Mental health problems at work are infectious. Of course they are not physically infectious, but depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders spread between and within organisational boundaries through social contagion. This is the finding of three Danish researchers, Kensbock, Alkærsig and Lomberg, writing in the Administrative Science Quarterly. They found an epidemic-like distribution of mental disorders occurred through employee mobility. “Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis of a mental disorder. The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position.” A related epidemic that spreads in a similar way is toxicity. We have probably all witnessed contagion happening within firms if we allow the influence of toxic people to spread. Toxic managers are particularly hazardous to the health of a company. They poison the atmosphere by bullying, disrespecting people, playing political games, undermining others, and blocking colleagues’ initiative and progression. It’s hard to pin down, but wherever they go trust drops and nastiness grows. When this happens our best people leave for healthier environments, and those who remain find themselves inexorably pulled down until they begin showing symptoms of nastiness too. When toxicity rules, mental health problems escalate. People become depressed, paranoid and anxious. The tragedy is that toxicity seems to be the norm in so many organisations, so those entering them assume naturally that this is the way managers should behave. Demands for exaggerated status and demonstrations of respect (“Call me madam”) mean underlings dare not speak truth to power. They put their heads down and do the very minimum lest any initiative attract an attack. They are disempowered and have to leave or become a pitiful mini-me of the boss. Those who own and run their own companies have an opportunity to counter both mentalillness and toxicity by the integrity and respect shown in their actions and words. This is not just a good thing to do, but an essential part of building the healthy company culture in which people thrive and do their best work – for the benefit of the customer, the owner and themselves. I have just completed a series of columns here featuring coaching of people at different levels in a company. I began it on 31 May this year with an introductory piece that suggested that times like these require a coaching approach, not just from professional coaches, but from line managers and business owners. We owe it to ourselves, to our teams, and to society in general to lead in a way that affirms the human dignity and potential of each person – even or especially those we disagree with, dislike, or differ from. It is easy to respect those we admire; the real test of character is to treat those we do not admire with the respect due to them as human beings, regardless of how little we believe they may have earned it. To meet disrespect with more disrespect is to continue the rise of toxicity in an arms race of nastiness. This does not at all mean allowing people to get away with poor performance; it means “speaking the truth in love”. Toxic people must change or go. Organisational culture is not a soft topic or nice-to-have. The “way we do things” deeply influences how people behave in the company, and therefore how customers or clients are treated; and this influences the kind of society we all live in. The wise leader will look out for early symptoms of toxicity and nip them in the bud, both by demonstrating deep respect for everyone and by making respect for each other a performance requirement for each person in the company. Jonathan Cook is a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 5 September 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-09-05-jonathan-cook-requiring-respect-at-work-counters-toxicity-and-builds-health/ ). #JonathanCook

Variety is a happy feature of humanity. We need both fresh-thinking creatives to push the limits and rule-bound compliance officers to curb them. Every positive opportunity comes with a risk of abuse; but without the risk, there would be no opportunity. If no one was ever found to have broken the law, we could argue that compliance and caution had taken over too far. There would be no space even for honest initiatives, for fear of falling foul of some regulation. Unfortunately there is an uncomfortable, if slight, overlap between creativity and deviance. So if we legislate too heavily against deviance, we may unintentionally stifle positive creativity too. We need to fight fraud without inhibiting initiative. Obviously we want zero fraud and zero corruption. I tell new members of my company that genuine mistakes are part of the training budget, but integrity is the one value I do not hesitate to fire people for breaking. Dishonesty and stealing break trust, which breaks the culture of working together and destroys the company. So zero tolerance for lying, stealing and bribing. But please, keep pushing the limits of innovation. Successful entrepreneurs are generally moderate risk takers – too much risk carries too high a chance of failure; but zero risk means zero business. Similarly, banks aim for a low credit loss ratio (the proportion of loans not recovered), not zero. Zero defaults would imply that the bank withholds loans from too many good clients for fear of falling victim to a few bad ones. A restaurant should never, ever risk serving food that has spoiled and could poison patrons, so complying with health and safety regulations is not negotiable. But it would be a poor restaurant that made compliance its primary purpose. To borrow terms from the competency literature, compliance is a threshold competence (a competence needed to enter the game), whereas cooking and serving