Dr Caryn Solomon shares her experiences of developing black managers in 1980s South Africa
When white managers started to complain that they were being excluded from what black managers were doing, I knew we had won.
It was the summer of 1989. Some years earlier, I had moved back to South Africa from America where, in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, I had learned about how Malcolm X and others had gone about empowering black people.
Apartheid was coming to an end. With my partner, Dr Allen Zimbler, I was co-running a consultancy that helped organisations to ready themselves for change, manage transitions and shape new futures. Government-enforced affirmative action was looming on the horizon. Every organisation in the country would soon have to start hiring black people as managers and leaders.
Under the apartheid regime, black people (90 per cent of the total population of South Africa) had been declared as unfit for anything beyond ‘drawing water and hewing wood’. To equip them for this, they all attended schools where they received Bantu education – basic literacy and numeracy skills. They were barred from higher education and, under the Job Reservation Act, were prohibited from taking up ‘skilled labour’ or professional work.
Our challenge was to help organisations find people who would be able to take up leadership roles. With no black people having ever done a management-level job, there was no obvious pool from which to draw people who could take up the roles that affirmative action would soon render vacant. Using standard questionnaires to identify leadership potential was out of the question – the black labour force had never learned to fill in questionnaires and, in any case, they wouldn’t have been able to meet the standard leadership criteria.
Instead, using a tried and tested ‘African methodology’, we facilitated story-telling sessions where people could share experiences of leading in their communities outside the workplace. Engaging in rich dialogue, we discovered choir masters, church leaders, sports captains, political activists, club chairmen, union leaders and many others. These people, who had only ever been allowed to unpack lorries, carry cartons, pack shelves, collect garbage and dig holes, had, between them, all the leadership skills required to run successful organisations.
But it was not just a lack of education that stood in the way. An obvious obstacle was the years of entrenched racism among white managers and staff. It was difficult enough for them to see black people as equals – much less as superiors. Additionally and understandably, apartheid had instilled in black people themselves a feeling that they were less worthy to lead than white people. Those who were selected for leadership development programmes were afraid and unsure of themselves in a white-dominated environment. A further effect of this was that many black workers were themselves unwilling to report to black managers and refused to support them, despite their commitment to overturning the inequalities of the regime.
Breaking down these barriers meant deep attitudinal change on the part of everyone involved.
Taking some of what I had learned in America about the Black Power movement, my partner and I decided to recreate ‘Black Power’ in the companies we worked with. We set up ‘black manager’ groups that excluded white managers. For months, participants attended facilitated learning and skills development workshops, and dialogue and storytelling sessions, to create new working practices. They also participated in many informal social functions – parties, barbecues and dinners where they had fun together, shared stories about what they were experiencing, and built strong team relationships that they could draw on for support at any time.
As the black manager groups became more confident, vocal, effective and bonded, white managers began to feel they were missing out on something. It was when they started complaining that they were not invited into these groups that we knew we had succeeded in creating a field on which everyone could come together to play as equals. We were then ready to dissolve the black-only groups and, with them, the boundaries of prejudice, exploitation and exclusion.
South Africa is still adjusting to change and has its fair share of problems. While politicians continue to battle corruption and inequality, many organisations have created real opportunities for social change and greater prosperity – much more than in its next-door neighbour, Zimbabwe.
I have seen no bigger change in my lifetime than that which South Africa went through as it transitioned from apartheid. Today Britain is adjusting to its own change as it prepares to leave the EU.
Caught in the turbulent eye of the storm it is hard to see out and impossible to predict what will happen. But what I learned in South Africa is that organisations that prepare for change are most likely to continue thriving. Those that do not will be relegated to history.
Dr Caryn Solomon is associate director at change management consultancy Blacklight Advisory
