THIS IS A WORK ABOUT LEADERSHIP.
The kind of leadership that amplifies and empowers, and the kind that limits and diminishes. And my personal experience of the fragile, crowded space that exists in between these extremes.
BUT IT IS ALSO, EQUALLY IMPORTANTLY, A WORK ABOUT PERFORMANCE.
The Service Profit Chain (Schlesinger and Heskett, 1991) defines the end goal of any organisation as long-term sustainability. In this model, sustainable performance hinges on customer satisfaction, which hinges on productivity, which in turn hinges on employee satisfaction (Millette, 2023).
Organisations that get leadership wrong quickly spiral into the dysfunction of disengagement, poor service delivery, eroding loyalty and, ultimately, sub-standard and unsustainable performance (Heskett et al., 2008).
Conversely, organisations who get it right enable internal satisfaction, accountability, productivity and discretionary effort, driving customer loyalty and sustainability (Kwortnik and Thompson, 2009).​​
IN BOTH SCENARIOS, LEADERSHIP IS A POWERFUL HARBINGER OF ORGANISATIONAL PERFORMANCE. AND ORGANISATIONAL PERFORMANCE BECOMES A RELIABLE INDICATOR OF THE CHARACTER AND SUBSTANCE OF ITS LEADERSHIP.
THE RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE:
A DEFINING MOMENT
I have been obsessed with the nature and pursuit of performance throughout my life.
It guided me through a difficult, tumultuous childhood and agitated my potential as a young adult. It inspired me – when the world seemed to conspire against me – to find my purpose, and to trust my voice.
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Linguistically, the word performance mirrors our evolving quest for mastery (Harper, n.d.). From the Old French ‘parfornir’, which means ‘to carry out completely’, it evokes our deepest, most innate drive to accomplish, to fulfil, and to succeed.
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Performance is not one thing. It transcends disciplines and philosophies. And it means different things to different people, in different contexts and at different times. And it is very often deeply personal. But pure, unadulterated performance that pushes boundaries is hard to miss. You know it when you see it.​
I first saw performance in its rawest, most explosive form, in a larger-than-life figure with an outsized ego but talent to match, who would come to play an extraordinary role in shaping my world view. And not just because I bear his name.19
Muhammad Ali was charismatic. Defiant. And extraordinarily talented. But it is his larger-than-life, almost supernatural confidence and self-belief that constitute both my earliest memory, and my most profound, life-long influence.
I was only three-and-a-half when Ali, 32, stepped into the ring against the younger, stronger George Foreman in what would become known as the Rumble in the Jungle. To this day, I am unsure whether I truly remember watching the fight with my father, or if I've replayed the footage so many times in the years since that it has become an adoptive part of my own narrative. Regardless of whether it was a lived experience or a reconstructed memory, it impacted me deeply, and would become a keystone moment in my understanding not only of performance, but of the art of the possible.
The 1974 Ali-Foreman fight in Kinshasa, Zaire – now the Democratic Republic of the Congo – was more than a sporting event; it was a cultural phenomenon that transcended boxing, touching on themes of race, politics, and the human spirit. Ali, who first captured the world heavyweight title in 1964, had dominated the sport for the better part of a decade, defending his title nine times in just three years (Remnick, 1998). By 1974, however, Ali was widely considered past his prime, while Foreman, with a devastating record of 40-0 – 37 of which were knockouts – was the clear favourite. And widely seen as heir to the title of “greatest fighter of all time”.
But Ali refused to be intimidated, famously declaring:
“I done something new for this fight. I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick. I'm so mean, I make medicine sick!”
(Ali, 1974).
This bold, defiant statement was not just boastful bravado. Ali was a master of metaphor and rhetoric, using powerful, emotive language to great effect throughout his career to inspire, motivate, and galvanise. Not just himself, but anyone willing to listen. 20​
​To me, Ali’s choice of words – and the powerful way in which he yielded them – spoke volumes about a man whose greatest talent, I would argue, lay not in his fists, but in his mind: In his ability to see a reality others could not, to give life to that reality through powerful metaphor, and to wrestle it into being through sheer force of will, determination and guts.
BUT, AS WITH LEADERSHIP, TALKING A GOOD GAME IS NOT ENOUGH
– it’s how we follow through that truly matters. Ali’s ability to back his words with action was on full display in Kinshasa.
For seven gruelling rounds, the fight lived up to expectations. Ali absorbed a relentless barrage of sledgehammer blows, which sports journalist Norman Mailer described as “the hardest any heavyweight had ever thrown” (Mailer, 1975). This forced the older, more experienced boxer to resort to his infamous “rope-a-dope” strategy which shielded him from the worst of the onslaught, while also enticing Foreman to exhaust his superior punching power.
Yet, even as his body was being pummelled, Ali was outmanoeuvring his opponent strategically. In the eighth round, with Foreman noticeably tiring, Ali lunged forward and landed a series of precise blows that stunned Foreman into submission, and sent the younger man to the canvas.
In the sweltering African heat, Ali – the rank 4 – 1 underdog – outlasted, outboxed, and out-strategised his opponent. As Howard Cosell’s rousing crescendo, “Ali wins! Ali wins by a knockout!” echoed through the night, Muhammad Ali had etched a powerful new chapter in the story of human performance, endurance, and resilience (Gast, 1996; Mailer, 1975).
Ultimately, Ali’s victory was a masterclass in self-belief, tactical thinking, and calculated risk-taking. And a moment of profound validation of Ali’s signature conviction, later immortalised in an Adidas advertising campaign, that:
THAT IMPOSSIBLE IS NOT A FACT. IT IS AN OPINION.
Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare.
Impossible is potential.
Impossible is temporary.
Impossible is nothing.”
(Brandvertising, 2004)
IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING. NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE.
​​For close to half a century, Ali has been more than an inspirational rolemodel. His mantra of 'Nothing is impossible' became my own – a guiding principle that has fuelled my choices, inspired my actions, and anchored me through seemingly relentless cycles of violence, turmoil and upheaval.
