Wesley College Principal Eric Soard shares his views on leadership and the importance of serving oth

CM: Describe the current leadership style in Tanzania.

ES: Most leadership here in Tanzania tends to be a very top down, big boss style where the person in charge is the one in charge and everyone else is there to make them look good or to serve them or work on their ideas. And part of something that perpetuates that is the shame honor culture that is here in Tanzania. And so, as the big boss leader, as the one in charge you are expected to correct and to direct those that are under you. As the people under the boss, you are expected to receive that correction and there is no shame in that because the expectation is that the leader knows more than you do. But there’s not a lot of space for bottom-up leadership where the people on the bottom may come up with a good idea or have a new policy or have some innovation they may want to try based on their area of expertise because then that would be seen as the boss not knowing and that could create potential areas of shame and so everything flows very much in one direction with leadership here.

CM: Why do you want to create a servant leadership program at Wesley College?

ES: We’re just getting started. We’re in our first year and a half. We want this to be a foundational program. We want servant leadership to be something that all of our students – whether they’re theology students or community development students or business administration students to come out of an idea of servant leadership – and that’s really for two to three main reasons. The first and foremost being we are a Christian college and Christian organization and that’s the style of leadership that Jesus displayed. That’s the style of leadership that’s most in line with Christian teachings. And so, we want to be able to instill in our students that they can be leaders. They’re expected to be leaders, but in a way that reflects their Christian practices and values.

The other reason is that this top-down leadership really seems to stifle innovation. It stifles multiple voices being able to speak out. It stifles peoples’ own creativity. So, what you get is a few people in charge and everyone else kind of mindlessly following along. And that’s not helpful for the economy, it’s not helpful for the community. It’s not helpful for the strength and health of an organization. We feel like our part in helping that is by contributing a different style of leadership training to our students in hopes that as they graduate, as they grow in their careers, as they rise in their respective organizations, they remember that style of leadership and they are able to transform the organizations they work for from the inside out.

CM: What is your ultimate goal and vision once this program is up and running?

ES: At Wesley College we have different levels of education. We have a one-year certificate. Next year we’ll add a two-year diploma course. And, we hope, eventually to add a three-year university degree. Our eventual goal with the holistic leadership program is to help our students walk through all the different stages of leadership. And so the first stage is really learning how to lead and manage yourself. And that means waking up in the morning and have a vision for where you are going, being able to set goals for yourself, being self-disciplined, knowing how to manage your time and knowing what your values are and how to stand up for them. All of that can then be displayed to others through servant leadership. So that’s the other part of stage one. Learning servant leadership allows them to display all of those values to others in a way that’s not threatening, in a way that can be influential without having to be in a position of authority by just simply through the way you interact with others, mentor others, serve others. All of those values – goal setting and time management – that you’ve learned about leading yourself can be transferred to others. And we want all of our students regardless of their education level to receive that.

Those that stay with us longer through a two-year program we are hoping can move on to our second stage of leadership development that we want to have eventually which is transformational leadership – how to empower others. That stage of leadership is learning how to lead others. You take your values and your motivations and what you’ve learned about leading yourself and then you empower and equip others, not through directing them, not through managing them, but really through really mentoring them and empowering them.

And then those that go all the way through degree, we hope that they reach our third stage of leadership training which is change management – leading other leaders. This is for those that will hopefully eventually go on to major leadership roles within organizations, larger leadership roles within their community, that they learn not just how to empower others directly but how to manage multiple teams at the same time and really from a real-world standpoint understand how to take an organization or a community from where they meet them to a place that they can envision which requires being able to empower others, but it also requires being able to think at a higher level of strategic thinking in change management in terms of their leadership.

We hope in five to ten years that all three of those leadership programs are up and running, that our students are receiving levels of leadership appropriate to their education and where they hope to be within their careers, and then also eventually to be able to share that with a wider community. If it’s successful on a college level with our students here, being able to take it to churches, nonprofit organizations, NGOs, businesses and training their leaders and management in these different styles of leadership, again hoping to offer something a little bit different in terms of what leadership is supposed to do, what’s it’s supposed to accomplish, and how it accomplishes that.

CM: How would you describe your style of leadership? How has it changed in the time you’ve been here in Tanzania?

ES: I’m certainly somebody that tries to lead by example. I try never to ask somebody to do something that I wouldn’t be willing or interested to do myself and I try to lead through example in terms of living out my values. Whatever expectations I have of the people around me, I have equal or higher expectations for myself. I think that has probably marked consistently all eight, nine years of my time here in Tanzania.

What has changed in my leadership style is probably the complexity with which I’m now managing multiple projects and multiple groups. I think some of the journey of leadership that I’ve described in the three stages that we’d like our students to go through are in some way stages I’ve been through myself. When I first came, I was very much just a servant, somebody here that maybe had a little bit of influence but very little authority and as I’ve been here longer and been given more responsibility, I’m responsible for now leading people in multiple geographic locations, working on multiple projects with multiple levels of education, and so the requirements of leadership have gotten a lot more complex. I’ve also tried to develop a leadership style that allows for failure and correction. So, not building an expectation that everything’s perfect the first time, but building an expectation that you’re trying to get better. That comes across hopefully in the ways that people are rewarded and given incentives within the organization that I lead. Failure is not necessarily a punishment, but not learning or not trying or not being open about strengths and weaknesses – those are the challenges that we have and that we talk about as leadership. Hopefully people get an understanding that no matter what their position, no matter what their level in the organization, they’re here to contribute their ideas, their efforts, their innovations, and they have the freedom to do that.

