The 2018 Global Leadership Summit kicked off with an inspirational ending with the founder of the Ritz Carlton hotel Horst Schulze answering questions from guests at the event. Leaders who shared their wisdom on the first day of the summit included Zimbabwean-born billionaire philanthropist Strive Masiyiwa, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Joh Maxwell and Mamikie Molapo.
The summit kicked off with Craig Groeschel and bishop T.D. Jakes sharing their insights on leadership with a focus on self-leadership. Jakes challenged the guests at the GLS to create a grand vision of the reality they want to achieve, stating that “if everyone believes in your vision, it is too small for you.” Relevant to Eswatini, the bishop also reminded guests at the event that sometimes it is critical to change your environment to one which nurtures your vision better, citing the Wright brothers as example. “When the Wright brothers invented the plane, they had to move to find the right winds for it.” The bishop T.D. Jakes closed off his session by challenging everyone to remember what “What did you learn from your last failure”, because “So much of what we learn is about winning and yet stimulation for growth comes failing”.
T.D. Jakes also facilitated an enlightening conversation with Strive Masiyiwa. The session started off with the question, “In 25 years of building ECONET… what have you learnt?”, and peaked when the bishop asked the businessman “How did you grow your company beyond zip codes and cultures?” Masiyiwa emphasized that “values are universal” so a good businessperson has to reach out and embrace other cultures and people. Masiyiwa further claimed that he achieves this through curiosity and engagement when he is an unfamiliar environment, stating that “you don’t know a place until you know how people live, what they eat, and what their values are”. Masiyiwa advised that such knowledge needs to be directed well because even though “Education is ground zero, it needs a purpose.”
Asked about the greatest challenge we have today, the African billionaire responded “The greatest challenge in the world today is that we’re not exposed to each other.” Masiyiwa emphasized that technology we have today is just a tool, and we should direct it to knowing each other better instead of using it to divide us. To conclude the conversation, the bishp T.D. Jakes asked “How do you set short term and long term goals”, to which Masiyiwa responded “the only thing that separates the short term and the long term is consistency.” He added that you must use the short term successes to remind yourself and organisation of the bigger picture.
Towards the end of the day, there were two panel sessions which stimulated the guests. The first was between Mamikie Molapo and ————, who focused on the importance of balancing power in leadership. The second was a Q&A session with the founding president of the Ritz Carlton hotel Group. Schulze answered questions from the guests at the end of the event to accompany his keynote speech on “How to accomplish service through leadership”. The businessman defined leadership first as “leading yourself first”.
Horst Schulze
For organisations, Horst Schulze emphasized that to solve most problems in business, you have to evaluate and improve the processes. The most important processes in creating loyalty with patrons, according to Schulze is to deliver services and products with no defects, on time, and in a way that makes the patron feel cared for. This was the core of his keynote and most of his answers during the Q&A came back to creating loyalty through process development, emphasizing that “the problem is never with the people, it’s always with the process. If your people are wrong, then you have the wrong process for hiring.”
The Global Leadership Summit continues for 4 days in total under the theme “Everyone has influence”. The event happens every year with the goal “engender excellence in whatever we do as way of life”, according to Kevin Ward, a Leadership Partner of the GLS Eswatini.
The event also featured musical performances from KrTC and Symphony among others.