He gifted me a perspective that helped me transcend the limitations of my own, challenging circumstances, and yet was wholly congruent with the world as I knew it could be:
AUDACIOUS. RESILIENT. AND INFINITELY POSSIBLE.
Ali’s story is a triumphant testament to confidence, self-belief, and the power of positivity. But it is also a cautionary tale about the cost of courage, and the price we pay for audacity, bravery, and brilliance – for refusing to yield, and insisting on fighting battles both inside and outside the ring.
The relentless blows Ali endured throughout his career contributed to the Parkinson’s disease that defined his final decades and ultimately claimed his life. In my own life, I have found these very same traits have equally proven to be sources of strength, and struggle. My own bias for boldness, and my preponderance for waging full-throttle into the battles I believed in, and stay the course, while powerful drivers, have at times come at a significant price – leaving me vulnerable to burnout and the relentless shadow of anxiety. In this, too, there is an inherent paradox:
Transformative leadership demands a level of courage, resilience and grit few other callings require. But the yin to our strength is the yang of human fragility.
EVEN THE STRONGEST AMONG US CAN, AND WILL, FALTER.
THE ALCHEMY OF ADVERSITY
"YOU MAY ENCOUNTER MANY DEFEATS, BUT YOU MUST NOT BE DEFEATED. IN FACT, IT MAY BE NECESSARY TO ENCOUNTER THE DEFEATS, SO YOU CAN KNOW WHO YOU ARE, WHAT YOU CAN RISE FROM, HOW YOU CAN STILL COME OUT OF IT."
- Maya Angelou (Black Women Writers at Work, 1983)
Throughout my life, I have yearned to understand the world, my place, and my purpose in it. From an early age I enjoyed a deep and abiding fascination with all things mystical, including both astrology and numerology, as I searched for a sense of order and meaning amid the dysfunction and chaos of my childhood.
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On reflection, I am struck by a curious pattern: The most significant and impactful chapters of my life have invariably occurred in eight-year cycles.​
In Pythagorean numerology,21 eight is the number of power, authority, and transformation and renewal, representing the relationship between material success and personal or spiritual growth. Phillips (2005) describes it as the number of balance and regeneration, signifying both the material and spiritual planes of existence. In its infinite form, the number reminds us that challenges and achievements, loss and renewal, endings and new beginnings are all inextricably interwoven into a journey of growth and transformation.
This symbolism has repeatedly been borne out in my own life, with many of my most transformative life events following an eight-year rhythm: The abrupt departure of my beloved father, a traumatic divorce, meeting my current husband, starting my own business, and now –at the start of another eight-year cycle – embarking on the challenge and adventure of a Doctoral programme. ​
​As an adult, I reflect on these events and recognise an esoteric harmony and order. Harbingers, often, to profound truths and insights of which I was not yet able to make sense, but which would become hugely significant later. This foreshadowing extended to another powerful influence that would prove to be a constant in my life: The enduring power of archetypes, generally, and the trickster archetype22 in particular.​
​As an eight-year-old child, however, the esoteric patterns and symbology that I would later come to value, held no deeper meaning. There was only profound, inexplicable loss.
Like for many other little girls, my father was my hero: My first protector. My biggest supporter. My most loyal defender. What made our relationship unique, however, was an extraordinary bond forged through time – I was his constant shadow – and the unusual space of the sweat-fuelled arenas of professional boxing and horse racing.
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I would have had it no other way, however. The boxing gym and the racetrack became second homes. While other girls my age were hosting imaginary tea parties, I had a front-row seat to raw physical power, the currency of sweat and grit, and the sheer thrill of high-stakes performance. And – on more than one occasion – I was an active participant in the world my father loved, a tiny slip of a girl sparring with men twice her size and three times her age.
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My gender was little more than a footnote to our story – as it would remain throughout my life. Why shouldn’t a seven-year-old girl don boxing gloves and take on grown men sparring partners? Or perch ring-side, watching those same men pummel each other into submission? Or share in the joy of the winner’s circle, where fortunes could be won or lost on the split-second performance of a horse and its rider?
IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING. BUT IT ISN'T ALWAYS PERMANENT.
If Muhammad Ali taught me the art of the possible, my father showed me the fragility of forever.
At eight years old, my world suddenly, irrevocably, tilted. My hero – the person I loved more than anything in the world – left us. No warning; no explanation. Just a devastating, suffocating, sudden absence.
ONE THAT BROUGHT A CASCADE OF LOSS:
The loss of our beautiful home on Somerset Street, my father’s pride and joy. Replaced by a tiny, broken-down semi-detached house so cramped that sitting in the lounge, the three of us – my mother, brother, and I – could touch feet across the room.
The loss of my brother as I knew him, before he descended into a terrifying, unrelenting drug addiction that turned our home into a war zone and brought not only drugs but the constant threat of gang violence and police raids to our door.
The loss of a once-happy mother, whose new normal was one of anguish and bitter despair, caught in a toxic co-dependent dance with a son she could not save from himself, and shutting out the daughter she could not understand.
And finally – the loss of a childhood that was, for a brief moment, a happy sanctum against the world, replaced by crushing poverty and constant fear. Our brutal shift in circumstances is best exemplified by a particularly vivid memory, even 45 years later, of a weekly ritual of shame: Every Saturday, we would drive to my aunt’s house, where a plain brown box of the most basic of groceries was left out on the patio.
This was not an act of love or support. It was, at best, a grudge offering, like scraps for strays, much more likely to appease their giver’s conscience than to truly offer a helping hand.
MEMORY HAS A CURIOUS BIAS:
Traumatic moments tend to be frozen in time, as lurid and intense as if they happened only moments ago, even if the surrounding details fade. One such memory stands as another stark and haunting symbol of a now-dysfunctional childhood. While my exact age eludes me, I could not have been older than 11 or 12. Our home at the time, the fourth in as many years, was a discounted rental with a flimsy aluminium-and-glass-pane front door – a barrier which, I would soon find out, offered little protection against the outside world.
