people
Temi Ajibewa, an award-winning business coach, bestselling author, founder of Ignites Africa, and CEO of Win or Win Consultancy Limited, in this interview with Ferdinand Ekechukwu, discusses organisational mentorship, and other issues relating to Nigeria’s work culture
Recently, we’ve seen a lot of the female gender assume positions in Nigeria’s financial services sector. How much organizational mentorship would you say had to have happened to see these women shatter glass ceilings?
A lot of mentoring has to happen because most of us learn by observation, not just what we read. Once you see one person do it, achieve a seemingly impossible feat, it gives you psychological permission that you too can do it. For example before Hussein Bolt (currently rated the world’s fastest man), made his debut in 100 meters in the 2008 Olympics, when he ran 100m in 9:58 seconds which had never been attained by any other athlete, it was erroneously believed that it was not possible for any athlete to do so but because he did and subsequently beat that record, he has set a standard and becomes a motivation for other athletes to become faster. However, after Hussein broke that record by not only achieving that feat but exceeding it, other athletes got inspired to do the same in a short time. This only corroborates the fact that once an individual is able to break through a certain limiting belief, it stretches the capacities of other people to reproduce the same results, or even more.
If a newly employed staff of an organization is failing, how much training and retraining would you propose before wielding the sack hammer?
There’s no fast and hard rule on the amount of training. Some organizations, due to the nature of their output and dealings cannot afford to give room for too many trials and errors. They need to train as much as is necessary, train and retrain as much as required. KPI (Key Performance Indicator) needs to be well defined that each person knows their responsibility and what is expected from them that when you eventually sack them, they are aware of their shortcomings. You can’t say how much training; just keep training for as much as necessary.
Since the remote work culture is now a way of life when employing new talents, what skill sets would you say is the most paramount for an organization to look out for?
The first skills you should look out for is digital skills or technical skills like being able to use Google suite, Microsoft office suite, basic web design, being able to use organizational tools such as Slack and Airtable. Basic communication skills such as writing, editing and proofreading are life skills that everyone who is working remotely should have. Presentation skill that is being able to present your thoughts and ideas on virtual calls is important.
What would you say is the reason why companies find it difficult retaining employees and what measures do you think can be put in place to not lose their best brains?
Organizations need to stop hiring only based on skillset and start hiring based on attitude and goals. There has to be an alignment between the goal of your intending employee and your organization because when there’s no alignment between the organizational and the employee’s goals, in a matter of time, the employee will leave. Given the fact that goals change, you’ll want to carry out quarterly goal alignment with the staff so that every 3 months, you can touch down and recast the vision and make it plain and let those who can see themselves in it, run with it. When you carry out these quarterly checks, you will know if someone is leaving you or not. Then you will know what you should do and how you should do it on a month-to-month and quarterly basis and that can help. Regular training and giving room for growth, showing the member of staff what growth would look like for them on a yearly basis and show them what is possible if they stay loyal and what is the promotional advantages for them and what are the rewards for them will also help. Let the employees know how many years they need to work in an organization to become a shareholder, and so on.
Recently, there’s been a high rate of thought-leadership development in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. As a coach and mentor, what will be your advice for would-be coaches on how to maximise their expertise for impact and income?
Indeed there’s been a rise in thought leadership in Nigeria and this is a good thing because leadership has been a major bane for us here. Seeing as more individuals are standing up to use their voice is a beautiful thing. So, here are some things I’d like to say to would-be thought leaders to help them maximize their expertise, impact and income. First, you have to be in alignment with your purpose because thought leadership is not something that you do for the sake of popularity or money. It is what you do because you want to impact people, you want to influence their decision and if it is important for you to do this you’ll have to be in alignment with your own purpose. Secondly, you must be transformation-driven. Like I said earlier, it is not about popularity, making your name known or being an influencer. No, it’s beyond that. It has to be life driven and for you to say you’re doing it well, you want to be transformation driven.
Thirdly, you must identify your core message. What is the exact message you want to push out there because there are tons of things you can talk about? A common mistake I see new thought leaders and new coaches in particular make is trying to be everything to everyone. So, they are trying to talk about everything, they do leadership, relationships, marriage, life coaching, mindset, business, I mean everything. No, this is not a good way to go about it. Choose a particular message. Look for your core message, the center of your thought leadership. Share on that first and then later on you can spread your message across the other areas of life. But first you want to identify your core message and drive that.
The fourth thing is to identify your target audience. Who are the people you’ve been sent to? You can’t possibly serve everyone. I always say who can you serve based on your level of expertise, character, and knowledge? Who can you serve the most? And also think about who can do the most with what you’re serving. Identify who you want to work with. That way you are more focused, you get better results and you will be more powerful as a brand.
The fifth thing is for you to create transformational products. Your products should be transformation driven as you can only deliver this transformation categorically and clearly when you create a product that offers this transformation. This product could be coaching programmes, consultation programmes, consulting solutions, books, online courses and so on. You must have products as this is a way for people to actually pay you for your thought leadership. If not, you will just be speaking and you will be getting all the whole ‘thank you’, ‘you inspired me’, ‘God Bless you’ with no tangible transformation at the core of what you do. By creating transformational products, you create income.
Then again you want to pay attention to your brand and positioning. It is not enough to have good intention; you must look like you have good intentions. This is where your branding comes in place. You have to look like your future and not just look like where you’ve been or what you’ve been through. Look like where you want to be, put yourself together, put your brand element together and before you know it, you will have things up and running for you.
Next thing for you is to learn marketing and sales.
You may create the product or have the branding, but if your sales and marketing are not right, you will end up in frustration. Even if your offers are free for people, they still need to know about it. People still need to know about what you’re selling. If it is so good and you’re not promoting it, there’s no way people will know of it. It is not the best product that gets bought, it is the best-selling product. The ninth step will be for you to create systems and structures around your business. Consciously build systems around what you want to do as a business so that you won’t be tired and be the only one running the business. Lastly, invest in hiring a coach for your business. You can’t be a coach without a coach, you can’t be a leader without having a leader yourself. Invest your resources, time, your energy, money into getting other experts to help you achieve your goals.
