo-Facebook; Tobi Odunowo- LinkedIn; Tobi Odunowo (tobiodunowo) on Twitter; a few other search results and then one that caught my attention had the caption: Head management development & organisation. What?! I wondered how this has got anything to do with me. I clicked on the result and straight away, a page opened. It was the Yatedo homepage that had an outline of profile pictures with short career descriptions. Taking a closer look, I realised these were profiles of top leaders in the area of Talent Management and Organization Development (TM & OD). But how did my profile get on this webpage, I thought [especially when I do not regard myself as a top leader in TM & OD]? I was to later discover that my Yatedo profile had been extracted from my LinkedIn profile. Yatedo (http://www.yatedo.com/) is a search engine intended to help users find and contact anybody throughout the web; and does this mean that if a recruiter is in search of people with a particular experience or background all s/he needs to do is enter key words into the Yatedo search engine and then profiles appear? My new finding changed completely the way I see social networks—the use of my LinkedIn profile, after all, isn’t controlled by me or by LinkedIn. Whatever I have on it (and on other social networking sites I’m subscribed to) matters beyond my social life—it has consequences on my professional outlook too.

A few weeks ago, I uploaded some pictures from some official working sessions on my Facebook page. A close senior colleague called and advised me against it. Recruiters, she said, prefer people who can separate their social life from professional life—indicating that Facebook, and what it’s used for, portrays an individual’s personal life separate from professional life. Whether I saw this perspective as entirely correct or not, a big learning point was the need to awaken my mind and become conscious of the increasing use of social network in search for professionals and subsequent background checks. Top organisations are increasingly utilising the social web-space to achieve many people management goals including search, selection and development of people. If this is the case, it is then wise for every professional to be mindful of what his/her social web-presence tells the world—what is the content on your LinkedIn profile compared with the best CV you ever developed?; what sites (dating and related sites etc.) are you registered on and what do they say about you? How can you use the social web-space to the advantage rather than disadvantage of your professional ambitions without compromising your personal preferences (what and how you use the social network tools)?

You could say "I don't have a social (outgoing, extroverted) personality". You do not need to. As long as you have a presence on social networks, you are a social person! Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn makes you social, albiet virtually. Thus, it is needful to start living with the awareness of your social presence. It is important to learn and apply the right attitude to the emerging realities of the social network and its impact on your professional life. For all you know, social networks might be doing your professional advancement more harm than good! Won't you want to turn that around?

What if you lose your job today?!

2011-02-03T18:11:00.000+01:00

Without an iota of doubt, this is probably one of the scariest questions anyone is willing to entertain in the mind—“What if I lose my job today?”

Living in a world recently hit by global financial recession with major world economies experiencing record down-turns in decades; organizations issuing letters to employees they regrettably have to part with, visualizing a job-loss, you’ll agree, isn’t a hard task after all.

So, say you get to the office tomorrow, and then rumours start to fly in the air: “learned we are about to down-size and redundant positions will be announced today” or more nicely put “the board has approved that the company is right-sized and letters will be dispatched today”. First thought that comes to mind: “Is my job secured?” Obviously, you will probably be unable to find an answer. You have no idea why the organization has decided to trim-down its size or what direction they are headed. Then reality sets in—you could lose that job today!

You are a high-performing staff—as much as you know—but that’s as much as you know. However, your boss had just issued you a set of queries in the past few months following a relationship break-down between you both. It’s tough to escalate to your Manager’s Manager who is almost inaccessible; and no one is there to help your plight and refute your boss’ assertion that you are a “poor-performer”. Two queries issued plus a warning means you might just be on your way out today! You could be asked to leave—“dismissed” or in milder terms “relieved of your job”.

Still day dreaming—nightmare or whatever you call it—say you get to work tomorrow and right there the dispatch-man arrives at lunch time, hands you a letter and BUM!...“we regret to inform you that the company will no longer need your services”! Shivers run down your spine; you start to sweat…think of home, family, kids' school fees, other commitments—you remember the benefit…free mobile-phone and calls, housing allowance, security, official car with driver—all gone! The most reasonable question appears: What’s Next?

“What’s next?” might stay unanswered for as long as you remain in that shock. In fact, the answer to that salient question dwells in “your past actions” not “subsequent actions”. "What’s next?" should have been prepared and set—like an already baked cake, ready to be decorated and presented.

Major question! When you are on a job, do you go to work to fulfil your tasks as meticulously as you can to be a great-performer on the job; or do you go there to explore how much development and value your job is adding to you. There might be a thin-line between these two purposes; nonetheless that thin line is the differentiator that predicts what sort of life is next when you exclaim: “What’s Next?”