delicious food attractively is a differentiating competence (a competence that makes your restaurant better than others). The understandable instinct of a manager is to respond to every problem with a new policy, procedure or regulation to prevent it happening again. But too much of that stifles the differentiating competencies, like the company that tried to stop staff abusing telephone time by installing a cumbersome system that cost more than the savings on the phone bill, and at the same time irritated everyone, discouraged staff from reaching clients, and quite possibly sent the most creative employees to the competition. Similarly, in nations, we need a competent bureaucracy to enforce threshold competencies for national success, such as ensuring contracts can be enforced, people pay taxes, and people are treated fairly regardless of their wealth, status or political connections. But for differentiating competence we need also to create a fertile ecosystem of opportunities and support that encourages enterprising people to take initiative. If a few then stray into illegal practices, hit them hard with the existing law, but avoid creating more unnecessary regulations that discourage everyone from trying legal things. Sometimes the frustration doesn’t arise from too many regulations, but their uncaring application. If I can’t get my goods across the border, have to wait months for the license I need, or receive no response from officials meant to help me, then not only is my immediate business damaged, but I give up and take my enterprising spirit to another country. And if a bank declines my loan application on a technicality rather than substantive reasons, the economy suffers through my reduced enterprise. At the beginning of this column I called for zero tolerance for fraud and corruption. Alongside that we should offer warm encouragement for honest initiative. We should spend at least as much time encouraging excellence and innovation as requiring compliance. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 28 November 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-11-28-jonathan-cook-requiring-too-much-compliance-can-damage-a-business/ ) Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit  http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook #JonathanCook

In a very sad story from England, a head teacher in Reading took her own life after a report from Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills) downgraded her primary school from outstanding to inadequate. A teacher who had been mentored by the late head teacher was quoted as saying, “She didn’t just care and dedicate herself to her school and her pupils, she was also a huge support for schools in the Reading area and beyond. . . She was absolutely brilliant.” How is it possible that someone apparently so dedicated and effective should be destroyed by the very process designed to identify excellence? A petition calling for Ofsted inspections to be halted gathered more than 150 000 signatures. That’s not a solution either – many of us dearly wish schools here would be subject to strict inspections with the results made public. Our children need better schooling! Sadly this so captures what happens in many companies. As responsible managers we implement rules and regulations to curb what goes wrong and encourage what we want to go right. After a while we forget the reason for the rules and begin to implement them blindly. Managers tick boxes and people become irritated, resentful, demotivated, leading to others agitating to do away with all monitoring of performance. According to a media report I read about the incident, Ofsted found a “welcoming and vibrant school”, where staff-pupil relationships were “warm and supportive”, and bullying was rare. But it also highlighted failings in training, record-keeping and checks on staff. The school only has to fail in one dimension to be rated as inadequate. Oh dear. If your child attended a school that is warm, supportive and vibrant and without bullying, would you mind too much if it had some deficiencies in formal training, record-keeping and checks? If that report is true, what a dreadful way to miss the point of an inspection. That’s the problem when systems take over, which is almost inevitable unless leadership insists on focusing on what is truly important – and remembers that our people are human, not robots. The reason why human beings just do not seem to respond well to rules and regulations is that the rules imply a lack of trust in the people they seek to control. We are not robots and we do aspire to dignity and self-regulation. This does not only apply in companies. When parents rebuke their children with a negative voice and maybe further restrictions, the atmosphere becomes heavy with distrust and resentment. The last thing anyone wants to do is behave with consideration and responsibility. Similarly, when government’s natural response to anything that needs changing is to introduce more laws or regulations, even when existing laws and regulations are clearly not working, citizens take pleasure in circumventing the rules. Instead of resorting again to what hasn’t worked we should find something that does work, like inspiring leadership, genuine listening, and generous resourcing to do the right thing. If only we could all trust each other! Here is a great paradox. Companies, nations and families that function best are based on trust and affirmation of each other. Look around you for very clear evidence of that. At our best, rules and regulations fade into irrelevance. But we know we are not always at our best, so we also need laws with strict enforcement. Managers, parents and ministers have to face this paradox daily. Ideally they would treat everyone with unbounded trust and joyful affirmation, while being absolutely consistent in implementing the rules whenever they are broken – as few rules as are absolutely necessary – and providing the encouragement and resources to be amazing. That’s the challenge of managing. Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit  http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook