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One terrifying night, we were woken by what sounded like a gunshot. My mother and I, alone and vulnerable, raced to the front door. Outside, five men armed with the street arsenal of the time – pangas, crowbars and knopkieries (a traditional African wooden club) – were menacingly approaching the house, hellbent, we later learnt, on retrieving a drug stash my brother had stolen from them.
My mother’s desperate promises that he was not home and pleas for them to leave fell on deaf ears. The air filled with the sound of shattering glass as the men methodically destroyed the door, glass pane by glass pane. When their demands to open the now-shattered door went unmet, their anger turned to my mother’s car parked in the driveway. The sight of a panga slashing into the tyres and the sound of a crowbar raining blows on the windows are indelibly etched into my memory.
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Their rage was not spent on the car, however. They returned, one of the men stabbing wildly through the mangled door, while another worked to pry away the frame with the crowbar. All that stood between us and what I felt was certain death was a single, meagre padlock. The events that followed play out in slow motion in my mind’s eye:​
My mother’s hand closes around my wrist, and she runs with me into the kitchen, and through the back door, screaming for help. Then, I feel her hands on my shoulders, pushing me towards the rear boundary wall. “Climb and run!” I claw at the wall like a trapped animal, desperate to escape. On the other side, I run blindly towards a house. Any house. I hear the exaggerated slap of my feet against the asphalt, and my own, seemingly detached voice, desperately crying for help. And then, the banging of my small fists against the door. By some miracle – divine intervention? – the door opens, and total strangers, risking their own safety amid a cacophony of violence, rush me inside.
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And then, the agony of waiting for the police to arrive, not knowing what had happened to my mother. Have our attackers done to my mother what they did to the car? Is she alive? Is she injured? Every second feels like an eternity. “She could be dying!” I plead with the neighbours to return to the house, to try to help her. But the threat of an armed gang running the streets proves too daunting.
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After what seems like hours, I learn that my mother is safe. The men had failed to gain entry to the house, and left without harming her. She is safe. But neither of us will ever be the same again.
That night changed everything. The fear. The rage. The relief. But also, the knowledge that it was a temporary, flimsy relief, and that violence and terror were just one disgruntled drug dealer away, was a defining moment for me.
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​It could so easily have made me small. Timid and fearful of the shadows, not knowing what the next night might bring to our door. But the opposite happened. As horrific an experience as it was – one that races my heart to this day – it gave me a courage and a resilience that I did not have before, and which I have relied on many times in the ensuing years. But more importantly, and certainly more consequentially, it gifted me a deep empathy and compassion for the pain of others. Even when that pain manifests in behaviour that threatens me, or those I love.
THIS WOULD PROVE A RECURRING THEME THROUGHOUT MY LIFE, AND MY CAREER.
The men who came to our door that night were never caught, or held accountable. But I feel no animosity towards them. Only sadness for the broken society that created them. Children affected by trauma often shut themselves off from others’ pain. But I found that the opposite was true for me.
Pain opened my heart, allowing me to hold space for the suffering of others. I came to understand that no one has a monopoly on suffering. We are all fighting our own battles – some visible, some invisible. The loss of my father. The emotional attrition of my mother. The physical deterioration of the brother I would eventually lose to addiction. Any one of these experiences could have made me bitter, or fearful, or caused me to withdraw from the world.
Instead, each one helped me find my greatest strengths: My ability to endure. My eagerness to understand. And my capacity to love.
It gave me a lens – not unique, but uniquely mine – which would shape the leader I would become, and the leadership I would come to value: The ability to meet the world in the space of shared humanity. The ability to rise above tough circumstances, and come out stronger on the other side. And the ability, as Maya Angelou implores us, to defy being defeated by defeat.
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it”
– Angelou, 1983.
IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING . NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE.
FINDING SANCTUARY IN STORIES
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
- Søren Kierkegaard
As I sit down to write the first draft of this thesis, at the close of 2024, I am constantly reminded that this is indeed an exercise in understanding backwards, in order to build forward.
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My need to understand the world and to make sense of my place in it is not new, however. This research project reminds me: I have been doing it throughout my life. And it started – fittingly enough – in a library. A tiny municipal facility whose modest façade and meagre resources were wholly incongruous with the quantum shift it would ignite in me and the
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Through adult eyes, the Mayfair Library in western Johannesburg seems unremarkable – bleak, even. Yet, for a curious and impatient pre-teen desperate to escape the chaos of home, it was a sanctuary – my refuge. South Africa in the early 1970s was a cauldron of racial tension and a tense, often violent, battlefield of ideas and ideology. As a white South African, born into the apartheid state, I grew up with all the benefit my race afforded me. Free education. Quality health care. Public transport. Freedom of movement, and association. All of which were denied to other children my age, not fortunate enough to be born into white families.
This is not to say that all white South Africans were equal in status. While white South Africans were deemed “superior” to other races, South Africa was purposefully designed to be a haven for those who fitted the white Afrikaner mould of the Nationalist government. As a dark-skinned immigrant child, growing up in extreme poverty, I fell outside of that mould – which introduced me early on to the concept of “other”.
In the library, however, my otherness softened. And dissolved.
Here, surrounded by the heady aroma of paper and ink – and what I can only describe as the scent of possibility – I was simply a child, eager to lose herself in a thousand new thoughts and ideas.
But it was not just the rows and rows of books that enthralled me. It was the quiet – the very antithesis of the shouting, the slamming of doors, and the endless debris and detritus of addiction that had become my way of life. The library with its sentries of knowledge was more than a portal into a new world; it was a gateway out of an old one that had become unbearable.
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At first, I approached the wonders of the library tentatively; a fish out of water. Soon, however, I would rush there every day after school, leaving only when I absolutely needed to, and then only because I had to start my daily chores of cooking and cleaning for my mother, my brother and I. The stories I encountered in the library provided more than escape; they were friends, and companions, and advisers. They taught me that hardship was common. Ubiquitous, even. But that hardship and struggle were incubators, not barriers. That they serve largely to point us in the direction of purpose, not derail us from what we are meant to achieve.
