 Have you ever wondered how someone in a group is passionate, can easily take control of a situation and expresses a clear vision of the group's goals? How that person makes the whole group feel motivated, enthusiastic and recharged? That person is showing leadership traits. An effective leadership strategy distinguishes a company that thrives and one that fails. Now the business world is getting increasingly complex and fast paced. Evolving social and political landscape, high tech development and hybrid working models have made the job quite difficult for leaders. Now to succeed in a swiftly changing work environment, you need more than basic leadership skills. Welcome to Business Insights and Plus TV Africa, I am Justin Akadonian. Alright, first off the House of Representatives has proposed a six-month extension to stop the collection of old Naira notes and for the redesigned Naira to finally come fully on-stream. Now the House also set up a special committee to interface with CEOs of commercial banks to discuss challenges facing hindering the small take-off of the new CBN policy. Well let's take that report. There are controversies surrounding the introduction of the new Naira note from the inception and has continued to launch the new policy. Following a motion on urgent public national importance brought by Honorable Sada Suli, Nigerians are facing challenges in swapping the new Naira notes from commercial banks across the country. The lawmaker thereby called for the extension of the time frame while advising that the insistence by CBN for 31 January 2023 could further ruin the nation's hailing economy. I'm not being personal, the CBN is a good policy, it's in tandem with global best practices but what over, the currencies are not forced out of circulation, they are phased out of circulation. In this instance, in my own view, our currencies is being forced out of circulation and it is a known fact. The cashless policy and the currency swap of the new Naira notes have raised a lot of concerns to the growth of our economy. Mr Speaker, there is need, the bulk Nigerian economy is driven by SME and petty traders therefore there is need for some review of the policy since transition is required and this transition does not only involve CBN. The motion was supported by lawmakers who bemoaned the hardship faced by their various constituencies in swapping for the new notes. And we are all aware in the village, people do trading with 200 Naira, 100 Naira, 50 Naira, so if you give somebody 1000 Naira, he can go and buy something but there is no way he can get change because the only available currency is the old note of 100 Naira, 50 Naira, 200 Naira, 500 Naira. This is one thing. Another thing, we are all aware, even before the insurgency, not east is the poor of the poorest of the whole zones in the country and our poverty was further escalated by Boko Haram insurgents and other related insecurity and today we have something that is almost worse than Boko Haram. From the first amendment, because of the reasons CBN are used to, I would say that rather than one year, we will use it to six months, that's my first amendment. Let's move it back to six months, that we should gradually phase out in six months. Let's not take it to one year. The second amendment is to add what you just said, we must meet with the bank mds today, tomorrow because of the debt line they put in, they have two amendments. In his view, the speaker called for the review of the new currency policy to six months while also calling for an interface between the house and the CEOs of commercial banks to trash out challenges facing the new policy. So we'll set up an adult committee under the leadership of the house leader to meet with the operators tomorrow and then subsequently with CBN. In his ruling on the motion, the speaker mandated the house bankers committee which will be headed by the house leader Honorable Al-Hassan Adodogua to interface with the CEOs of the commercial banks and report back for further legislative action. Welcome back. Amongst other styles of leadership, transformational leadership has gained immense popularity. These styles can help bring positive changes in attitude, thinking and approach. Assam Oye is a world acclaimed leader with a passion to emerge, develop and deploy leaders' potentials in different spheres of influence. He is a president of springtime leadership academy and lead pastor of transforming church with a badge premium prize as one of the Nigeria's most watched online personality. Oye is a multi-dynamic and international speaker with over 5,000 leaders raised across Europe, Africa and America. He now joins us now to discuss more on the topic. All right, many thanks for joining us on Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. Thank you so very much for having me. It's such an honor to connect with you today. All right, let's talk about transformational leadership and how business executives can explore that in management because right now a lot of people actually venture into businesses that are trying to beat their own bosses. But how can they make a difference through transformational leadership? Well, the first thing we need to do is to get to define what leadership is all about. Then we can now narrow down to transformational leadership because this is one of the styles of leadership that we do have and it is very, very effective. The first thing is to come down to the fundamentals of leadership by definition and leadership in simple terms is the capacity to be able to galvanize a group of people together in order to accomplish a very, very strategic goal that brings about the advancement of that particular group. In simple terms, people always say leadership is influence. I always say that leadership as influence is not result oriented in itself by itself. So we always say leadership is a utilization of influence to accomplish a specific objective. Having said that, as we come to the various styles of leadership which are bound and I do not want to go into that today because that's not our focus. I'd like us to funnel down to transformational