Cde Mduduzi
After a nasty experience with my work mates, a friend recommended that I read
what was by then a new publication, 'Emotional Intelligence - Why it Matters
More than IQ', Bloombury 1996, by Daniel Goleman, a psychiatrist who captured
the issues over emotions and leadership and represented his ideas with actual
cases in order to reach the lay reader. The concept of emotional intelligence
is now used in university courses that deal with leadership at business schools
worldwide. It is worth exploring this issue in our discussions too. I want to
make two examples of my own.
We were a committee tasked to deal with transformation and empowerment matters
at this JSE-listed company in the defence industry. Paris Mashile, a highly
qualified scientist and electronics engineer, was head of the committee and I
was the only other black person in a committee of five management policy
makers. Some of the white directors were not happy with the envisaged changes,
and almost all the time sabotaged the process deliberately. Paris convened
this crucial meeting where final recommendations were to be adopted. I later
learnt this from him after the meeting was adjourned, that a few minutes prior
to us sitting in the meeting one of the directors openly asked him a rhetorical
question - "Do you know what BLACK stands for?" - and went on to say "B -
Bloody, L - Lazy, A - AIDS, C - Carrying, K - Kaffirs", and the rest laughed
uproariously. Paris was fuming and totally lost his mind in the meeting. He
never handled the proposed resolutions and the objectives of the meeting well.
I did not understand his behaviour - my approach with these colleagues at the
time was to come to the meeting right on time, to avoid small talk. Their plan
was to shake Paris Mashile emotionally in order to sabotage the crucial
decision - and it worked.
Mashile later resigned and joined Siemens and went on to be appointed
chairperson of ICASA, the communications regulatory body. I also left the
company at a later stage for entirely different reasons: in the corporate world
there are invisible dog collars and chains, which come as perks, and I was not
cut out for such things. As a rule, I follow the dictates of my conscience.
At the CODESA forum in Kempton Park, I was once invited to a private discussion
with Cyril Ramaphosa and his ANC comrades like Joe Slovo and others. Their aim
was to influence the PAC delegates in a particular direction. Before the
meeting Cyril told me that he couldn't help noticing that my neck tie was the
same as that of the white oppressor in the NP leadership. The tie was a gift
from the Sowetan newspaper and it had no exclusive choice or implied similarity
of taste properties between me and the "white oppressor". This was a ploy to
destabilise me emotionally so that I'd lose my train of thought before the core
issues were tabled. Needless to say, we came out poles apart from the meeting.
Jacob Zuma has no emotional intelligence as a leader. The blunders over SA
endorsing no fly zone in Libya and therefore suppporting NATO and regime
change, and the way he handled himself at a Youth League conference trying to
explain his sell-out foreign policy when he berated a heckler on the matter,
and, the Mogoeng choice to spite Moseneke in the appointment of Chief Justice,
clearly attest to that. Thabo Mbeki also falls in this category. He slapped
Winnie Mandela with a back hander at a public forum because she arrived late as
a crowd favourite who stole the thunder from him. He sulked openly in the
glare of the media when he lost at the infamous Polokwane electing conference.
Academics and thought leaders are now saying emotions play a major role in the
process of thinking, decision-making and individual success. They say
emotional intelligence helps to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. It is
a required package in the leadership personality and collective, and in the
process of day to day decisions-making. Are we in the PAC alive to this
development and can we relate to it in the past mistakes we have made?
Jaki
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