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IOL News
14 hours ago
- Business
- IOL News
Learning and Development is a Business Imperative
Lucia Mabasa is Chief Executive Officer of pinpoint one human resources. Image: supplied By LUCIA MABASA Staff training is as important for a manager as hitting your sales targets. You wouldn't let anyone else set those targets yet far too many managers do exactly that for training: shifting the responsibility to Human Resources departments. The problem is that delegation can very quickly become abdication, with negative consequences for the staff, the manager, and the company. Properly conceptualized and executed learning and development (L&D), should be neither a chore nor a nice-to-have. In fact, in this rapidly changing continually disrupted world that we live in L&D has become increasingly important. Companies often complain that the talent pool is far too shallow to meet their needs when they cast their net for new hires, but those same companies are in all probability not doing anything to create an internal pipeline of skilled talent. Great companies, through the ages, have seen the need and the value in developing their own skilled employees. For them, the question today is not what to teach but rather how fast their people can learn. The advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has unlocked learning opportunities in ways that were unimaginable before. At one time training was generic, sometimes rote, always in a classroom. Now it can be asynchronous, one-on-one in person or remote or both. It can even be co-created with AI. The output can range from short skills courses to formal credentials. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ Like the world it seeks to unlock, learning is far more agile than ever before in scope and scale. As always it is the CEO that sets the tone for any company and learning and development are no different. A CEO who is actively learning both inspires and allows their staff to do the same by physically creating a culture of learning in the company. Truly effective L&D though requires the involvement of the full gamut of the C-suite: The CFO needs to ensure that the old bugbear Return for Investment (ROI) is realised for the company; the CIO must implement and support the digital infrastructure required for modern learning while the Chief People Officer must create an environment that enables and encourages learning at every level. Creating an HR enabled learning environment is so much more than just measuring attendance and completion metrics, it is about putting in place mechanisms to ensure that the training does what it is supposed to: unlock the potential of the staff who have been selected to participate in this development. Sometimes those development interventions can be deceptively simple yet exponentially effective, like the time a company decided to send a manager to the Voice Clinic. The manager who was full of promise but failing, emerged as phenomenal deal maker and closer, having unlocked the confidence to speak in public with the actual abilities that were always on show in the office. We need to move away from a one size-fits-all approach to learning and development; the companies that are filled with curiosity about the different kinds of learning programmes that are available and look to technology not as a mechanism to police their personnel; focusing on algorithms to manage people and track progress, but as a way of developing skills are the companies that will flourish. As businesses evolve, so too do their needs, business leaders need to use L&D to meet both their short term staffing – and leadership – needs, as well as meet the challenges that might be looming five years down the line. Lifting your gaze beyond the immediate to the mid-future is perhaps the most important, because a five-year horizon provides a company with the runway to develop a proper in-house talent pipeline. When you get that right, you shouldn't need to always look outside the organisation for the talent you need, but just as there are different ways of learning for different people, so too are there different ways of attracting talent. Sometimes it makes sense to look beyond the strictures of the company organization if that is what the company needs, but equally that should only be done if the company has done everything it can to grow its own timber because creating a culture of always looking outside for leadership candidates can also be expensive and self-defeating. We have the tools like never before, which help reduce – and even eradicate - the traditional barriers to further education. As business leaders, we do not have an excuse not to act. The greatest incentive for traditional business leaders is that over and above the very laudable goals of developing the staff that work for you, it makes real business sense too with a tangible, positive, impact on the bottom line. There are business leaders who complain that there is no upside to training staff only to have them be poached by head hunters from rival companies. It's a valid argument but one that is easily trumped by its corollary: not training your staff and having them stay. *Lucia Mabasa is Chief Executive Officer of pinpoint one human resources, a proudly South African black women owned executive search firm. pinpoint one human resources provides executive search solutions in the demand for C suite, specialist and critical skills across industries and functional disciplines, in South Africa and across Africa. Visit to find out more or read her previous columns on leadership; avoiding the pitfalls of the boardroom and becoming the best C-suite executive you can be. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
