“I See You!” – The Zulu Insight to Caring Leadership

Abstract

Although the role of leaders in building relationships with team members has been well-established as a foundation for improved performance (Beer, 2009), the complex challenges in directing the modern organization in a highly competitive global marketplace often mean that leaders of organizations are more focused on tasks rather than people. Nonetheless, a growing body of research about the importance of leadermember relationships confirms that leaders who demonstrate a caring commitment to the welfare of organization members also create organizations that are more profitable, more innovative, and more effective at meeting customer needs (Cameron, 2003; Kouzes & Posner, 2012). Introduction Insights from the Zulu, a Bantu ethnic group in South Africa, and that group’s common greeting of Sawubona, provide powerful evidence of the importance of the leader’s role in acknowledging, validating, and truly understanding colleagues and followers as they create organizations committed to shared goals. The purpose of this paper is to explain the nuances of that Zulu greeting and to equate that term to the ways in which today’s leaders can better establish their own relationships with the employees whom they lead and serve. We begin by explaining the precise meaning of Sawubona in the Zulu language and identify four important elements of the phrase that are communicated. We then examine each of those four elements as part of the leader-follower relationship and present eight propositions about the application of those elements and their positive impacts on today’s highly competitive organizations. We conclude the paper with a summary of the practical applications of this paper for today’s leaders and a charge to leaders to incorporate the spirit of Sawubona as they strive to create stronger relationships and more successful organizations. Meaning of Sawubona The African greeting, “I see you,” is common to several cultures and reflects the importance of acknowledging others and seeing value in the present moment (Bishop, n. d.). The term Sawubona encompasses far more than the casual greeting of “Hello,” which is sometimes