The month of March is widely known as Women’s Month, a celebration honoring the contributions of women to history, culture, and society.
In that regard, we introduced a special Feature series for Women’s Month under the 2021 International Women’s Day theme: ‘Women In Leadership: Achieving An Equal Future In A COVID-19 World.’ Throughout the month of March, we will feature women that have portrayed exceptional leadership in their respective fields during these uncertain times.
The outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic has revealed a hard-and-fast evidence of female leadership competence with numerous studies pointing out, that number of cases and deaths, were systematically less in countries with women at the highest levels of decision-making and frontline service delivery.
Meet Elizabeth Ntege a wife, and mother to two beautiful girls (21 & 16), a daughter, an entrepreneur with a number of enterprises, an executive director on a number of boards, a business mentor mostly to women owned enterprises and a person of faith, roles that govern what is important to her.
As a faith driven entrepreneur and investor, Elizabeth believes in making a relevant contribution and impact in Africa through meaningful employment by creating an environment in which innovation and opportunity unlocks one’s potential. Her purpose is to inspire others in the belief that they too have the potential to make a difference in their community.
Her company, NFT Consult Group offers services in the East African region with offices in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, South Sudan and Zambia.
What motivates you to wake up daily?
The very notion that I get another opportunity to make a difference in someone’s life through what I do and relationships I form. I try to treat every interaction as a learning opportunity so I look forward to putting into practice any lessons I learn especially from the mistakes I often make. This has enabled me in a small way to become a better version of myself today than I was yesterday.
What is a typical workday in your life like?
I am a very structured person. I live and work by my calendar which is categorized and synchronized across all my gadgets and all three of my email addresses. That is the practice but in reality, with the current business environment it’s been extremely hard for me to adhere to the activities planned in my calendar.
I am a firm believer and practitioner of “work-life-integration” but it’s now more like work-life-juggling. This is why in this season, I am usually awake by 4:00am although my alarm doesn’t go off until 5:45am. After a few hours of spiritual and physical nourishment I normally hold my first meeting at about 8:30am and then it’s one session after another until around 7:00pm. Since I oversee 6 countries, with ambitious plan to expand to 2 more this year, it can get quite hectic.
What are some of your most notable failures that ended up playing a great role in your success as a leader?
I have had a number of failures but none more notable and as recent as the closure of our operations in Tanzania in 2020 during the pandemic. Tanzania was one of our most profitable operations and as the country never went in lockdown, we were doing so well in business with no pending lay-off’s. Unfortunately, my staff on the ground where constantly under a lot of pressure by the authorities seeking pay-off’s for tramped-up charges to go away. After failing to negotiate with the authorities on the various unfounded charges they kept throwing at us. I made the decision to close down because any sort of pay-off would go against our core values. We then took up the audacious challenge to find employment for all 480 staff in Tanzania while ensuring they continued to serve our clients diligently. It took us 6 months but we did it with all but 2 staff fully employed.
There’s no gain without pain. What are some of the sacrifices you have made a long the way to get where you are now?
I really love what I do, so it’s never been a sacrifice to do it. This of course was due to the fact that I have always had a great support system and the added luxury to choose what I do. But if I was to be pushed to name one, it would be sending my children off to boarding school abroad at such a young age, when they most needed me to be present in their lives.
Describe your leadership style? What are some of your go to leadership strategies that help you achieve great results?
For me, leadership is not an event. Its’ an accumulation of several good leadership practices done again and again in the moment. My leadership style is therefore constantly evolving to suit the environment in which I am operating. With the dynamically changing Covid-19 environment, at times the situation will call for servant leadership, other times it will call for leading from the front and other times it’s taking the hit on-behalf of the team and hoping the damage is not irreparable. This of course has been exhausting and draining but the trick is knowing yourself well enough to recognize the signs and either ask for help or put it aside until the next time.
What are some of the strategies you have put in place to support your team during this time?
We were really fortunate to have made a decision 3 years ago to consciously automate most of our work processes in line with our
ISO 9001:2015 quality management system. This meant that our teams were able to successfully transition from in-person to working from home and subsequently with the easing of lockdown to the hybrid work model we have in place.
Our focus during this time has been on staff welfare. We introduced initiatives specifically focused on the wellbeing of the whole person – mind, body and spirit in a contact-less environment which have gone done every well with the team. We have also empowered all our staff, not just the leaders to make decisions on behalf of the company in the interest of their colleagues who might need a quick response to a situation that might affect their whole person.
Leading especially during a pandemic is not for the faint hearted. What has kept you going?
Firstly, I had to knowledge my responsibility as a leader. I employ thousands of workers, who in turn have thousands of dependents.
I could therefore not afford to not show up.
Secondly, I quickly acknowledged that I had no experience or knowledge of what it took to lead in a pandemic and therefore treated every interaction as an opportunity to learn. I was then able to update my beliefs and assumptions about what made me more effective as a leader.
Finally, my faith my absolute trust in God and His plans me.
What is the one mistake you often witness women make that hinders their success in leadership?
The first mistake is to believe in the old adage that gender inequality plays a huge role in your success as a leader. Secondly spending so much time trying to define and measure what leadership success looks like against what can only be described a moving target or as author Simon Sinek likes to call it an “arbitrary target.”
Finally, women are much more relational but unfortunately due to the pandemic we are witnessing women leaders becoming more transactional, much more task orientated at the expense of our relationships. We therefore need to make a concerted effort to have equal measures of both contact and connection especially when it comes to the remote leadership settings we operate in.
What takes up most of your time?
As mentioned earlier, I have 7 roles that I focus on and these really take up most of my time. That notwithstanding I spend quite a bit of time planning my time. I have become good at managing the things I do within the time period I have. Anything else I delegate or outsource and then just concentrate on the outcome
What do you want to be remembered for?
“If your presence doesn’t add value, your absence won’t make a difference” Zero Dean
Most people will say they want to leave a legacy. Which in layman’s terms means an inheritance or something received from the past from an ancestor or predecessor – This is in the past. This contradicts the bible definition of legacy as stated in Proverbs 13:22a about leaving a legacy for your children’s children – This is in the future.
By taking learnings from both definitions I created some semblance of personal mission statements for each of the important roles of my life. Inherently I would love to make a distinctive contribution in each of my relationships so that they will remember that “I was here”