IOL News
20-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
If your female boss emasculates you, maybe it's time to look in the mirror
Lucia Mabasa is Chief Executive Officer of pinpoint one human resources. Image: supplied By LUCIA MABASA One of the saddest and silent, yet salient, failures of our 30-year journey to transform this country, has been our inability to rid our workplaces and our boardrooms of deep-rooted misogyny. Far too many women executives must bear the brunt of having to break through the glass ceiling and then continue to justify themselves for getting where there are. There are too many stories of women managers and executives being gaslit by their underlings and actively undermined by having their every decision or instruction retro validated by male peers. It's an issue that is difficult to deal with because it doesn't always happen out in the open but instead lurks in different spaces that women are excluded from. But even when it presents as outright misogyny it isn't any easier to manage. It's difficult for a South African woman of colour to have to listen to men justifying their prejudice on the grounds of culture, ethnicity or even religion, when women have been carrying more than their fair share of discrimination for decades, if not centuries, in this country. Prime Minister JG Strijdom made the same mistake in 1956 when 10 000 women marched to the Union Buildings to fight the repressive pass laws. He was told in no uncertain terms :'Wathint'Abafazi, Wathint'imbokodo (you strike a woman, you strike a rock). That spirit burns fiercely in South African women, especially those in executive positions today. It's a mistake for anyone to think that women leaders cannot rise to the top by keeping their femininity – and their innate humanity - intact. In the world we live in now especially, that's not a weakness to be able to lead with empathy and kindness, on the contrary it is a vital antidote to the selfishness and populist nationalism that is threatening humanity's continued existence. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ Not all women leaders are kind and empathetic. Some have adopted the worst attributes of the jock culture to fit in, with all the intrigue and backstabbing that goes with it. It's not something we need in this country. We do not need to create corporate lives that fuse TV shows and dramas like Survivor and Succession in a battle for survival and the corner office, instead we need to create inclusive environments where merit will always be recognised and rewarded – irrespective of the gender, colour, creed or orientation of the candidate. We need to create a culture where a rising tide lifts all boats. It makes business sense to do this, but we – as the heirs to the Mandela legacy – have a special debt to the founding parents of this nation and the Constitution that they bequeathed us to continue their work to create a country which belongs to all who live in it and because of that allows everyone the opportunity to unlock their potential. Anyone who finds fault with this, needs to look within themselves rather and address their own frailties. Culture or religion can never justify bigotry. People who feel threatened by women leaders need to lean into their vulnerabilities and insecurities and work on them. The path to the C-Suite is predicated on self-improvement and that can only happen when people take a long hard look at themselves and identify their weaknesses and intentionally set about strengthening them. The buck doesn't stop there, but right at the top. If we are to have any chance of smashing this last silent barrier, misogyny and sexism must be actively and unequivocally outlawed by the CEOs themselves. There must be consequences for sexism and misogyny, just as there are penalties for racism and homophobia and any other institutionalised intolerance. South Africa has made incredible strides addressing the gender imbalances on shop floors, in the professions and the managerial classes. We have broken glass ceilings in the boardrooms too, but to paraphrase Madiba, it's still a long walk to freedom. Women are engineers, soldiers, sailors, pilots, doctors, surgeons, advocates and attorneys. They drive trains, fly fighter jets and command infantry battalions. But to do their jobs to their utmost ability they need to be properly respected too, not just given lip service, to be properly empowered. I am confident that we can, as a nation, do just that. *Lucia Mabasa is Chief Executive Officer of pinpoint one human resources, a proudly South African black women owned executive search firm. pinpoint one human resources provides executive search solutions in the demand for C suite, specialist and critical skills across industries and functional disciplines, in South Africa and across Africa. Visit to find out more or read her previous columns on leadership; avoiding the pitfalls of the boardroom and becoming the best C-suite executive you can be. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