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I read everything; and I read voraciously. The children’s section soon became of little interest to me. The books that interested me most were inevitably either in the adult section, or, of significantly more concern to the librarians, in the reference section. The more I read, the more I questioned all that I had been taught to accept blindly, including a narrow, church-based view of God that I found, even as a child, wholly unsatisfactory.
On the one hand, we were told that we were wretched, sinful human beings who could find eternal life only through an intermediary. But at the same time, we were asked to believe that we were made in God’s own image. How could both of these things be true? How could we be both small and inferior, yet a pure reflection of the divine?
Mayfair Library, Johannesburg, South Africa
My journey through the adult and reference sections of the Mayfair Library offered its own, intriguing explanation. The greatest evidence of God’s existence, I discovered, was not biblical at all. I found it in the lives of men and women – Christian, Buddhists, atheists – who lived lives of consequence. Lives of purpose. Joan of Arc, Edith Piaf, Helen Keller, Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.
These men and women enthralled me because of what they have done. What they had overcome. And what they had inspired others to achieve. What they inspire me to believe about myself. That I could achieve anything.
IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING. NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE.
BREAKING BOUNDARIES, BUILDING WORLDS
In addition to devouring the Mayfair Library’s entire collection of biographies, I was drawn to books that challenged me to see and think about the world differently. Books that ignited a lifelong fascination with the realms that defy logic, and invite an open mind. Telepathy, faith healing, psychokinesis, remote viewing – concepts that challenged me to step outside the norm, and the normal. To reject limitation.
And to question the status quo. It was a fascination that would soon put me on a collision course with the status quo, however. The disconnect between the world I was inhabiting, and the one that I was discovering, hit hardest in the classroom. One memory, in particular, stands out. I loved reading, writing, and learning. So homework assignments never resulted in the same anxiety my classmates seemed to experience.
So when we were tasked to do an oral presentation on any topic that interested us, I immediately thought about the fascinating esoteric world I had become so drawn to. I had recently discovered the bizarre concept of spontaneous human combustion, and thought this inexplicable phenomenon would make for an excellent oral report. For days, I did diligent research, reading all I could find, and hunting down photographs in support of my presentation. I was prepared, and eager to share a glimpse into this fascinating world with my fellow learners.
It never occurred to me that spontaneous human combustion – or any esoteric topic, for that matter – would be considered inappropriate for a girl my age. In the same way that my sparring days in the boxing gym seemed perfectly normal to me, trying to understand our world – all aspects of our world – seemed perfectly reasonable.
was wrong. My choice of topic was met with shock by my classmates, and alarm by my teacher, who immediately contacted my mother to warn that something was clearly wrong with me. Perhaps I could benefit from seeing a psychologist?
My mother was furious, and in hindsight, I realise that her anger was based in deep fear: Any involvement of a psychologist would undoubtedly expose our chaotic home life, which would inevitably lead to a visit from social services – the silent, omnipresent terror that haunted us both.
Yet, even in that moment of humiliation and rejection, I found not only solace, but affirmation. The world that the library had opened up to me – the world of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., but also the world of esoteric oddities and unexplained phenomena – was vastly different, but my fascination with both was rooted in the same hunger for knowledge. And that, I knew, could never be wrong. Not everyone was going to understand or support journeys that challenged the norm, or questioned the accepted wisdom. And in truth, few have, over the years.
BUT I HAVE NEVER REGRETTED MY SENSE OF WONDER, OR WONDERMENT. IN FACT, BOTH HAVE SERVED ME WELL. THEY HAVE PROVEN THE FOUNDATIONS OF A LIFELONG INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY. AND PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANTLY, TAUGHT ME TO NOT ONLY QUESTION CONVENTIONAL WISDOM, BUT TO EMBRACE OUTLIER IDEAS NOT AS THREATS, BUT AS ESSENTIAL PIECES OF THE LARGER PUZZLE.
THE GIFT OF BEING SEEN
As I revisit my personal story for this project, I am more convinced than ever: Our trajectories in life are disproportionately impacted by those individuals who hold influence and power over us. However briefly.
After the traumatic departure of my father, the authority figures in my life seemed intent on making me smaller – more pliable, more conformist. My high school, an all-white institution, mirrored this effort. It was an environment shaped by a South African context that upheld a prevailing norm that celebrated conformity and dismissed those who dared to diverge.
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One notable exception to this rule was a high school teacher, Mrs Smith, who gave me an extraordinary gift. One which I, in turn, strive to give to everyone I now meet: The power of being seen. Not through the lens of expectation but through the lens of validation.
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In his memoir The Power of Being Seen, Roger Saillant (2022) makes a compelling case for how being truly seen by others – especially caring adults – is one of the most powerful influences that positively shape children and young adults’ sense of identity.
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Mrs Smith saw me like no one else had done up until then. And she created space and permission for me to truly see myself. Not as the product of a broken home, or an impoverished upbringing. But as someone whose dreams were valid. Whose talents were limitless. Whose potential was exponential. And who had a unique contribution to make in the world. ​
She was also the first person to give me both the language and the permission structure with which to express my growing discomfort and sense of injustice growing up in, and into, apartheid-era South Africa.
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It is often difficult for South Africans of my generation to articulate quite why a brutal, inhumane regime was not only voted into power to begin with, but was kept in power, for almost half a century. There are myriad reasons, all of them inhuman, cruel, and utterly unforgiveable. But when all is said and done, the orchestrated invisibility of black South Africans – the utter lack of being seen – was, I believe, one of the greatest and most evil contributing factors.
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One of apartheid’s most egregious sins was how it purposefully and systematically made millions of South Africans invisible, in order to dehumanise them in full view of the world.