This column was written on National Women’s Day for men who are not sexist, because we still have so much to learn. I believe Women’s Day has a message for men who run businesses. In a TED talk Susan Colantuono explains how well-meaning mentors can unwittingly help maintain the status quo. The mentors she spoke to emphasised personal and relational matters when mentoring women, like becoming more assertive and confident, developing a personal brand, working with other people and self-promotion. All good stuff. But when they mentored men, they talked about the importance of business, strategic and financial acumen. And that is what gets middle managers noticed for the C-suite. The other stuff is taken for granted. So unwittingly the mentors prepared women for middle management and men for the top. The best intentions can backfire when we treat people differently. How are you grooming people for promotion in your business? It is understandable that many women dismiss the idea of a National Women’s Day as merely window dressing, when we all say the right things for a day and then continue as before. But I am grateful that we have this reminder of how scarily easy it is not to notice the extra barriers facing women in business, as elsewhere. So in that sense the day exists for men more than women. Similarly the Black Lives Matter movement tells us that it is not enough to be colour-blind; the existing playing field is uneven in ways those of us who are not black just do not notice, because people like us built it and we are deeply familiar with its contours. The field needs changing in ways others need to explain to us. So what can we do? The first and biggest step is to listen. This means listening beneath the words and watching eye contact and body language to discover who is regarded as in the conversation and who is being subliminally excluded. And it means suspending our logical response until we have felt the passion. While we all have feelings of inadequacy, rage and impotence in the face of power we cannot control, I think it is almost an insult to say, “Yes, there are times when I feel like that too,” when as a man I hear a woman explaining her frustration. Those who grew up in the dominant worldview only partly understand until we really hear. The second is to acknowledge that implicit bias is present in everyone. You can confirm this for yourself with the online Implicit Associations Test. We imbibe it from childhood and it infects how we perceive others and ourselves. We can’t be blamed for unconscious bias, but we can be blamed for ignoring it. Instead of denying it we need to limit its effects by creating policies, for example, that prevent unconscious bias in recruiting and developing staff. Thirdly we can talk about our own biases. Men are not easily convinced of their bias when they are probably unaware of it. When we respond a little defensively to the current epidemic of gender-based violence with, “Not all men are violent! There are good men too (like me)”, we miss the opportunity to say that until we change the biased system in our heads, in our businesses and in society, women will continue to suffer violence, however virtuous we may be as individuals. So the fourth action is to join others in taking prejudice seriously and changing the way society works. This is both the right thing to do ethically, and also economically sound both at the macro-level of society and the micro-level of our own companies. We need the talents, energy and leadership of 100% of our people to thrive. Jonathan Cook is a psychologist and chairman and co-founder of the African Management Institute. This article was originally published on BusinessLive on 10 August, 2020 and is republished with permission.

One day when I was a child a tortoise crawled into our garden. A hole had been drilled into its shell, so my father explained that this must be someone’s pet tortoise. He tied string through the hole and attached the other end to a stake he knocked into the middle of the lawn. For three days our new pet grazed inside the circle, held back by the string. Then we felt sorry for the tortoise, missing its family, so dad untied the string. BUT for the rest of the day we were astonished that the tortoise remained within the circle! It did not know it was free. The next morning it was gone, so presumably during the night it had put a foot outside the circle and discovered to its surprise that it was free. Many of our staff go through life like that tortoise, with imaginary strings holding them back in the form of out-of-date beliefs about themselves. These imagined strings are thought-habits – assumptions that determine how we interpret the world around us and our own abilities.   