Swiftly restore public leadership trust

I recently returned from a tour of duty in a neighboring East African country. I was taken aback by a question that I kept getting asked. “What is happening in Kenya? It looks like everyone is going on strike.”

I was disturbed by this observation and my mind kept gravitating to its genesis. It occurred to me that Kenya has been in the news for many reasons and East Africa is watching its big brother with interest.

The most common news items have been in relation to strikes by this or that sector. The airport workers, doctors, university students and lecturers, teachers, taxi drivers, high school students and of course, the most visible of all, the youth demonstrations now famously labelled as the Gen Z Revolution.

Kenyans have been asking some critical questions about the country’s priorities. These questions are rarely addressed and are always ignored leading to angst and an upsurge in social media inuendo and propaganda.

Beyond national issues, many sectoral issues revolve around money and its unavailability to meet the needs of those who threaten to strike to be heard. Money is indeed a scarce resource for most of the population, but its visible excessive manifestation among a select few raises’ questions of transparency and probity in the stewardship of an important scarce resource.

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The common denominator among those who have excess money is that they hold public offices of trust, yet their lifestyles far exceed their known public salaries or track record in any form of constructive entrepreneurship ventures. This blatant dichotomy is what has led to much angst and a deep feeling of unfairness and betrayal of trust.

Based on a reductionist mode and in the spirit of the 80/20 principle, the country’s main problems can be linked to lack of trust. It seems that we stopped trusting those who should be trustworthy in the stewardship positions they hold. This phenomenon of mistrust is common in families, in organisations and at a national level.

Richard Barrett in his 2010 book New Leadership Paradigm captures the key components of trust which we need to bear in mind. He suggests that trustworthy people possess character and competence. Character can further be understood from the point of view of intent and integrity.

Barrett explains that intent is demonstrated by the visible practices of caring, transparency and openness while integrity is demonstrated by honesty, fairness, and authenticity, all desired ideals that have been missing in the chaotic, divisive, and violent engagements being observed in the media by our neighbors and the world at large.

Further to this, Barrett indicates that competency is critical in any trust building process and it is about one’s capability and history of results. An individual’s results are further manifested by a good reputation and credibility.

It is not surprising that we continue to have episodes of strikes, demonstrations, and bitter exchanges. This is well captured in Edward Abbey quote when he said, “it is better to confront a cruel truth than live with a comfortable delusion.” The truth of the matter is that division and mistrust cannot continue endlessly.

As a leadership development practitioner, I have always been amassed how complex and insurmountable problems can be reduced to a single factor that if addressed can resolve what looks like a hopeless situation. This is the process of effectively dealing with the key cause of a given problem rather than tampering with the symptoms.

Let us therefore start today to rebuild trust in our beloved country. If we do not act swiftly in rebuilding the trust that every citizen is longing for, we will slowly be killing the goose that lays golden eggs and all of us will be the losers.

Our urgent focus should be to restore trust in leadership. The only way to do this is for our leaders to take a deep hard look at their character and competence and immediately turn a new leaf to develop a track record of caring, transparency, openness, honesty, fairness, and authenticity. Any other actions at this time are akin to straightening deck chairs on a sinking ship.