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As a 16-year-old South African child, I had never known anything other than institutionalised racism. It was rigid, pervasive, deeply entrenched, and vigorously policed. Such was the success of school-, church- and state-sanctioned indoctrination that even questioning the status quo seemed unthinkable. Until it was not. Until the moral courage of a teacher lifted the veil on what had been invisible, but what could never again be unseen.
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Sadly, Mrs Smith left our school abruptly and without explanation, in a manner suggesting that it was likely related to her political views, and committed activism. I think of her often, even 35 years later. And often I wish I had the opportunity to thank her, not only for the gift of visibility, but the realisation that my responsibility, in receiving this gift, was to do the same for others.
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A few months after Mrs Smith’s departure, her greatest legacy in my life manifested in a most unexpected way: I was appointed head prefect.
LEADERSHIP
At first, even the word lay awkwardly on my tongue. It was a world away from the girl who scrambled over a wall to escape a drug gang. The girl who took shameful drives every Saturday afternoon to collect a food box. The girl who was shunned for her interest in the unexplained, and whose curiosity was labelled morbid and macabre. And yet, standing in front of the entire school, stepping into the trust placed in me, felt completely right. A validation of my truest self.
I FELT RECOGNISED.
I FELT VALUED.
I FELT SEEN.
I would not feel this way again for several years.
INSTITUTIONALISED COMMAND AND CONTROL
Warfare has long been a go-to metaphor in business. We wage price wars. We gather intelligence. We convene strategy sessions to capture new markets. And in challenging times, we rally the troops. Our organisations, even today, are by and large reconstituted armies, with chains of command and rigid hierarchies that create narrow job descriptions and regimented career paths.
In an article for the Harvard Business Review, Frank Cespedes sounds the alarm about business strategists’ propensity for using overtly military jargon. “Strategy gurus constantly use analogies with battle plans for ‘competitive advantage’ versus the enemy,” he writes. “But the metaphor is not suitable … Business, unlike a war or battle, is not primarily about defeating an enemy. Business is primarily about customer value” (Cespedes, 2014).
And yet, military thinking continues to dominate our boardrooms and C-suites, despite ample evidence that hierarchical workplaces often lead to toxic work environments and behaviours (Shen and Lei, 2022; Priesemuth, 2020).
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Toxic leadership, and the dysfunctional workplace cultures it ignites and enables, has constituted much of my work over the past two decades. But this career-defining preoccupation was never academic or theoretical. It was deeply practical, and deeply personal. In fact, my very first exposure to corporate culture was exactly what Cespedes et al. would come to warn us about. It was militaristic. Hierarchical. Controlling. And wholly de-individualising, demanding conformity and rewarding compliance.
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The Pension Fund Administration Society of South Africa was every bit as rigidly bureaucratic as its name suggests. It was situated in the heart of central Johannesburg, in a faceless, characterless monolith of a building that stood as a monument to function and process. But it was the bland uniformity of experience inside that proved the most soul-destroying.
After serving as the head prefect of my school in my final year, I had allowed myself to dream of a tertiary education, and all that this new world would unlock: Critical thinking, open-minded debate, and vast university libraries where no one would ever again try to usher me back to more age-appropriate sections. I kept the dream alive throughout my matric year, having applied for – and been granted – a scholarship that would cover my tuition.
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My home life had not improved at all, however. And despite working full time, my mother simply could not afford even the most basic expenses. There was no question and little debate: I would leave school and find a paying job as quickly as possible, to start contributing to our meagre household income.
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The R900-a-month Pension Fund salary was a much-needed financial lifeline to our family. But I knew, virtually from the second I took my seat in a tiny cubicle under buzzing fluorescent lights, that this would not be a forever place. It would not even be a medium-term place. The crushing uniformity and dehumanising rituals and routines were simply unbearable. What chance did I have of learning and growing and realising my potential in a place that seemed to have been designed specifically to crush the human spirit, in neat, quarterly increments between an 8am start, tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and a 4pm final bell that dismissed us like school children?
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Even as an 18-year-old workplace novice, I knew, instinctively, that this system could never liberate human potential. On the contrary. And as the days ground by monotonously, I began to truly understand the insidious nature of institutionalised repression. It was not just the obvious attempts to control every small detail of our day. Or the purposeful reduction of human beings to human resources. Or even the constant reinforcement of mindless, assembly-line-type work. It was the slow, deadly ebbing away not only of passion, but of purpose.
I KNEW, AT 18 YEARS OLD, THIS WAS NOT FOR ME.
​BUT I ALSO KNEW, IT SHOULD NOT BE FOR ANYONE.
UNLEASHING HUMAN POTENTIAL
Even within the mindless grind of the Pension Fund, I refused to let my university dream die. My R900-a-month Pension Fund salary afforded little more than household necessities, but I was determined that it should buy me one, precious luxury: The ability to finally start studying part-time.
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The contrast between my cubicle existence and student life at the University of Johannesburg – then Rand Afrikaans University – could not have been more stark: A world of rigid conformity, and a world of limitless, intoxicating possibility.
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I encountered lecturers who recognised my hunger for knowledge and exploration, and gave me the tools and the maps to find my way. And thought leaders like Peter Senge, Warren Bennis and Daniel Goleman who championed ideas like emotional intelligence, learning organisations and – prophetically – human-centred leadership, which recognised the absurdity of militaristic or command-and-control leadership styles, and advocated for a new way of thinking about human potential.
By the early 1990s, I had finally been able to leave the Pension Fund for a slightly more challenging position at the financial services company Commercial Union. Although I had been hired primarily to do technical training, I had also been trying – albeit unsuccessfully, for the most part – to convince the executive team to include leadership and power skills training into the programme.
Then, out of nowhere, I was contacted by corporate head hunters representing Capital Alliance Life, one of the largest insurance providers for a lower-income market. Not only had they heard of my work at Commercial Union, but the University of Johannesburg had put my name forward as someone who represented a fresh perspective on leadership development.