For example, many people believe that they are no good at numbers and their minds freeze when faced with a spreadsheet. This often arises through poor quality teaching of mathematics and may have nothing to do with their natural ability or potential. Many are held back by a sense of low self-esteem. At the moment some of us may believe that we cannot cope with crises, and that the continuing threats facing us in Covid-19 are so catastrophic we cannot face the present or plan for the future. In this third column in a series on the mental health of entrepreneurs, I suggest that business leaders can grow resilience in themselves and their teams by encouraging thought-habits that open opportunities where others may be seeing only endings. The psychologist Martin Seligman found that we develop “learned helplessness” when our beliefs about our problems are characterised by three P’s: Problems are permanent (we think our problems will last for ever), pervasive (they affect everything in our lives), and personal (they are our own fault rather than a consequence of the situation we find ourselves in). Learned helplessness is associated with less success, worse health and general discouragement. Covid-19 has gone on longer than most expected. Some of us fear that it is permanent and the familiar life we treasured will never return. It is easy to believe that it is pervasive, affecting work, home and recreation. And while it is clearly not our fault, we may punish ourselves with the thought that our personal response to it is weak and ineffective. The antidote to learned helplessness is to see our problems as temporary, specific and situational. Do you remember how terrifying HIV/Aids was? Twenty years ago it was killing about half a million South Africans every year . It is still with us, with about seven million people HIV+, but we have learnt to manage it and it no longer terrifies us. The Covid-19 crisis should absolutely not be underestimated, but it will pass in one way or another. This problem is temporary. Part of coping with the pandemic is to talk about it in words that create a constructive set of thought-habits. Losing the old “normal” means we might be able to create better elements in the new normal. We may be forced out of a rut into opportunities we would otherwise have missed. We can learn new skills and new ways of coping that make us stronger. The good news about habits, including thought-habits, is that they can be changed! The team can be helped to pay attention to their resources and opportunities rather than their deficits. Much of leadership happens in the mind. Jonathan Cook is a counselling psychologist and chairman of the African Management Institute. He  is also the host of AMI’s weekly Rise  reflection series focused on supporting you in your business and your personal wellness. This article was  originally published on BusinessLive on 16 November, 2020 and is republished with permission. #JonathanCook #Rise #StaffColumn #Thrive

A past colleague and good friend, Conrad Viedge, passed away on Saturday after battling cancer. I was considering writing this column about business ethics, and the two came together rather well. Conrad was a good man in every sense. Not only did he pay his taxes, which I am sure he did, but when it came to work, friends and family he went beyond compliance to consider what would be best for them. He had some creative entrepreneurial ventures, but most of Conrad’s career was devoted to teaching – first at Wits Business School and more recently as acting director at the Johannesburg Business School. We worked on a number of consulting projects together, and I was struck by his asking in each case what the client needed, and how we could solve their problems creatively – even those problems they might not yet have recognised. Similarly his careful preparation for lectures followed the same theme: what do the students really need to know? How can we help them discover this? I learnt so much from Conrad about teaching technique and even more about responsibility. He was a very private person and I doubt he ever believed how highly many of us respected him. So I don’t think he did this to gain kudos; rather it was an inner conviction that one had to do the responsible thing in any situation. What a different world this would be if business and society were routinely conducted with the same inner conviction! That is how it should be. As one reads of accusations against public figures it is striking that lying is taken for granted. That very sad assumption has been creeping into business. Those outside business circles may be sceptical, but there has been a strong ethic in business to tell the truth to the board and investors, signalling in advance when things may be heading in the wrong direction. Honesty is one’s fiduciary duty, and without it, the economy cannot function effectively. Professor Deon Rossouw writing in Daily Maverick recently reviewed some interesting research on the standing of ethics in South African business. Compared to other countries South Africa leads the world in adopting written standards of ethics, providing facilities to report unethical conduct confidentially, and advising employees how to behave ethically at work. SA came second in providing training in ethics and in the willingness to report misconduct in one’s organisation. That’s brilliant. No doubt the King Commission must take credit for some of this. Yet SA also came second in the world for employees feeling pressured to compromise the ethical standards of their organisations, and first for employees feeling that honesty is not practised at work. Oh dear. So we are good at the formal side of ethics, but poor at living it practically. That brings me back to the example Conrad gave us of honourably doing the right thing, even in little matters. To thrive as an economy and society, we all need to do the right thing, even and maybe especially when no one is noticing – not just complying, but responsibly preparing for a good future. When you retire, I expect the words that will please you most will not be that you never broke a rule, but that you cared so deeply that you continually sought the common good, whether people were watching or not. Responsible behaviour begins with not breaking rules, but it goes much further to prepare the best for the people and institutions with which we operate. Most of us are in humble positions without aspirations to save the world, but if we each just lived honourably and responsibly, the culture we create would steer our world in the right direction. Jonathan Cook is a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 7 February 2022. ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-02-07-jonathan-cook-a-life-lived-honourably-can-help-change-the-world/ ). #JonathanCook