leadership which is our focus of conversation. The reality is you never see any nation that has moved from anything to a significant thing as a nation, either from a third world country to a first world country where you do not find transformational leadership style at work. Whether it's in Singapore or you find in Dubai, what you find is transformational leadership. In Africa, Nigeria in particular, in the business community in Nigeria, the time has come for us to go beyond the story, the narrative that follows our businesses that businesses do not last in Nigeria. The reality is that the reason why these businesses don't last is because of the kind of leadership that we find in these businesses which is usually transactional. In our political space, what you find is transactional. In most of our organizations, what you find is transactional kind of leadership, but the leadership that will bring about transgenerational businesses, that will bring about political stability is what we call transformational leadership. When we're talking about transformational leadership, basically we're talking about the kind of leadership that causes change and it's important to note this, two things. The transformational leadership style is the style of leadership that causes change in the leader, in the people, the individuals who are around the leader and in the social system around that organization. In essence, a transformational leader creates change in the people and causes them to accomplish great goals through one word, inspiration. All right. Not by punishment, not by rewards, but by inspiration. Good thing you've mentioned inspiration. A lot of people, they feel that just because they have the well-adult, they have the capital, they have all it takes to bring people together, bring resources and human capital together. Automatically that makes them a leadership. But you talked about inspiration. For instance, now let us bring you to a business cycle, to a business workplace, for instance. Now you have people under you and they look up to you to give them direction on how to grow or the way, the direction that the business is supposed to follow. How do you bring this issue of inspiration to bell when you might not really have them all it takes just because you have just the finances? Well, maybe I should put it this way. It's important to note that when a person, let's say for instance you're starting a business and you've got people together based on their different competencies and capacity to contribute significantly in the various areas where you employ them to work. If all the people come to do is to walk for salary, you're just going to get an average organization. The organization will never rise to its maximum potential. You know, that's why when I walk with organizations, when I walk with CEOs, what I try to do is to make sure I help talk with the management and leadership team to see beyond working for salary. The worst thing that any CEO can do is to gather people and make them work for salary. Such an organization will never rise into its maximum potential. But when you begin to paint a bigger picture, when the people begin to see how connected their visions are with the vision of the organization, when the people begin to see the larger, the greater good that they do, then you begin to see people doing much more than what they would have done just because of salary. I think CEOs are actually undermining the potential of their organization if all they do or when all they do is to gather people together. And the only motivation in that organization is salary promotion, punishment and rewards. I think it's important that we go beyond all of that to begin to paint a bigger picture. Now, the art of inspiration, I call it the art, the art of inspiration is what most business leaders don't know how to navigate. So they must also be taught as executives or pre-exects. All right, it's a good one. I'm glad you actually mentioned the CEOs and what they need to know. I know over time that you have been dealing with CEOs across, but not just in Nigeria alone, but in Africa and other parts of the world. If you were to advise entrepreneurs who are trying to start their own businesses in the country in the face of the year 2023, what would that mean advice be? You've talked about rewards system, you talked about punishment and motivation through salaries and promotion. What should they be focusing on as they bring people and the resources together? Well, thank you so very much. That's a very great question for startups. The first thing I believe that a startup must have already done is to have been able to identify gaps in society in terms of needs that people do have. And I do believe that the startup, the entrepreneur who has been able to identify gaps in society has been able to package a solution and intervention, has been able to package a product or has been able or she's been able to put together services that will be able to deal with the gap that the person has been able to identify. Haven't been able to put together solution. Haven't been able to put together services that will act as intervention basically in the area where the startup has found the gap. It is now critical that this startup, the entrepreneur must practice the following. Number one, the entrepreneur must go out there and at least, the entrepreneur must first at least the right people. You see Jim Collins in the book, Good to Great will always tell you that the first thing you do is to get the right people on board. The right people on board. Don't even bother about thinking of where you're headed to. Sit down, get the right people on board. So the startup must at least, that's the first thing the startup must do, at least the right people. Number two, the startup must now envision them, envision them. Letting the vision that the CEO shares with the people who have come to work with the CEO, letting their motivation be driven by your vision of something grandiose, something extraordinary, that their contribution will help the organization to make. When you paint that kind of picture