Jim Rohn advises: “the greatest value in life is not what you get; the greatest value in life is what you become. Major question to ask on the job is not “what am I getting here?”...major question to ask is “what am I becoming here”. Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job”

My attitude, when I work for any organization [note that I’ll rather say “I work for an organization” than say “I work with an organization”—Bottom-line: I work there to add particular value and in turn gain particular development; not just pass time with the organization even if I’m percieved as very productive] is to take inventory of my development within the organization in relation to the new tasks and responsibilities I handle which are complaint with global best-practice. If I am not getting that from my organization, then it’s time to walk away! (even if I do not have a new place I am walking to) Crazy idea uh? I’ll tell you how that works.

In this time and age, organizations have discovered that competitive advantage lies with their people and apparently within the tacit knowledge possessed by each of these individuals called employees. Tacit knowledge is defined as “knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it” [source: Wikipedia]. This kind of knowledge is required to perform tasks and more importantly to generate such innovative ideas that can out-compete the competition. In contrast, explicit form of knowledge can be taught and learnt—such are common work practices, tasks and routine responsibilities—anyone can learn it, anyone can do it. The more tacit knowledge you possess, the more valuable you are! Big question: How many more people can do what you do?

Waking up to the reality of the “knowledge market”, “future-thinkers” and "next-generation-talents", who are bound to survive the increasingly competitive job availability, have started giving greater “priority” and “loyalty” their own development over company interests. Don’t get me wrong, I do not mean that they do not have the interest of the companies they work for at heart. They are people of integrity and see themselves as being in an agreement with the company to ensure growth within their area of work. As such, they are committed to that “bound”—the agreement, the contract! However, should the interest of the company compromise their development (acquisition and utilization of their tacit knowledge—the competitive advantage), it seizes to make common sense why they should remain in such companies at the detriment of growing their tacit knowledge for competitive advantage. Such people possess the guts to initiate “the loss of a job” all by themselves--they do not even wait to be told to go.

And when you ask them “What of if you lose your job today?”…the response is loud, clear and said with utmost conviction “I will be out there tomorrow doing something more valuable and profiting, working for the next “client” that needs my value-adding tacit knowledge!”

Learning from my Arabic-attire dressing Experience to a West-African Workplace - V1

2011-02-03T14:48:00.000+01:00

The Article Below is a excerpt from a paper written in partial fulfilment of my MA in Management Learning and Leadership. Steming from the practices of Experiental Learning, Life-long learning and Living Life as Inquiry, the interesting piece (albeit wordy) emphasizes the changing approaches to individual and organizational learning.

Abstract

This paper was written with the intent of reflexively learning from a self-stimulated experience of dressing in an Arabian-attire to a West-African workplace. It explores the major learning embedded in the experience for the writer, and examined the social issues echoed from the reaction of his colleagues.

Key Words: Reflexivity, Learning, Labeling, Stereotypes, Post-Colonialism, Religion

My Arabic-dressing Experience

When I decided to wear a traditional Arabic attire to work, my intention was largely to portray myself as an international, widely-traveled, open-minded and exposed young-man. Some weeks before my Arabian-dressing experience, I was hitching to wear a “rare”, non-routine work-outfit to the office. Weary of the traditional English official wear (suited up in shirt, tie, a pair of pants and a jacket) and the Friday dress-down sports wears or Westernised African traditional outfit, I decided to dress to work in a complete traditional attire of my tribe (the Yoruba tribe) two-weeks before my Arabian-dressing experience. This Yoruba traditional attire is widely associated with politicians and as such, I attracted a relatively high level of attention and comments from colleagues which I did enjoy and even craved for more. As I will later discover, those were much more positive comments than some of those that ensued in reaction to my Arabian appearance.

Prior to the Friday that saw me dress in the Arabian outfit, I reflected on my expectations of people’s reaction when they see me in the “strange” outfit. In actual terms, I did anticipate that some observers will equate the attire to me being a Muslim and was determined to educate them on the fact that it is rather traditional than religious—however, this awareness instilled in me some expanse of perturbation, a fear of what such perceptions could lead to realizing that the topic of religious affiliation is quite sensitive in my environment. In contrast, I expected great comments like “nice outfit” or “Nice! Where did you get that from?”—which ultimately will help achieve my aim of generating some level of attention from colleagues and depicting me as an exposed, widely-traveled, international young-man. In retrospect, the only instance when I ever saw a Nigerian (who had) dressed in an Arabic-attire, was during my undergraduate days (pre-9/11). He had recently returned from the holy pilgrimage in Mecca. I could remember the level of attention he drew; and how admirable his outfit was to everyone that saw him.

