Ubuntu Coaching is real. Ubuntu means: “I am because we are”.
When used in a workplace environment, Ubuntu connects leaders, managers, supervisors, teams and organizational systems to each other, to their higher values, and to their reason for existence. Ubuntu offers a powerful lens that helps people in shared spaces to see each other, and to understand each other’s capabilities clearly. Ubuntu is an enabling and empowering approach that facilitates working seamlessly across difference, and through perceived, and real or constructed narratives about each other.
It is important to note that Ubuntu is a global phenomenon with local and contextual expression. The concept and practice of empathy and compassion is universal, however, humaneness and genuine human connection in the modern workplace is a rare phenomenon. This change is due to the advent of mobile connectivity and innovation technologies that are currently disrupting workplace dynamics and relationships. Ubuntu offers organizational leaders and people practitioners’ viable traction in managing these unpredictable interrelationship dynamics.
In Nguni languages across Southern Africa, Ubuntu means, “I cannot be anything of value or worth without you being enabled or allowed to be who you can fully be”. In seSotho or seTshwana languages, the word for Ubuntu is Botho. Ubuntu and Botho mean that we are in this ‘human life-journey’ together in far more intricate and inextricable ways than we care to acknowledge. In this regard, Ubuntu Intelligence is the capacity to consistently live with, work, co-create, play and engage authentically with others in a naturally unencumbered humane way. It encompasses the ability to transcend well-ingrained and often taught ways to separate, differentiate, and be the ‘other’.
Ubuntu Intelligence provides us with tools to pin-point the value and appreciate the human essence in each one of us. It implores us to find this in spite, or regardless, of our personal, organizational or existential circumstances. Ubuntu Intelligence is what the modern workplace requires, and demands, today more than ever before. Ubuntu Coaching and Ubuntu Intelligence together, expect and demand that machine coding and IT programming professionals must be aware and conscious of the values they ‘transmit’ into the machines they help create and bring to life. These machines eventually interact with humans as part of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4iR). They are extensions of the coders and programmers that take on their own life-forms. Ubuntu values are – and will remain – the distinguishing characteristics of being human when machines increasingly take over most of organizational and factory life.
Our organizational and societal roles are opportunities for us to express our humaneness as naturally and authentically as we possibly can. This is a call to ‘see each other’ as we are, not as we have been taught or that ‘others are’. If you are a business leader, manager, or team player that is somehow averse to human connection, you have a lot of work to do to transform. If your business requires human interaction at some level, you owe it to yourself to find ways to refine your human inter-relationship skills. Fast. As coaches and human capital practitioners, none of us can afford a one-sided perspective of ‘the other’. We need Ubuntu eyes to see ourselves and each other.
Most professional coaches agree that the work of a good coach is to raise the client’s awareness of their current ways of ‘being’. The client can be an individual, a team, or a whole organizational system. Once a significant level of awareness is reached, the system cannot ignore it, and it inevitably leads to systemic shifts. In the global profession of coaching, there is one systemic shift that is taking place. This is the recognition that organizational systems are able to achieve harmonious climates that lead to greater productivity and higher performance when there is engagement across levels. Ubuntu Coaching and Ubuntu Intelligence are critical catalysts for this.
Forward-thinking human capital professionals, coaches and ‘organization-whisperers’ are quietly looking into and exploring ways to engage and utilize one of the most natural, dominant and potentially impactful ‘approaches’ to help address people-related challenges. Ubuntu Coaching, and Ubuntu Intelligence, together bring us a step closer to genuine, authentic human connection and understanding of who we all are.
Finally, some of the best leadership practices have been influenced by Ubuntu insights, and the result is transformational leadership in action. For example, Nelson Mandela believed in Ubuntu and humaneness, and their transformational power in leadership roles. He said:
“Humaneness does not weaken business. It strengthens it. It cements the relationship upon which teamwork and innovation must rest. It builds trust among employees, customers, and communities. Both teamwork and trust are … vital components of world-class enterprises today” (Mandela, in Preface to Khoza, 2006: xxiv, in Let Africa Lead).
Transforming organizational cultures is not the preserve of a few top leaders. Yes, they must take the lead. The success of positive organizational transformation is the responsibility of every member of the organization. Ubuntu Coaching is one of the best places to start.
Afrika Coaching is a leading coaching firm that empowers individuals and organizations to unlock their full potential.
