E94: Belonging and Healing [Part 5] – Ubuntu

Dr. Dave:

Hello, and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. And my conversation today is with Nobantu Mpotulo from Ubuntu Coaching. And our conversation will cover the practice of ubuntu and see how that could play a really important role in belonging and healing in organizations and community. So Nobantu, why don't you share a little bit about who you are with our audience? And hopefully I'm saying your name correctly.

Nobantu:

Nobantu, yes.

Dr. Dave:

Nobantu, yes.

Nobantu:

Thank you very much. Yes. A very important name for me indeed. And Bantu in my language, which is Xhosa, means people. So Nobantu means mother of the people. And I find that in our culture we name our children with the hope that the name would be fulfilled. And I found that I followed the helping professions, starting off as a psychologist, and I worked at institutions of higher learning as a student counselor and also counseling staff. And from there, I branched into coaching executives in organizations, and also, I'm a facilitator of peace circles, and ubuntu plays a very critical role and central role in my work.

Dr. Dave:

That's so great. So you are an accredited master certified coach at MCC from the International Coaching Federation. So how do you define ubuntu?

Nobantu:

Ubuntu is the way of being, way of life that takes into cognizance the importance of interconnection, the importance of working with others, the importance of seeing the good in others. So if we define ubuntu in my language, it is [foreign language 00:02:57] I am because we are. I cannot be fully myself if you are not fully who you are destined to be. So in essence, what this is saying is that whatever I do I can be more with others involved. And we have a proverb in Africa that says if you want to work fast, go together. Go alone, sorry. If you want to go far, go together. Let me say that again. If you want to go far, go together. If you want to go fast, go alone. So the spirit of ubuntu is a spirit of moving from I-centrism to we-centrism.

Dr. Dave:

So if ubuntu is the spirit of being focused on we, what are the benefits to a person, to an organization if they practice ubuntu?

Nobantu:

If, for instance, we take diversity, inclusion, and belonging, we cannot be an organization that is successful or that is able to get far if, for instance, we focus on the competencies, on the strengths, on the resources of individuals. But if we take all of those collectively and looking at our bigger goal, looking at our global goal objective that we want to reach, then with all those different competencies, different ways of how people are, we able to enrich this objective we want to achieve. And as I'm saying that, I'm thinking of Maya Angelou's saying where she said that if you look at a tapestry on the wall, it's not the individual colors, the individual shapes of that tapestry that make it to be beautiful, but it's all of those combined together. And if you take one of those, then that tapestry becomes something else. So in diversity, in interconnectedness, in inter-beingness, there is more value, there is more beauty, there is more sustainability in what we want to achieve.

Dr. Dave:

So if we are working in a disconnected organization, how would ubuntu help people build bridges?

Nobantu:

I want to answer this with a story because we're storytellers in Africa. There's a tribe in Zambia is the Bemba tribe. And what this tribe does, for instance, if someone is, I would say, menace in the society, they are a troublemaker, instead of casting that person out, what this tribe in the spirit of ubuntu does,