President Ramaphosa’s comment in the SONA has sparked an irritating debate in South Africa about whether the private sector or government create jobs. That’s like arguing about whether it’s the doctor or the medicine that heals. Both have roles. To oversimplify, the government creates conditions in which businesses grow jobs. Those who love big government say the private sector has been losing jobs and can’t be trusted to look after people. Those who love small government say the government has failed to manage its existing state-owned enterprises and cannot be trusted to look after anything. Both have a point – but reflect mistaken views on the role of each. Government can create some jobs directly. We need more nurses, teachers, police and people skilled in pro-poor projects, tax receipts permitting. That’s government’s job, and proponents of small government should spend more time with the poor to understand it better. Competent government can also initiate projects too big, risky, or unprofitable for private companies on their own – like railways. But at best that can only grow employment modestly. We have seen in many countries that government is generally bad at running businesses and really should not try. Furthermore, the public sector ethos of service is horribly compromised when public servants try to run businesses themselves. We don’t need an entrepreneurial state, we need a caring and honest state built on an ethos of serving the people. Part of this service is providing the physical, legislative and administrative infrastructure required by those who are entrepreneurs. That does not mean leaving the field for private companies to do as they please; government also has the role of regulating for safety, fair labour practices, equity and ecology. A significant point often ignored is that whereas government is an agent that can be held accountable for what government does as a sector, the private sector is not. It is a class of independent actors who have to be held accountable independently. Deciding whether or not to invest is something many thousands of entrepreneurs and management teams do regularly and independently in the light of the information at their disposal. They won’t and should not invest if the return from investing would be less than the return from keeping the money in the bank or giving it back to shareholders to use elsewhere; or if the risks exceed the potential return. That’s their job. Businesspeople don’t set out to lose jobs – downsizing is a very painful and costly admission that a growth dream has failed. So it makes no sense to blame the average businessperson for destroying jobs or failing to invest; rather blame the conditions that led to this sad situation. That is where government comes in. Of course government creates jobs. It can create a few directly, but it can create many, many more by enabling businesses to thrive. I do not create the vegetables that grow in my garden. but I do plant the seeds in good soil with compost and fertilizer, and I do water them regularly and remove the weeds. If they do not grow, I blame my stewardship, not the plants. Similarly, it is the job of government to provide the good soil and regular watering and weeding that businesses need to flourish. If businesses die or migrate to better climates, government should blame its own policies and administration rather than blame the people trying to earn a living. So for long term, sustainable employment at scale, the president was clearly right that the bulk of job growth comes in the private sector. But the responsibility for this happening is government’s. Both do need each other. Is it government or business that creates jobs? Yes! Now in heaven’s name let’s stop squabbling and do it. Jonathan Cook is chair of the African Management Institute

Erica Kempken, co-founder of Youth@worK, tells a great story illustrating how government and private sector can collaborate to create small businesses and jobs for unemployed youth – the ecosystem we have been talking about in this column. Youth@worK is the largest implementation partner (IP) of the Youth Employment Service (YES), a collaboration between government, business and labour to give work experience to black youth between the ages of 18 and 35. When Covid struck, YES chose Youth@worK to help communities produce masks. One dynamic young lady with a sewing machine was selected as a supplier. She set up a business making tailored school uniforms in rural Kwa-Zulu Natal, saving their parents the cost of traveling to the city to buy uniforms. Youth@worK placed another young person with this small business as it grew. This second young lady in turn set up her own business sewing fashion apparel and wedding designs – and Youth@worK duly appointed a young person to assist her, and another to replace her in the original business. “Youth@worK itself is an entrepreneurial business!” explains Kempken. “We started because of YES and are now creating jobs for youth and new businesses.” It is impressive that 17% of the young people that YES places go on to start their own businesses. “YES demonstrates the collaboration we know is needed to address our employment challenge,” says Kempken. “The buzzword among all those engaged in YES is collaboration.” I was intrigued by this, as my past experience has been that NGOs can become very competitive, even destructively so, in their