of a grand vision, you paint this, you bring to them this grand vision of what your organization will do. Of course the salary will be there, but you see they are no longer working for salary, they are working for this grand vision. So enlist them and vision them and number three, equip them. You want to make sure as a CEO you give them the tools, the skills, you want to give them the right environment for them to be able to maximize their potential within their work time in your environment. The last thing you want to do is that you want to engage them. This is where proper deployment in their various unit through the right onboarding process really takes place. I wish I can go on, but I think these four steps will help any CEO boarding entrepreneur pre-exec. Alright, let's talk more concerning this and transformational leadership and Eva, maybe there are some characteristics that we should be talking about because over time I have heard that for you to be an ideal leader or a transformational leader, you have to be involved, you have to be an inspirational team player. Most of the times you find out that most people but just want to boss over and lot over people who work with them. Are there unique distinctive characteristics that we'll talk about in transformational leadership? You are just so absolutely correct. There are four things that really defines a transformational leader, which is now the strength of a transformational leader is measured by the mastery of the four things I'm about to mention. Every transformational leader must master these four major characteristics or what we call the traits of a transformational leader. Incidentally, this happens to be my area of focus at my masters. My masters was in the area of leadership and transformational leadership was my major area of focus. One of the major characteristics of a transformational leader is what we call idealized influence. Idealized influence. This is where the leader leads by example. And trust me, you know very well that most of our business organizations, the CEOs are the ones who destroy the culture of that particular organization. They tell the staff to do a particular thing and they go counter cultural or they go counter to what they tell the staff to do because they believe it doesn't matter what I do. It truly does matter. For a transformational leader, you lead by example. You are a role model. And trust me, if we're going to see transformational, you know, results in most of our organizations and in our country, we need to see leaders right up at the front. We need to see leaders saying, follow me. We need to see leaders say, look at what I'm doing. We need to see leaders put their hands in the work and we need to see them become the role models. Number two, every transformational leader has something we call inspirational motivation. It's a trait that transformational leaders have mastered. What does it mean to have inspirational motivation as a skill? The leader is able to set challenging goals. Is able to set goals that inspires the team to accomplish great things. So the leader is an inspirational person, able to motivate the people by setting amazing goal. And like you rightly stated before, the leader also is part of the team who also brings to pass the achievement of those particular goals. Number three, it's critical to know that the leader who is called a transformational leader has mastered something we call is intellectual stimulation, intellectual stimulation. By that, we mean that the leader is able to create an environment where creativity and innovation flourishes. Members of the organization staff are allowed to cover creative ideas. And no creative idea is looked down upon. The research and development department or unit of that organization is very functional. If you're going to have a high, yes, if you're going to have a high performing organization, it is critical that we have intellectual stimulation. And finally, the transformational leader must have what we call individualized consideration. What does that mean? The leader must go beyond looking at the staff in that organization as numbers. The leader must learn to relate with each of them as a person to the best of the leader's ability. And the leader is able to also distill that through the management leadership management team down into the organization, whereby everyone counts, everyone matters. There is empathy in the organization. We get to know how you're doing, how you're fearing, and what can we do to value to your life? Because if it matters to them, if it what matters to them matters to us, what matters to us will matter to them. All right Samoye, thanks for the insight you have shared so far. But we'll take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll try to find out the place of our emotional intelligence and of course encouraging participation and communication in terms of business leadership and transformation. It's still business insight and plus TV Africa. We'll take a quick break and we'll be right back with more. Do join us again. I welcome back. It's still business insight and plus TV Africa and we still have Samoye, transformational leadership and expert. Now we're looking at the place of business leadership and transformational change. Thanks for staying with us Samoye. You're welcome. All right, before we went on the break, I wanted to find that the place of emotional intelligence in all of this and of course how you can encourage participation and communication and to ensure effective leadership in your chain of command as an organization. It's important to know that when there is communication without emotion, people get into a state of frustration. I mean imagine talking to someone you never, you don't even consider the fact that this is a human being. So your tonality, the way you talk, the volume with which you talk, the speed with which you talk and just imagine all of that when someone is talking to you in an organization and the person is not even thinking about the fact that a human being who have your own feelings and all of that, the person is even a