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Integral Ubuntu Leadership: Utungamiriri Uzere
by Passmore Matupire, ART Holding and Pundutso, Zimbabwe

The contribution of Passmore Musungwa Matupire and his team to a world in crisis, is an Integral Ubuntu leadership model dubbed “Utungamiriri uzere”. This entails skilful integration of exogenous and endogenous perspectives and worldviews as much as possible. Embracing such a model in the business sphere and the political domain, universally, would go a long way in alleviating some of the world imbalances where leadership failure is a burning issue of our time.

Calling: Adressing local-global Leadership Failures

The burning issue underlying this research-to-innovation is leadership failure not only in business, resulting in company failures but also in politics and this lies at the heart of many problems in the world. In coming up with the Integral Ubuntu leadership model, the burning desire is to reverse business failures, renew company performances and to develop leaders who CARE for their people.

Innovation Ecosystem: A high level Composition of Workplace Leaders and local Think Tank

This innovation is a product of collaboration at the workplace (work based challenge at one publicly listed manufacturing company in Zimbabwe-ART Holdings Limited). This involved participation by a group of middle managers and another group at the senior management level who were co-researchers and co-subjects of the inquiry.

There was also an academic think tank named, Pundutso or Advancement/Transformation which met regularly in Cooperative Inquiry sessions to give vital input to the entire research process. Pundutso has since evolved into a Centre for Integral Development which collaborates with other local, regional and global integral centers. 

Passmore Matupire - Cooperative Inquiry Meeting
Cooperative Inquiry Meeting, together with Co-Researchers Liz Mamukwa and Josh Chinyuku

Integral Innovation: Towards Ubuntu-based Leadership

Passmore Matupire as the initiating researcher for this integral innovation, used the Trans4M integral research and innovation methodologies and the Integral Worlds approach to address leadership failure, the burning issue that leads to company closures and failures. The research journey was contextualized as a work based challenge.

The co-researchers came up initially with a systemic generic integral leadership model whose elements were constructed in the form of circles as a demonstration of the unity between the indigenous and exogenous theories of leadership. It also depicted the inclusivity of the four worlds approach which encompasses Southern, Eastern, Northern and Western perspectives on leadership.

Passmore Matupire - Generic Leadership Model
Generic Leadership Model based on Community Values

For the generic model to be truly African, co-researchers incorporated, based on shared experiences, additional indigenous elements relative to the exogenous ones. To that end they imagined the totality of CARE encircling Ubuntu, an African social philosophy which has been in existence for thousands of years. The end result was the Integral Ubuntu leadership model:

Integral Ubuntu Leadership Model by Passmore Matupire, Zimbabwe
Integral Ubuntu Leadership Model “Utungamiriri Uzere”

The Integral Ubuntu Leadership model “Utungamiriri Uzere” captures elements from the Western and African leadership theories.

The integral leader then collaborates with others (grounding),embraces the archetypal Eastern value of spirituality (emergence), operates with knowledge (navigation) and makes a difference to the organization, society and to her- or himself as s/he is transformed (effecting).

Integral Impact: A Foundation for Pundutso Center for Integral Development

This research-to-innovation led to the creation of the Pundutso Centre for Integral Development (PCID) to pursue the developmental agenda and the publication of the book “Integral Ubuntu Leadership: Utungamiriri uzere”. In addition, an accompanying leadership development programme was produced and is currently with in the process of being published.