Lessons of Leadership & Culture From Kenya

A few weeks ago, our three children taught me a valuable lesson during a trip to the national public library in Kenya to attend a children’s club. The first activity of the day was poetry, and the club’s coordinator asked for a child volunteer to teach the others a poem. There was a poignant unease as none of the children wanted to go up on stage.

Suddenly, a hand shot up. It was our precious six-year old daughter. My lovely wife nearly fell off her seat in fright! She wondered what our daughter could possibly teach her peers. Before my wife could react, our daughter bounced onto the stage. In a clear, confident voice, and without skipping a beat, she let forth the words:

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
a peck of picked peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a pipe of pickled peppers,
where is the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”

Like clockwork, all the children chimed in together and asked to learn the piece. At the end of it, there were many smiling, albeit tongue-tied children. Curious to know what drove her to volunteer, I asked her and she responded, “It was the right thing to do!” She had this funny look on her that seemed to suggest that I might be growing a little soft in the head.

Then it struck me, unbeknownst to her, she was already honing her leadership skills. Without fear of failure, she took the initiative, and taught her peers. Immediately, it took me back to a poem I read on Todd Nielsen’s blog, “The Leadership / Parenting Analogy”. Four lines from “Children Learn What They Live” by Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D especially stood out…

If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.

Then I fully appreciated our daughter’s response. My wife and I have sung, spoken and read to our three children from when they were snug in their mother’s belly. In there, a culture was incubated… one of care, reading, love, and sharing. No one taught our daughter the tongue twister she recited that morning. Her mother had written it out on a card and posted it on a door at home.

From a very tender age we have encouraged our children to read wholesome literature. We read to them, bought them books, and spurred them to explore the joys of the written word. My wife and I also read a lot. Reading has become an odyssey into new worlds. At six years, our first-born daughter is exploring Greek mythology, presenting me with a mind-boggling account of Greek leaders and their conquests and failure. She is already engaging us in debates, trying to link historical events to present reality.

As parents, we have been very deliberate and actively present in our children’s lives. We have been able to practice what Lyn Boyer refers to as ‘Affective Leadership’, the ability to connect with and influence other people to achieve common goals through strong and genuine relationships and emotional attachments.

As we have developed the culture of our family, so the culture of organizations needs to be developed. A primary function of leadership is to develop culture. For the right culture to emerge, deliberate and careful nurturing is required. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell notes that people don’t rise from nothing. “[People] are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.”

Furthermore, Brent Harris said, “You can’t teach culture. You have to live it. You have to experience it. You have to share it. And most importantly…you have to show it.”

As leaders I hope that we can all take heed of the lessons all around us, including in our family, that teach us how to develop and improve the cultures that we are responsible for.

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