CM: Speaking of strengths and weaknesses, how would you describe the Wesley College leadership at this time?

ES: Our college leadership, because we are more of a junior college, is very young and most have not been given a lot of leadership opportunities before coming to college. Some of them have leadership experience and those are the ones that obviously shine early on. A lot of our student leaders are in leadership positions for the very first time. Not only that, but it is among their peers which adds an additional complication and level of difficulty because they’re not necessarily clearly set above another group in where there’s a clear relationship of leader and follower, but they’re expected to lead among people that are at their same level both educationally, age-wise and status-wise. This is where servant leadership can come in handy in that they can learn how to lead without having to necessarily boss others around and learn how to lead without necessarily feeling like they are separated from the people around them. So far, I think that has been one of the difficulties. They’ve found in leading their peers it’s hard when there’s a need for discipline or there’s a need for clear leadership that may not be very popular is sometimes a hard stance to take. Hopefully this training program will help them start on that path of understanding how they can lead among a community of people that they’re a part of and how to transform and empower others through that process.

CM: What are the student leaders doing well. What do you see lacking in student leadership in terms of skill sets?

ES: I think that the ones that shine early on are the ones that understand who they are and why they are here. There’s a level of personal leadership and they are coming to study with a purpose. They are less prone to be distracted by some of the issues that their peers have in the same process. In the same way, they understand what their values are. They’ve had their values tested already in life through various challenges and so it’s easier for them to stand firm without having to be confrontational. It’s not so much that they force others to conform. It’s that they stand very strong and their gravity of their values and their outlook pull others to them.

I think the skill sets that are still a struggle for them and others is clear communication. It’s that ability to not back down from conflict while not escalating it. A lot of times new leaders, and we’ve seen this with our student leaders, tend to get involved in power struggles, whereas more experienced leaders will know that there’s no winner in those games. Another characteristic of new leaders that’s difficult is that they take things more personally. Other skills tend to be centered around organization. Our less experienced leaders struggle sometimes to express themselves clearly and help others understand exactly what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, how it’s going to happen, and that can create confusion and confusion creates opportunities for people that may want to cause trouble or opportunities for those that just don’t want to do something because they find it difficult or they find it unpleasant and that gives them an opportunity to move around what the leader is trying to establish in moving the group forward.

CM: Is there a difference between male and female leadership?

ES: It is still a very conservative society. Even among the female leaders that are reaching higher heights, there is still a large expectation that you keep the home in mind, that you stay very feminine within your style of leadership, within your priorities, within your focuses. That’s not necessarily a male-dominated viewpoint. Women in Tanzania tend to have the same view – women are women and men are men – and they are not necessarily interested in adopting a male leadership style which tends to be more forceful and more dominant.

Publicly, women are very much supported. In how the mechanics of leadership actually work, women are much less supported. In terms of promotion, there is certainly a bias against women because there is an expectation that they follow their husbands. In government, they cover that very easily because they have a very generous leave policy.

In private companies and organizations, that counts much more against women because it’s expected that they’re going to have to take maternity and they are going to put family first. They are less likely to be sent for further studies by an organization for the same reason. In terms of business and entrepreneurship, you see very few females in those areas because their income is seen as more supplementary to their husbands. Entrepreneurial start-up organizations and companies require a lot of risk, require a lot of dedication and the general understanding is that women don’t have that freedom. So, it’s not official policy, but it still certainly exists in terms of discrimination and extra challenges for women in leadership.

I think that in a leadership formation program it would be very beneficial to address certain issues with both men and women at the same time. There’s also benefit to work with women separately in large part to help them focus on some of their specific issues. How do you address the concerns of an employer if you are career oriented? Those conversations need to take place with female leaders that have made it and what helped them get there. How far are they willing to challenge the status quo and in what areas are they not interested in challenging the status quo?

CM: What are the biggest factors in attaining leadership positions?

ES: Things around here are very status driven. Status can be based on wealth, education, family background, and authority positions. One of the reasons I am especially excited to be introducing a leadership program into a college that’s specifically targeting first generation college students is because there does seem to be a tendency to hold power within a small, historical class. If your family is descended from a line that used to be a chief in that area or an important person in that area, then you tend to still have sway in that community and you are more likely to act like a leader.

The reality is that Tanzania is changing extremely quickly. We are urbanizing at a very fast rate. Our working class and young adults are moving to urban areas very quickly. What that translates to is that your traditional family unit, your traditional tribal unit, your traditional leaders are kind of fading away because it was based on that area, it was based on your influence with the community, it was based on your influence within the family, who your parents and grandparents were, and as people come to an urban area and mix, those distinctions disappear. That has opened up a whole new field. Tanzania is socially mobile in a way that it has never been before and it’s only going to increase. It becomes I feel like more important to teach a values-based leadership system, a values-based leadership style to our young adults and to our youth because without that it’s going to very quickly become whatever they copy from whatever they’re paying attention to at the time. That may be the government. That may be the Western world through YouTube and music videos. That may be a charismatic, yet self-aggrandizing leader they find in a local church or local community organization. They are losing the foundation that has held Tanzania together for generations.

Teaching a leadership style that is based on values, that is based on self-awareness, that is based on what you add to the community, and how you can serve the community I feel like is a much better alternative to the some of the things they are being exposed to. When people are confident with themselves then they’re more likely to be accepted as the leaders that they are.