I remember the culture shock of my first professional role in Tanzania. It was a Monday morning, and before any work had begun, a senior leader berated the team publicly. Voices were raised, mistakes were named, no context was given nor was any response was invited.
Despite later hearing the grumbling and angry murmurs among staff, I assumed that it was my first week so clearly something had to have gone wrong, only for this fear based “leadership” scenario to repeat itself the very next week and the week after that.
After the meeting, staff spoke candidly when the leader was absent, but fell into careful silence when he entered the room. What looked like respect from above was, in practice, fear.
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