Part 2: Leadership Lessons for a Lifetime by Arina Anisie
If I pause and ask myself what I will carry with me from the Global Leadership Summit in Tanzania, it is these lessons:
- Own your privilege. Don’t diminish yourself, own your journey and play your part fully.
How to deal with privilege? I often find myself sitting with this question.
One of the golden nuggets Musimbi offered us, the day after we visited the Maasai women from PWC, was this: true leadership means owning your story fully. Your privileges. Your challenges. Your successes. All of it.
Over-empathizing with others often masks unconscious bias and projection. We assume we understand others’ realities when we’re actually often projecting our own. For example, we might pity children without shoes, while their parents wonder what purpose shoes serve in early childhood.
When you minimize your challenges, you also minimize your achievements. When you shrink parts of your story, you diminish the very journey that shaped you.
2. We all have blind spots, and we project our reality onto others. Listen before assuming we understand.
Even with good intentions, harm can arise when we project our own assumptions onto others. When we interpret situations solely through our own cultural, social, or experiential lens, we risk mistaking our perceptions for truth and overlooking the expertise of those who are closer to the context. This can lead to dismissing local knowledge, reinforcing unconscious power dynamics, and reproducing systems of privilege where we assume we know better and must intervene or “fix”. The antidote is pausing, listening deeply, recognizing the limits of our perspective, and honoring that our view is only one lens among many, not a universal truth.
In this context, we also discussed myths and stereotypes about Africa, and how many of the dominant narratives are not told by Africans themselves, but by people outside the continent. These stories are often shaped through external assumptions, incomplete understanding, and unconscious bias. Even when they contain facts, they frequently miss deeper context and lived reality, resulting in distorted narratives that perpetuate stereotypes.
Our role is not to tell their stories, but to create space and amplify their voices so they can tell their own stories.
Two powerful talks that beautifully expand on this are:
- Africa is not Poor, by Mallence Bart-Williams
- The Danger of a Single Story , by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Both invite us to question dominant narratives and examine the lenses through which we see the world.
- We all make mistakes. The courage to admit them and ask forgiveness heals and builds trust.
When disappointment and rupture happen, what restores trust is accountability. When a leader openly acknowledges a mistake, takes responsibility, and asks for forgiveness, it creates space for healing and reconnection. This is a profound act of leadership. It opens doors to forgiveness and kindness, fertile soil for growth and deeper connection.
Leadership is revealed not in never failing but in the courage to name failure, repair harm, and lead with humility.
- Don’t shy away from conflict. Conflict is not the opposite of connection. It’s a doorway to deeper connection.
Many of us avoid conflict. We seek approval, harmony, or the comfort of being liked. We people-please to feel safe. But conflict is not the opposite of connection, avoidance is.
Conflict, when approached consciously, is a doorway to deeper relationship. It surfaces what matters. It clarifies values. It invites honesty. But only if we are willing to stay present with it.
Trust and vulnerability are intertwined. When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to speak truthfully, to listen openly, we create the safety needed for difficult conversations. And through those conversations, connection deepens.
The truth is: change creates tension. And change management is, in many ways, conflict management.
We are not born afraid of conflict. We learned to fear it. Which means we can also unlearn that fear.
5. Influence comes from connection, not information. People support those they believe in.
An essential part of leadership is learning how to influence and persuade. But I have learned that raising awareness is not the same as influencing, it is simply sharing information.
Influence begins with understanding. If you want to move people, you must first understand what they think, what they value, and what they fear. You need to know their interests before you can speak to them in a way that truly resonates.
Ultimately, influence grows from connection. People support those they believe in. Those they trust. Information may inform the mind, but connection moves the heart.
Authenticity, integrity, and confidence are the foundations of trust. When you speak from clear values, stand firmly in who you are, and communicate truthfully, grounded in facts, you create credibility. And credibility inspires others to invest not only in your ideas, but in you.
6. Our inner narratives shape our reality. The stories we tell ourselves define what’s possible.
This is a lesson I have been sitting with for some time. The way we speak to ourselves shapes how we show up in the world. Our inner narrative either expands us or confines us. How can we change and pivot our narratives?
Musimbi said: “When asking for money, you’re not begging. You’re enabling people to invest in causes that matter. People give to people they believe in. Perspective is important”.
That shift in perspective changes everything. Changing our internal stories requires courage and practice. It requires noticing limiting beliefs and consciously rewriting them. I experienced this firsthand while preparing and launching my fundraising campaign. Without challenging the narrative in my own head – the doubts, the hesitation – I likely would never have launched it at all.
Perhaps most importantly, changing narrative requires self-knowledge. We cannot move forward without understanding where we come from. Changing your narrative does not mean rejecting your history; it means claiming it, learning from it, and choosing how it informs your path ahead.
There is freedom in knowing who you are and what you can do. Self-knowledge releases the potential of leadership within you. Ask yourself: What stories do I tell about myself? What stories are told about me by others? Am I authoring your own narrative, or passively accepting others’ versions of my story? And what do I want to carry forward?
- Be bridges. Build bridges between worlds, people, knowledge levels, and cultures. We make a positive impact through small acts of kindness.
“Be bridges.” This was the closing message from Musimbi Kanyoro, a simple yet profound invitation. She encouraged us to use our position in the world, through our travels, our work, and the way we show up each day, to build bridges between worlds, people, knowledge systems, and cultures. Change does not always come through grand gestures. Often, it begins with small acts of courage and kindness. When we open a door for someone, they open a door for another. This is how impact ripples outward.
In conversations with Maasai women from the Pastoral Women’s Council, a powerful question arose:
“How do we continue scientific education while keeping our roots, when modern education can erode our culture?” This, too, is bridge work – holding tradition in one hand and modern science in the other. Honoring ancestral wisdom while engaging contemporary knowledge.
I often feel the world does not need more self-reinforcing bubbles. It needs more bridges, courageous crossings where difference becomes dialogue rather than division.
8. We must hold onto the fact that we are all creative spirits.
Last but not least, we are all creative beings. The artist within the leader. The poet within the scientist. The dreamer within the doer. We are not one thing only, we are all that and more and we need to embrace all facets of our humanity in the same breath.
Last but not least: we are all creative beings. There is an artist within the leader. A poet within the scientist. A dreamer within the doer.
We are never just one thing. We are layered, expansive, and alive with possibility. To lead fully is to embrace every facet of our humanity – logic and intuition, structure and imagination, discipline and wonder – in the same breath.
