Professor Barbara Simpson, Department of Human Resource Management, was invited to Mauritius (November 5-19) to investigate the ways in which leadership is practiced in the public service there.
Her work was commissioned by the National Productivity and Competitiveness Council of Mauritius (NPCC), which aims to promote leadership as an engine of national growth by building a uniquely Mauritian brand of leadership that reflects indigenous values and aspirations.
The NPCC arranged a programme of work that brought Professor Simpson into contact with a wide range of Permanent Secretaries and other senior public officers, as well as business leaders and trade unionists.
Using novel methods of inquiry, she conducted 20 face-to-face meetings as well as three appreciative inquiry circles, which revealed some of the hidden assumptions that inhibit leadership development in Mauritius. In particular, although her respondents were clearly very comfortable with the idea that leadership is a collective, rather than individual form of action, there was a tendency to gloss over the challenges of actually putting these ideas to work. As a consequence, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the current directions being pursued by the public service and an acknowledgement that there is an urgent need for changes in leadership practice.
Professor Simpson also presented a public lecture, jointly organised by the NPCC and the University of Mauritius, at the R. Burrenchobay Lecture Theatre in Réduit. The seminar was well attended by a variety of different interest groups, which led to an energetic session of questions and answers. In her presentation, entitled "New Leadership for Interesting Times," she rejected conventional models of top-down leadership, offering instead a more social and relational model that can engage collaboratively across all levels of organisation. She proposed this as a fruitful direction for the future development of a uniquely indigenous form of Mauritian leadership.