The first reaction I observed happened right after I left my apartment and walked towards the car-park. A group of young kids dressed for school were walking towards me, and on sighting me, changed the course of the direction they were headed. I felt embarrassed but quickly concluded that they probably have never seen someone dressed in the keffiyeh (Arabian headgear) besides televised pictures and that probably scared them a first-sight. Driving to work, I noticed that drivers and occupants of cars that drove by took extra caution to take a second look at me—an incidence that created the mini-celebrity feeling in me.

On arrival at work, walking through the corridor to my office, I got several greetings of “As-Salāmu Alaykum” –-an Arabic greeting that translates to “Peace be upon you” and customarily spoken by Muslims when they meet people of the same faith. Others called me “Alhaji”—an honorific title given to a Muslim who has completed the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. My determination soured as I thought on ways to achieve the up-hill task of re-orientating my colleagues to make them realize my outfit is traditional and not religious. I was in doubt, however, of how much impact my affirmations could make in a bid to influence their existing perceptions—it became more glaring to me that there is a stereotype associated with my outfit and in relation to the Islam religion. This in itself became a learning opportunity for me recognizing that achieving success in convincing at least one person will indorse my self-stimulated experiences learning approach as a way of helping others to learn or accept a particular fact.

A few people did make pleasant comments about my outfit in a way that helped realize my desire to be perceived as an exposed, widely-traveled individual. However, there were contrasting reactions. One of these was from a Muslim female colleague who surprised reaction to the sight of my dressing and subsequent remarks insinuated I might be intending to join a terrorist organization; relating my action to following the path of the Nigerian Christmas-day-bomber who attempted to detonate an explosive in a US-bound aircraft on Christmas day of 2009. I found this Muslim female colleague’s reaction astounding, considering the fact being Muslim she should have displayed more tolerance and familiarity with my strange attire. However, I began to wonder if the Arabian attire echoed terrorism rather than religion to her.

Another highpoint of my “single-day-dressing-experience” developed from a conversation an older colleague (in his 50s) initiated which attracted a good number of colleagues in no time; as it developed into a heated debate. The older colleague had questioned my decision to dress like a Muslim when I am not one. I attempted to re-orientate him and insisted that the attire is not a religious wear but one of the numerous traditional wears that exists in the world. He persistently opposed my opinion as he started to outline the dangers I was being exposed to by dressing this way. He inferred that colleagues’ impression about me will change as I will be labeled a potential terrorist or could even be attacked by Muslim fanatics if they find-out I am of a different religion. I was dumbfounded! This was a grave impression of my appearance—considering the very serious implications associated with it. A number of other colleagues joined in the debate. Most of them shared the opinion of the older colleague. They emphasized that my dressing could have been okay without the keffiyeh (Arabian headgear). As I struggled to convince them otherwise, I realized I had become frightened by the threat that I could be a possible target for religious attack. Being in a country (and a city) that is quite susceptible to religious violence between Muslims and Christians, my colleagues’ assertions on the implications of my Arabian traditional attire got me panicky and a few hours after, I lost the courage to keep the keffiyeh on my head.

Defying my perturbed situation while the debate was on, I raised my voice to make reference to other forms of stereotypes especially “the discrimination we Nigerians face being notorious for internet scamming and other vices”. I pointed out to the audience that having a few Nigerians as scammers does not make all Nigerians scammers invariably affirming that being dressed in an Arabian traditional attire does not make an individual a terrorist suspect even if a number of Arabians have been linked to terrorism following the 9/11 incidence and subsequent terrorist acts in and from the Middle-East.

Sadly, there was no certainty that I was able to pass across my message proclaiming—“this dressing has nothing to do with religion, it is just a traditional wear”!

Albeit, I had gained a first-hand experience similar to the stereotyped population—it was an experience that probably brought me close to the feelings of thousands of Arabians who, because of their appearance and traditional attires, are subjects of suspicions when they visit other parts of the world. As the day came to a close, I realized my “single-day-dressing-experience” comprised numerous incidences that had substantive richness for reflexive learning.

The Decision: Reasons and Purpose

At the point where I decided to dress to my workplace wearing outfit that is “stereotyped”, my intentions were not entirely clear. I had a craving to dress in an unusual manner in a bid to attract attention and I also sought to show-off my exposedness across the global terrain. As I thought through possible scenarios that could play-out, there was an awareness of likely reactions from observers that could depict traces of biased assumptions of my intents. Conscious of the commencement of a journey that depicts an experimentation of a learning approach, I lacked clarity on the learning awaiting me. However, I was determined pick-up each learning point by disengaging the “me” from the situation and analyzing it in a rational and objective manner (Cunliffe and Easterby-Smith, 2004).