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Within 24 hours, I found myself in an interview, talking with the Commercial Director about the need for transformed workplaces that were the antithesis of the stifling, military-style approach I witnessed first-hand at the Pension Fund. A place where people were not constrained, but enabled. Where we could let go of outdated thinking about human beings as mere resources by zeroing in on what they needed to liberate their highest potential.
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To my astonishment, the interview led to a final face-to-face with the CEO of the organisation, and, almost instantly, an offer to head up Capital Alliance’s Leadership and Learning Academy.
A DREAM DEFERRED
Every hardship, every sacrifice, every dream deferred, came into full resolution. It had all been preparing me for this moment. A moment to do work that mattered. Work that could contribute to a different way of thinking about organisational performance, and the disproportionate role of the leaders in enabling this performance.
t was a thrilling but also an extremely daunting prospect. I was painfully aware of my own relative inexperience, and the optics of a young woman, who had yet to graduate from university, advocating for a mindset shift that was, in essence, a rejection of much of what corporate South Africa had been built upon: Command. And control.
But as I left the CEO’s office, offer in hand, I experienced again the heady sensation with which I had once delivered my head prefect acceptance speech.
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IT FELT RIGHT. I FELT SEEN.
And here, finally, inked into my new employment contract, was an opportunity to join a movement of human-centred leaders creating workplaces where others could feel seen, heard, and valued. A movement intent on finally turning the page on a militaristic, command-and-control style of leadership, in favour of one that placed human beings at the centre of human performance.
LEADERSHIP REIMAGINED
Being entrusted with not only leading, but reimagining, the Leadership and Learning Academy gave me something I had never experienced before: Autonomy. For the first time ever, I had both the authority and the material resources to follow my instincts. My father’s shadow looms large over those early years at the Academy. I do not recall if he ever told me this directly, but one of the greatest learnings I took from him and the countless hours in the boxing gym was the importance of preparation.
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NO BOXER EVER STEPPED INTO THE RING WITHOUT A VISION, A GAME PLAN, AND MONTHS OF PHYSICAL CONDITIONING TO ENABLE EXECUTION OF THAT VISION. THERE WERE NO SHORTCUTS.
I stepped into my new role as head of the Academy like Ali entering the ring in Kinshasa: Knowing I was going to have to be ready to wrestle with alligators, tussle with whales, handcuff lightning, and murder a rock! Because the task ahead was going to be gargantuan.
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South Africa in the early 1990s was riding a wave of tremendous optimism and possibility. Forty-eight years of apartheid rule had ended. Peacefully, against all odds. Nelson Mandela – one of the most revered and respected men in the world – had assumed the highest office in the land, ushering in a new era of ethical, equitable and compassionate leadership at state level.
I was optimistic that the transformative, hopeful spirit that was sweeping through our country after 1994 would equally inspire transformation of the private sector, setting the scene for new thinking about the best way to lead people.
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Optimistic, but under no illusion that this would be an easy shift.
My work at the Pension Fund and, more importantly, the leadership theory and frameworks I had been exposed to at the University of Johannesburg, left no doubt: A complete paradigm shift would be required.
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Paradigms are more than belief systems. They are rigid frameworks that fundamentally shape how someone experiences the world around them (Kuhn, 1996). But it not only dictates what we see; it also frames what we do not see, creating blind spots and biases that profoundly shape our reality (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013).
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The rigid, militaristic command-and-control style of leadership that I encountered at the Pension Fund was not, I subsequently discovered, out of the mainstream. It was very much the norm. The time management. The narrow roles. The lack of autonomy. The rigid hierarchies. These were the hallmarks of corporate life, in South Africa as elsewhere in the world; adopted almost wholesale from military- and assembly-line organisational structures, with little appreciation for the human at the centre.
Because they result from deep institutional layering, paradigms often appear unquestionable. And almost impossible to shift.
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Almost, but not entirely.
IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING. NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE.
Over the next few months, I set out to find the most advanced leadership practices in the world, capable of delivering the ambitious development programme we were developing. I found it at Harvard Business School, and through Harvard Business School Publishing. With the help of an international partner, we were able to source cutting-edge learning materials, delivered as e-learning content – a concept then still in its infancy.
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One of the most pivotal discoveries during this period was the 70:20:10 learning and development model. This framework, widely recognised and established by the Center for Creative Leadership, posits that 70% of learning comes from challenging, on-the-job experiences; 20% from feedback, coaching, and relational development; and 10% from formal coursework or classroom learning (Center for Creative Leadership, n.d.). This model resonated deeply with me because it reflected principles I had seen play out in the boxing gym – where fighters learnt not through formulaic training sessions but through intense sparring with formidable opponents, honing their skills under actual, high-stakes conditions.​
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DRAWING ON THIS FRAMEWORK, WE DEVELOPED A LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME REFLECTING THE UNIQUE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OUR INDUSTRY AND OUR ORGANISATION WERE GRAPPLING WITH. THIS INCLUDED THREE INTERCONNECTED FOCUS AREAS:
THE 70%
ON-THE-JOB CHALLENGES:
Leaders were assigned high-impact, stretch projects that introduced novel leadership concepts, pushing them beyond their comfort zones while staying within the context of their existing roles. These challenges created a safe yet demanding environment where risks could be taken, mistakes made, and lessons learnt, all while driving meaningful growth in a controlled setting.
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THE 20%
RELATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND FORMAL TRAINING:
This element, traditionally reserved for coaching and mentorship, was expanded to include opportunities for leaders to engage with executives, board members, and industry influencers. These interactions exposed them to strategic and progressive business issues, deepening their understanding of leadership at the highest levels. Additionally, we incorporated formal learning components – such as Harvard e-learning modules, recorded seminars, and structured training sessions – which traditionally fall under the 10% element of the original framework.
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THE 10%
FIGHT NIGHT:
Adapting the model allowed us to concentrate on resources and effort inspired by the real-world challenges of boxing. Leaders were seconded to special projects or roles designed to test the culmination of their learning. In these roles, leaders were required to demonstrate mastery under real-time, actual work pressure, drawing on the skills and insights gained during the framework’s 70% and 20% elements. Leaders were exposed to real-world and real-world challenges, solved them and critically evaluated their performance, received feedback, and refined their approach in real time.