pursuit of grants. So how did YES get this right? YES illustrates that government should be an enabling rather than implementing partner. Government and business got together to work out appropriate and sustainable incentives for all parties. Government created legislation that supported the B-BBEE regulations to allow all companies to commit to BEE despite their ownership structure. Businesses committed to meet all the BEE requirements, to play open cards with their profit numbers, and ultimately create youth jobs. So far nearly 2000 firms have signed up to YES. Government furthermore provides the Employer Tax Incentive to encourage businesses to create more youth jobs. The next clever step was to put implementation into the hands of an independent non-profit organisation – the Youth Employment Service. YES is driven and entirely funded by the private sector. It has the clear and specific mission to connect with companies to create work opportunities for black South African youth at scale, and to achieve this by leveraging B-BBEE policy for better and more meaningful company impact and performance. YES gives each young participant a mobile phone loaded with a digital learning app that teaches them about work and essential skills such as digital literacy and budgeting. IPs have to ensure that 95% of participants complete the full 12 month programme and complete all modules. Kempken points out this demonstrates that young people are not lazily sitting waiting for others to do things for them. Why has YES succeeded? One factor is leadership. The founding CEO, Tashmia Ismael-Saville, vigorously canvassed and brought on board CEOs of leading corporates and the legislation was easily understood and adopted by the B-BBEE ecosystem. Another factor is the appropriate allocation of roles. Government both led and listened to the interests of all stakeholders, and created facilitative conditions through regulation and tax incentives. Business co-operated and committed sincerely to the principles. And implementation was left in the hands of nimble independent agencies. So far 72 712 young people have been placed in one-year real jobs that teach them how to work and triple their chances of a permanent job at the end. New businesses have been created. A model has emerged that is sustainable and can scale. It’s a success story. Jonathan Cook chairs the African Management Institute.

There is a proverb in Setswana that says  “Eetshetlanyana etsala eerunneng” which can be loosely translated as a poor cow can give birth to a fine calf.  When a herder realizes that a cow is underweight, they don’t give up and slaughter the cow immediately, they improve the cow’s diet to make her healthy again. There’s a lesson that entrepreneurs can draw from this. Although the past two years have been filled with external difficulties and entrepreneurs may have struggled to adapt and rebuild, are there opportunities to grow and build resilience during this adversity? Let us see how this has played out for one of our South African entrepreneurs. Last year we sat down with Mzi Nduna, Director of Lesengkeng , a food business that was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Lesengkeng supplied school tuck shops in South Africa with food and beverages. However, due to the global pandemic, the schooling system in South Africa was disrupted many times, forcing Lesengkeng to pause their service to the schools.  During this period, Mzi enrolled in AMI’s Survive To Thrive (S2T) programme, which was designed to empower SMMEs and MSMEs to overcome Covid-related challenges. While in the programme, he learned new skills, gained access to financial tools and resources, and interacted with other entrepreneurs across Africa . As a result, he was not only able to keep his team together, but also identify opportunities to restructure and grow his business. “As a team, we had to review our plan and that is when the AMI Scenario Planning Tool came in handy. We had to revise everything and eventually we came up with a short, medium, and long-term strategy for the business.”  Because he participated in the Survive To Thrive programme, Mzi now conducts process analysis in the form of daily checks which helps them to:  Determine whether targets are being met Leverage upselling opportunities Explore new channels to add to their line of business. Since the beginning of their journey with AMI, Lesengkeng foods has managed to sign new deals with two schools in South Africa. “It is interesting because now, using AMI tools and materials has become part of our culture. We use AMI materials daily as we work towards getting back on track.” With the on and off lockdowns in South Africa, Mzi confesses that for him and his business, things are still tough. Despite these challenges, he is grateful for the opportunity to learn and take a moment to reorganize his business, which is now paying off.  Mzi attributes most of Lesengkeng’s foods success to his team and says that a business is all about teamwork, which is among the top key lessons he learned at AMI.  “I have learned how to manage, encourage and support my team better.” Looking ahead, Lesengkeng foods will continuously upgrade their offering and identify gaps in the market to explore new opportunities for growth, such as canteen management for corporates, supplying stationery and office products, and even providing clean water for rural areas. During these testing times, it is critical for business owners to have a good team, upskill with the right tools and always remember that hardships can still give birth to new opportunities. If you are an entrepreneur or business leader looking for new ways to grow or motivate your team in 2022, check out AMI’s programmes.  You can also reach out to us on partnerships@africanmanagers.org if you want to support small businesses like Lesengkeng foods to achieve growth. #Covid19Stories #Entrepreneurship