mindful of your body gesture. The reality is you're going to put up a defense and that's what we say. Defensiveness comes in and so you begin to talk, the people are stonewalling you, they are being defensive, they don't want to even hear what you're saying. So here's the key. Emotional intelligence and social intelligence are non-negotiable factors in the life of a transformational leader and that has to do with the ability to master your thinking with your feeling, the ability to understand your own feelings and be able to utilize your feeling and your thinking to be able to achieve your set goals. Similarly, emotional intelligence is also the capacity to be able to understand the feelings and the thinking of the people you are leading. You cannot ignore their feelings and want to engage their buying. If they are going to buy in, it is critical that you also demonstrate some level of empathy. So it is very critical in communicating, in trying to inspire people as leaders. It is critical that their emotions be taken into account. You consider their feelings, you give account, you give a, you take into account how they feel. Here's what I want to say, sir. I always say to my leaders that if you're going to be effective in the boardroom, you want to make sure you give attention to the people outside the boardroom. If you want to be effective in the organization during work hours, you want to also be in touch with the people outside of work hours. It means you have emotional intelligence. It is critical that we give emotional intelligence a very strong place in our leadership journey as transformational leaders. All right, and Sam Oyi, let's try to help leaders, entrepreneurs, and of course head of board of directors in the organization who are actually struggling in the organization as much as possible. If you were to advise for a business, a business rather, that is actually not really doing well in terms of they having a leadership challenge and they don't really know where to turn is a new year and they're looking at scaling up their business for the year 2023. What would that one major advice be? It's difficult to call it one major advice because there are a few things. Number one, I would say the first thing to always do is to go back to the core ideology of the organization. The core ideology of every organization includes the vision statement, mission statement, includes the values of that particular organization. All of that nestled together becomes the core ideology. Who are we? What are we trying to do? Where are we going to? It is when we have the core ideology right in the front, then we then ask ourselves, we now do what we call the auditing of our leadership team. We then ask ourselves how many of those who are currently in our leadership team actually have the competencies to deliver on our core ideology? Did we employ people based on sentiment? Did I bring in a leader because he's my brother? Did I bring in a leader because it's from my tribe? Did I bring in a leader because my brother told me to employ him? All the sentiment, audit your leadership team and try to determine the competence of each leader. These are these, the core ideology of the company. What are you bringing on board that will enable us as an organization to accomplish the lofty great ideas or what we call our core ideology? If the leaders on board lack the competencies, identify if one is trainable, if they are trainable leaders who have spent time with you and they exemplify the values of the organization to the extent to which they exemplify the values of the organization and they look trainable, you may say, look, can I train this one and give this person time and see if he can fit it? But if the person is not trainable, does not exemplify the values of the organization, does not even align with our core ideologies, you may have to take the right and the top decision CEOs have to take at the beginning of the year, let them go. All right, Sam, very quickly before we let you go, the final question would be for people who have actually been under leadership and they are thinking of springing up and being their own bosses this year. They want to move to the entrepreneurship of development level. What should they be looking at as the year 2023 that gets on spring? First thing I would say is if you want to start anything, clarity, you want to be very, very clear. In one of my books, I talked about the emerging leaders and I talked about as a leader, if you're going to do anything, you want to build an organization the first in first. Jim Collins will tell you always starts with the future in mind. So clarity of vision is very critical. You must have a clear and commanding vision, not emotion, not just passion, not just that I feel like doing something by myself or you just have this emotional drive because friends are doing it. There must be a clear and commanding vision. Number two, timing. I've seen so many young potential entrepreneurs, I've seen them with great vision, but I think the problem was timing. You don't just jump out because you have a vision. Sometimes the best thing for you is to stay where you are working, give yourself some time, not just to get money, store money, but to also learn to get skills, to understand the true dynamics of running an enterprise. So it's critical that vision is critical timing. It's important. And of course, the next thing I've got. Yes, sir. I think I'll stop there. Alright, we must say a very big thank you to you could actually just go on and on because when we talk about entrepreneurship development and of course, transformation leadership, there are so much inroads and insights to be shared. But we must say a very big thank you to you, Sam Oye, for joining us on Business Insights for this time. Well, thank you so very much. And I must commend the great work that you do. I mean, you are simply just amazing. Just a right man for the job. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sam Oye. And that's the size of the show for this week. I am Justin Acadonia. Many thanks for watching and see you again next time. Bye for now.