THIS WASN'T JUST A BLUEPRINT FOR PERFORMANCE. IT WAS A BLUEPRINT FOR SUSTAINABLE PERFORMANCE. AND A VISION FOR THE KIND OF LEADERSHIP THAT CREATED AN ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH PEOPLE NOT ONLY SUCCEEDED, BUT...
TRIVED
THE FRAGILITY OF SHIFT
The impact of the blueprint we developed at the Leadership and Learning Academy quickly reverberating throughout the organisation, and even further afield, as others saw what we were achieving. And there was enough real-time evidence of the Service Profit Chain’s validity – with leadership as one of the key links in this chain – to prompt even traditional, hierarchical organisations to start engaging in a new conversation about business performance.
The mindset shift we were aiming for was slow, to start, but it quickly gained traction, with Capital Alliance becoming a case study in how to challenge a paradigm, by reimagining the conventional wisdom.
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UNFORTUNATELY, IT ALSO PROVED A CASE STUDY IN THE FRAGILITY
OF THE SHIFT WE WERE WORKING TOWARDS.
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Our work at the Leadership and Learning Academy taught me that positive, transformative change can only happen when the tenets of change are fully adopted, fully supported, and authentically role-modelled by leadership. Conversely, transformative change can never be vested in a few individuals. It must be robustly institutionalised, or risk ebbing away when the champions of change move on.
This is exactly what happened at Capital Alliance. When the CEO – the man who had appointed me and given me both free reign and a substantial budget to reimagine leadership development – left the organisation, the momentum of what we were achieving slowed, and then stopped.
By not vigorously embedding our new approach, and not bringing middle and lower levels of the organisation along on the journey, the energy and appetite for calculated risk disappeared. The Academy, which had flourished for five years, was no longer an organisational priority. Budgets were cut; decision-making became more conservative and risk averse; and the environment reverted back to one of convention and constraint.
It was clear: My journey at the organisation had run its course. To continue the work that I had come to care deeply about, and to grow its impact, it was time to take the next step. That step presented itself in the form of LRMG, the organisation that had partnered with us in accessing content from the Harvard Business School, and who had played a significant role in showcasing the Leadership and Learning Academy to the South African market. An invitation to join their team seemed like both a natural progression, and a natural homecoming. And despite an almost 50% salary cut, the decision was an easy one.
THE WORK MATTERED.
THE COST OF
BETRAYL
"IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE AGE OF WISDOM, IT WAS THE AGE OF FOOLISHNESS..."
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Charles Dickens’s famous opening line from A Tale of Two Cities (2003) echoes in my mind as I contemplate the 17 years I spent with LRMG. It was a time of tremendous growth and great professional success, but also, I increasingly recognise, an era of painful betrayal.
OF ME, AND OF MYSELF.
On the surface, we were soaring. The consulting division, which I had been brought in to head up, became a significant force for transformation at a unique, honeymoon moment in the South African business landscape. Following the inauguration of Nelson Mandela, and later, his hand-picked successor, Thabo Mbeki, the South African economy stabilised, and then started growing steadily (Khumalo, 2016). By 2004, GDP had grown to 5.5% – the highest since the 1960s. This created an economic climate that not only fostered optimism, but gave the private sector tremendous hope and confidence about the future, which led in turn to a big uptick in growth-oriented spending (Aron, Muellbauer and Prinsloo, 2021).​​
​At LRMG, this resulted in revenue of over R1.1-billion in just 17 years. By adopting the frameworks and tools provided by models like the Service Profit Chain,23 we were able to demonstrate the business case for investing in people, rather than processes.
We demonstrated our ability to move beyond the compliance or tick-box approach of traditional consulting businesses, and started seeding the philosophies and concepts I had been nurturing for the past decade: A human-centred approach to leadership and leadership development that owed more to sports science and human performance than the militaristic command-and-control approach of the prevailing paradigms. ​
​​However, with rapid and sustained success and profitability came a dark side. At the same time that I was actively developing and championing a new way of leading, my own leadership was failing me, my business unit, and the wider organisation. Despite the presence in our organisation of many talented women, LRMG’s executive team remained resolutely white, male, and patriarchal. And, more damagingly, unflinchingly chauvinistic and misogynistic.
A firmly entrenched boys’ club held sway, claiming for itself all the perks and privileges of a highly successful business, while those generating the wealth – myself, and the many women I had mentored and promoted over the years – went unrecognised, and unrewarded, in what I now recognise as a cycle of “performance punishment”.24 ​
​The excellence and success of my team were met with more responsibility and heavier workloads, but little else in the way of remuneration or reward. This relentless pursuit of performance, and the unforgiving toll it exacts, mirrored the dichotomy of the Muhammad Ali story as I had become acquainted with it, years earlier. High performance often comes at a cost. Audacity requires resilience. But often, organisation default to exploiting the resilience of their people, to the point of disengagement.
Muhammad Ali’s story is indeed a cautionary tale. His extraordinary triumphs, his refusal to stay down, and his relentless pursuit of greatness at any cost, ultimately exacted an unforgiving toll. In this, I see parallels to my own story. My insistence on giving everything of myself to build and sustain an exacting business came at enormous personal cost. Like Ali, I absorbed the relentless hits of overwork, mounting responsibilities, and unrelenting pressure, all in service of a cause I believed in. Sacrificing much of what might have given me a dual purpose outside of work: Personal relationships. My marriage. Motherhood. In the end, burnout and anxiety became the hallmarks of my success.
​The excellence and success of my team were met with more responsibility and heavier workloads, but little else in the way of remuneration or reward. This relentless pursuit of performance, and the unforgiving toll it exacts, mirrored the dichotomy of the Muhammad Ali story as I had become acquainted with it, years earlier. High performance often comes at a cost. Audacity requires resilience. But often, organisation default to exploiting the resilience of their people, to the point of disengagement.