Two years ago I wrote in this column that the entrepreneurial priority then was to save as many livelihoods as we could. “Many small businesses and gig workers face ruin in the coming weeks, with economic damage rivalling health threats; so our response should be as urgent as for the health threat.” Predicting that the problem could last 18 months, I suggested some things we could do to keep people earning, “some of which we may want to continue after this tsunami of suffering is over.” As we emerge into what we hope will be a better environment for business, what should we keep doing to create jobs? Back then we suggested that those with a secure income should be generous in continuing to pay staff and buy goods and services even if we couldn’t use them. Firms with secure revenues should be generous in dealing with suppliers and customers in temporary trouble. Firms in trouble should preserve cash wherever possible, be ruthless in cutting costs, be open with staff and suppliers, and look for new markets. In AMI we have had the immense privilege of seeing many small firms across the continent do just that. More than 90% of the companies we worked with last year are still in business, and many of them have become stronger through the efforts required to keep afloat. One inspiring entrepreneur is Adeoye Oluwatosin Adewale, CEO of Wale Success Agro Allied Ltd. He has a poultry farm in Nasarawa, Nigeria and used to sell all his produce from his farm gate. When Covid struck his customers stopped coming overnight, leaving him in despair. When he joined our Survive to Thrive programme he realised he was not alone – people across Africa were in the same worried state. They listened to and helped each other with ideas and suggestions. He diligently applied the practical tools on our platform – the customer profiling document, the business plan template, the cashflow projection, the marketing plan template – and rebuilt his business. Two years later he has more demand than he can fulfill. He sells eggs, broilers, goats and rabbits (a new venture) and manure from the hens. He now takes his produce to his customers, having found out who they are, what they like, and where they live. He has a WhatsApp group where they communicate and place orders. The Business Plan template showed him how to secure a government Covid loan in February 2021, which he repaid six months later. His workforce has grown from two in 2020 to eight today. The business is now far better that it was before Covid and his farm is now a model for young agriculture students. I don’t want to downplay the tragedy that has faced many other businesses that were not in a position to find new markets. Unemployment is higher than ever now. But isn’t that the point? If Covid could force us to work together to tackle an acute public health challenge, can’t we work together now to tackle the chronic problems of unemployment and poverty, which together probably do far more damage than Covid has? One very obvious contribution would be to continue to help small businesses thrive. As Adeoye Adewale demonstrated, given the tools, small business owners can grow their businesses and provide livelihoods for others. It’s not rocket science, and technology helps us get the tools to them. Then it is up to government and big business to create the ecosystem that supports enterprising people creating and growing businesses. Humanity tackled Covid with amazing urgency, innovation, resources, collaboration. We could do it for jobs too. Let’s learn to turn chronic problems we have grown used to into acute challenges we can solve. Jonathan Cook is a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of the African Management Institute. #JonathanCook

Will Smith’s Oscar slap has generated a huge debate about toxic masculinity, with some decrying his hitting Chris Rock on stage as an example of how men are programmed socially to be violent, some supporting his courage in defending his wife, and others looking for reasons in his childhood to explain his bizarre reaction. But toxicity is gender-neutral. It is true the damage caused by male toxicity is clearly evident every day – not just in cases of individual physical and verbal violence, but also in the systemic oppression that still today condemns many women in many places to powerlessness and deemed inferiority. I really do not want to go there; but I do want to use the occasion to address toxicity at the workplace. It is huge and destructive. Every day good people come home, pushed into bad behaviour by sheer rage, frustration and helplessness by horrible bosses, careless colleagues, dishonest suppliers and impossible customers. This leads to mental illness, alcohol and substance abuse, family violence, and the perpetuation of dysfunctional patterns in social life. Why do we do this to each other? More importantly, how can we stop it? The “Why?” question can be answered by the three great origins of behaviour: genes, environment and choice. The nature/nurture debate has pretty well been settled by good research that shows that genes and upbringing both interact to create the propensity to act. For example, evolutionary psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson studied homicide in different places. They have a fascinating graph comparing homicides In Chicago from 1965 to 1990 and England and Wales from 1974 to 1990. Firstly, it records male perpetrators only, because women committed too few homicides to appear on the graph. Secondly, the age distribution of homicide for the two places is indistinguishable – both rise steeply to peak at about 21 or 22, and then fall steadily to