Reflecting on my action and considering the weirdness of a resolution to create experience for the sake of reflexive learning, I see the need to question my source of guts. Did it have anything to do with my personality, a new approach to living life or is it normal for humans to wish to learn from daily-lived experience?

Archer (2007), in explaining the rapid change of late-modernity, stated that continuous reassessment of experience and information imbedded in our experience has become central to living, describing it as an essential means by which people make their way through the world. Thus, she defines reflexivity as ‘the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all normal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) context and vice versa’ (Archer, 2007: 4).

In her submission, all normal people are assumed to regularly exercise their mental ability in relation to social context. It is however unclear what Archer meant by the term normal people. The research was conducted drawing on an initial sample of 174 respondents and a final 128 subjects, each of whom was chosen to reflect differences in age, gender, and occupation (Cicourel, 2010).

But was it or has it been always normal for me as an individual to initiate an experience in a bid to reflexively learn from it? I am naturally analytical. Yes! But in retrospect, I realised that I would not have taken such an action (decision to dress in Arabic-attire), for the sole purpose of reflecting on the eventual experience, a couple years back. Although, the reasons for my awareness of the value-addition in reflexive learning is imprecise, my participation in the MAMLL Programme has certainly enhanced my willingness to be open-minded in exploring various views and perspectives of particular issues and critically evaluating situations as a basis for instituting change (Cunliffe and Easterby-Smith, 2004).

Built on a model of Action Learning, the MAMLL Programme is pedagogically based on learning communities. Expressing the effect of being on the MAMLL Programme, a past MAMLL student stated that:

“It is difficult on MAMLL not to develop some form of critical thinking as tutors and peers constantly ask questions of statements we make and assumptions such statements may be based on, and challenge us to look at things from a different perspective. This happens in all forums of the programme, be it online around our papers, by phone or face to face in workshops. I think that this is perhaps most evident in our questioning of our own ontologies and/trying to understand why we see the world the way we do”. (Ormand, 2007)

Furthermore, my quest for tacit knowledge could have helped suppress my perturbations and gave me the guts I needed to go ahead and dress in an unusual outfit. In explaining the forms of knowledge, Raelin (1997) stated that explicit knowledge are forms of knowing that could be transmitted in formal systemic language while tacit knowledge are forms of knowing that cannot be reported because they are deeply embedded in individuals’ actions and their involvement in a specific context. Drawing from the Model of Work-based Learning at Individual Level initiated by Raelin (1997) in which four learning types were outlined resulting from a matrix of the two learning modes and knowledge forms, I can identify my transition from one level of knowledge to another before and after my “dressing experience”. The four learning types identified by Raelin (1997) [through learning modes of theory and practice and knowledge forms of explicit and tacit knowledge] are: Conceptualisation, Experimentation, Reflection and Experience. Although this model may not apply to my reflections in its entirety, my experience probably portrays a transition between Conceptualisation and Experience.

Conceptualisation involves the learner going through theoretical forms of learning to gain explicit knowledge. When new principles are introduced to learners, it is conceptualised thereby giving them an ability to solve work challenges in new and different contexts. When learners conceptualise they are better positioned to reflect on their actions based on newly gained theoretical learning. Experience breeds learning—when learners pass through a particular experience and then, upon reflecting upon that experience, they extrapolate learning from it. Experience, therefore, refers to how people learn in practice to gain tacit knowledge (Raelin, 1997).

My prior theoretical knowledge on topics related to diversity and inclusion has made me an “advocate” of equity and equality in diverse societies promoting zero tolerance for any form of discrimination. I have, for a long time, held a firm belief in promoting inclusion of disadvantaged groups whether it is as a result of cultural, racial, gender, sexual orientation or other forms of differences.

I was to later realize that I could not have anticipated the richness of my experience as some of the numerous reactions of the people around me (most especially colleagues) were stunning and even frightening; and how much more practicality I would add to my conceptual knowledge on diversity and inclusion. The reactions to my Arabic appearance could be said to span two extremes. One extreme was the remark relating my action to terrorism and inferring my choice of dressing as “religious extremes”. The other [delighting] reaction was a tolerant reception from another colleague who showed delight in my attire and offered to take pictures with me—though raised as a Muslim, he had grown up in Europe and gone around the world, raising questions of how much influence his “global exposure” had on his perception of my dressing in contrast to the perception of the other colleagues who have not had as much global exposure. An interesting outlook emerged from my thoughts, pondering on the role of post-colonialism in the tacit knowledge embedded our minds as West-Africans about the Arab world. I will attempt to explore this further later on in this paper.

Overall, this single-day experience brought me to a greater realisation and knowledge of discrimination based on culture and generalisations, and fulfilled my aspiration and purpose for initiating a unique experience to learn from.