Mark Harris, cited in:
Leadership in a multinational company requires strong communication skills, forthright management styles, personal business drive and organisational development. Mteto was a very humble individual and was very quiet in his approach but he demonstrated an intellectual capability that clearly showed his talents.
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Louis Guelette, cited in:
We decided to make him responsible for the revenue target of the SMB sector in South Africa, an area with limited resources that needed cooperation with business partners - a complex world that he didn’t know very well. Complex because such relationships can be with both partners and competitors and very much depend on the right deal being struck. Such management requires maturity and diplomacy and I was surprised to find these qualities and characteristics in a young man with little practical experience of the business.
Louis Guelette, cited in:
We had discovered a potential leader, a bright man with a high level of attention for others and an incredible ability to motivate people around him - not only those who reported to him, but also his peers.
There are people able to unite teams wherever they are - Mteto is one of them.
I enjoyed working with this great man.
When I joined MTN I began visiting operations in Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Botswana and Kenya and discovered that although the company’s presence was geographically wide-spread, head office was surprisingly insular. Staff in those countries told me that, when group executives visited, they hardly ever engaged with employees and customers. This concerned me as my understanding of our role at headquarters implied a high level of involvement: giving operational leadership direction, guiding and coaching staff, reviewing and providing feedback to operating companies and helping with their sales effort - all while holding them accountable for results. MTN head office appeared to operate more as a holding company rather than as a strong centre.
Leadership is more than a position. You must influence, motivate, engage and share priorities with your staff. But our leaders seem to have trouble standing up and sharing, even when you created a platform for them.
Even if the essence of leadership talent is universal, the context a leader is in will shape how they behave, ought to behave, and are evaluated. As a consequence, some leaders may be popular in some cultures but not in others (think Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chávez), and many high-performing managers may struggle when they are moved from one culture to another, for example, from Germany to Indonesia or from a nongovernmental organization to a fintech startup.