Muhammad Ali’s story is indeed a cautionary tale. His extraordinary triumphs, his refusal to stay down, and his relentless pursuit of greatness at any cost, ultimately exacted an unforgiving toll. In this, I see parallels to my own story. My insistence on giving everything of myself to build and sustain an exacting business came at enormous personal cost. Like Ali, I absorbed the relentless hits of overwork, mounting responsibilities, and unrelenting pressure, all in service of a cause I believed in. Sacrificing much of what might have given me a dual purpose outside of work: Personal relationships. My marriage. Motherhood. In the end, burnout and anxiety became the hallmarks of my success.
As with the progressive brain trauma Ali suffered, which could be ignored for only so long, my own mental and emotional strain would eventually demand to be acknowledged. ​
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In both Ali’s and my own stories, the pursuit of greatness demanded sacrifices that were unsustainable. The very traits that fuelled our success – determination, resilience, guts and the refusal to stop – also became the source of profound vulnerability. Ali’s later years with Parkinson’s mirrored the fallout I faced, not in physical terms but in emotional and mental exhaustion, as I reckoned with the realisation that I had given too much, for too little in return.
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THE LESSON WAS SOBERING:
SUCCESS WITHOUT SUSTAINABILITY IS A HOLLOW VICTORY, LEAVING INDELIBLE SCARS THAT MOMENTARY APPLAUSE FAILS TO HEAL.
On reflection, it had seemed worth it. I believed in the work. I believed in the paradigm we were seeding. And I believed, more passionately than ever, in my hero and namesake Muhammad Ali’s mantra that the impossible was nothing – that every human being was, in fact, infinitely possible.
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It had seemed worth it. But it proved not to be.
With this realisation came a brutal reality check: The business for which I had sacrificed everything, which I had built, and defended, and protected, was not human-centred at all. On the contrary. It was exploitative. In more ways than one.
AND I WAS COMPLICIT.
The boys club was not just reaping financial reward at the expense of those who made the money. It was cultivating and protecting a culture of sexual harassment and abuse of power.
I knew what was happening. To my eternal shame, I turned a blind eye to many of the details, and chose not to be exposed to the full extent of it. But the truth is stark and unequivocal: My silence was complicit. By not confronting sexual misconduct, I gave those in power the permission structure to mistreat those with less, or no, power.
Only in hindsight, through the painful process of shadow work and self-examination, have I come to understand the forces at play in my complicity. The sudden and unexplained departure of my father, the loss of his protection and presence, and the extinguishing of hopes, dreams, and aspirations on the day he left were wounds that remained unacknowledged and unhealed. That loss etched a deep, subconscious fear of abandonment – a fear so profound that the rejection of another person who held a seminal influence over my life felt, at the time, unbearable.
In this flawed, emotionally manipulative man, I did not find the trusted leader and mentor I longed for, but rather the surrogate father I needed – a figure whose approval and acceptance I desperately sought to secure. As long as I paid the ransom of blind allegiance, he would stay. My silence and reluctance to confront the abuse of power around me were, in truth, acts of self-preservation. Losing him and what he represented would have been to relive the unbearable sense of abandonment I was not yet ready to face.
I offer this reflection as an explanation, not a justification. Nor does it absolve me of responsibility – there can be no justification. Instead, it illuminates the complex interplay between unresolved trauma and the choices we make when we are unaware of the forces driving us.
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I now see with crystalline clarity that my complicity was not solely about him – it was about me, about my own wounds, my vulnerabilities, and my need to feel anchored to something, even when that anchor was deeply flawed.
EVERY DAY. IN THE BIG MOMENTS, BUT ESPECIALLY IN THE MICRO-MOMENTS.
HEALING BEFORE LEADING
LEADERSHIP
– the kind that empowers and liberates; the leadership I have spent so much of my working life building and championing – is earned. Not once, or occasionally. It is earned every day. In the big moments, but also in the micro moments.
I remain proud of the big moments. The organisations we transformed. The hearts and minds we changed. The shift that embedded new ways of thinking in some of South Africa’s largest and most influential organisations. But I deeply regret many of the micro moments of being too trusting, of believing implausible justifications, and of not standing firmer, or taller.
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Each one of these moments lives on in the work I do today, the independent business I have since built, and the people I now serve. They serve as both a professional and moral compass: When you know better, do better.
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YOU MAY ENCOUNTERED MANY DEFEATS, BUT YOU MUST NOT BE DEFEATED.
In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
The Pension Fund taught me what stifles human potential. Capital Alliance taught me how to liberate it. LRMG taught me that it is impossible to lead authentically until we confront our own shadows – the unresolved wounds and subconscious fears that shape our choices. ​
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Courage, like leadership, matters disproportionately in moments of reckoning. Integrity – so often a lofty ideal – is forged in the journey of self-awareness and alignment.
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As leaders, we must first understand the forces that drive us – the traumas we carry, the fears we suppress and the patterns we repeat. Without this understanding, aligning our values with our actions or creating environments where others can thrive becomes impossible. It is in this alignment that authentic leadership resides: A commitment to healing ourselves because better people make better leaders.
THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND
Despite 17 years and R1-billion in revenue, exiting from LRMG would mean that I would leave with nothing. In a final act of control and retribution, the price tag of freedom would be sacrificing my shareholding, and accepting punitive exit agreements.
Total cost: R10-million
But it proved an easy choice, because, in the words of Anais Nin (1979), the risk of standing still had become greater than the risk of walking away. And walking away would afford me the opportunity to create something new. Something #BETTER.
SOMETHING DEEPLY, MEANINGFULLY HUMAN.
The Performance Agency is what this looks like.
A truly human-centred agency that believes in the power of human-centred work, enabled by human-centred leadership. This is not just something we teach or aspire to; it is the essence of who we are, and what we are building. More importantly, it is what we want to inspire as a movement. A movement, borne from courage and clarity, that is more than just a repudiation of the command-and-control style of leadership