approach zero after age 65. This identical line for Chicago and England & Wales would suggest genetic factors as the origin of violence, acting for example through testosterone. But astonishingly, the incidence in Chicago was thirty times higher than in England and Wales! That clearly supports environmental origins of violence. I hope people are not killing each other physically at your workplace, but I am pretty sure they damage each other regularly through non-physical assaults. This research on homicide suggests that while some of us may be more prone to antisocial behaviour than others of us, the emergence of this toxicity is highly subject to the culture in which we find ourselves. This brings us to the third determinant of behaviour: choice. There are many things we cannot choose, but given time to practise, we can choose to develop habits that do not surrender to our instincts or toxic role models. We do this by practising respect – both for others and ourselves. This is not a choice made in the heat of the moment, but the result of a lifetime of practice. Even those not blessed with parents who taught them to respect others can still learn this key lesson when taught by caring and insistent leaders. Sometimes a coach or therapist can help develop new habits. Will Smith might have felt driven by his inner demons when he jumped up to hit Chris Rock. Maybe he experienced little choice then. But he does have a choice now to practise constructive responses over the rest his life, so that next time his automatic reaction will be constructive. And those of us privileged to manage others can choose to treat our colleagues with dignity and create a culture in which people learn to exercise choices responsibly. The true test of leadership is what our followers choose to do. Jonathan Cook is a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 4 April 2022. ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-04-04-jonathan-cook-practising-respect-can-counter-workplace-toxicity/ ). #JonathanCook

Dunvegan, a suburb east of Johannesburg, is bisected by a road with two large traffic circles. The circles feature attractive, well-designed and lovingly maintained gardens. That is both welcome and surprising, as the local government is not particularly known for its public gardens. My wife and I enjoy discovering the latest colour and texture combination as we walk through them. So when we saw someone working in one of them, we stopped to chat. It turns out that he is a local resident who does this as a hobby in his spare time. Professionally he is a banker. He obtained written permission from the local authority, and for several years has gradually planted, shaped and maintained this lovely public asset. He is grateful for the opportunity to exercise his hobby in these large spaces – each several times larger than a typical suburban garden. It made my day and stimulated thoughts about how citizens step up to fill in the gaps left by formal authorities. This is particularly evident at times of national disaster. In KwaZulu Natal, for example, the riots last year and tragic floods this year have highlighted the initiative, courage and generosity of ordinary people. Sometimes generous people possess unusual organisational ability too, and create wonderful private agencies like the Gift of the Givers. Thank God for them. But it is also evident in the continuing quiet, faithful volunteer work of ordinary people in ordinary times, like Sally who many years ago planted gardens on the pavements in Malvern and arranged for residents in every street to meet and create a sense of community. Or those many people who prepare food for the hungry at their door or at the traffic intersections. This enterprise in public service mirrors the energy that goes into entrepreneurship. Our world is filled with energetic people who create a living for themselves with creative ideas for a service or a product that people will pay for. They are the heroes who provide necessary goods and services, create jobs, and pay the taxes that keep the country going. So thank God for them too. It suggests that whatever our political persuasion, room should be made in society for private initiative. Freedom to follow our conscience, not just in what we believe, but in putting our best values to work to aid our neighbours has to be one of the best features of human society. Authoritarian societies do not encourage this. Under a dictatorship people tend to become passive. Risking enslavement for the uncertain prize of stability and economic growth is simply not worth it – and anyway evidence shows that democracy is better at supporting prosperity. I don’t mean to espouse the excesses of free enterprise – huge harm is done by greed in the guise of freedom. Bad governments can come in any ideological dress. Bad government stifles enterprise through unnecessary bureaucracy, or worse still, kills initiative by “rent-seeking” – siphoning off money through bribes or extortion. Good government works with the people to liberate and celebrate their initiative. I happen to think that social democracy underpinned by an appreciation for human rights and liberty may offer the best combination of government leadership and private initiative. But this is not an essay on politics. Freedom can be achieved under a wide range of political and economic systems, provided you and I are empowered to act when we see a need or an opportunity. Viva the little people who create jobs and serve their communities. Those who design political and economic systems should put them at the top of the agenda. And let public servants everywhere understand that their job is to put power in the hands of the people, not themselves. Maybe that could be the focus of our next investment conference.