The LIFT philosophy targets senior leadership, guiding reflection, realigning roles, connecting teams and embracing the African context. It recognises leadership evolution of learning, earning and sharing. During the launch of my third book, Coming In From The Cold – Autobiography, which followed LIFT As You Rise, released in 2018, and Behold The Turtle, released in 2021, on 10 November 2025 at a place of significance, Constitution Hill, Braamfontein, I was truly blessed to be able also to launch the Leadership Insight to Foresight Tool (LIFT) and framework inspired by my very first best-selling book, LIFT As You Rise.
I chose to partner with Kearney Consulting precisely because of the absolute alignment of values. LIFT is a self-assessment survey consisting of 27 (+5) questions from the LIFT As You Rise book. This tool assesses a leader’s personal growth, values, well-being, and how effectively they manage themselves, the team, and model strong ethical principles.
It is tailored for the South African context, gleans valuable leadership insights, self-assessing senior leaders across four (Emerging, Competent, Proficient and Mastery) levels to optimise individual, team and organisational leadership dynamics, and ultimately a leader’s ability to drive meaningful, community-aligned societal impact. The four leadership levels are underpinned by four themes of Internal Leadership (self-mastery), Interpersonal Leadership (leading others), External Leadership (leading in business) and Meaningful Impact (leading in the community). The self-assessment is then followed by personal feedback, coaching, development of specific actions and continued challenge for personal growth.
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It is not about being right or wrong, but about personal reflection and growth, targeting senior leadership differentiators – those qualities that set impactful leaders apart – designed to deepen your self-awareness, supporting leadership development and helping you navigate complexity with greater confidence. It is a facilitation tool – less about the score, more about sparking meaningful conversations that shape your leadership journey. To empower leaders to be curious, uncover, reflect, transform and grow, the LIFT framework is premised on three cornerstones of “shape your legacy”, “act with purpose” and “lead with insight”.
It champions leadership built on courage, humility, integrity, consistency and service. Legacy represents purpose-driven influence. It is the story that lives on long after the final chapter is written.
It is how you meaningfully touch each life that you encounter, the impact that you create, the values that you uphold and the contributions that shape generations to come, whether it is a brand, business or a life well lived. Especially in a world that moves fast and forgets even faster, legacy is your imprint on history. It is how you are remembered, what you stand for and the reason people will speak your name with reverence, respect and inspiration.
Legacy begins where reflective leadership takes root. The reason why we work with senior leaders is precisely because they are beneficiaries of hindsight, and that is why they have foresight already. This is where we are helpful in assisting them to gain foresight.
In our experience working with these senior leaders, they ordinarily use hindsight (understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed) in order to gain insight (the capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something) that will better inform foresight (the ability to predict what will happen or be needed in the future) so that they are better able to see around the corners and are then able to ask the question, “so what else is missing?” They Discuss, in order to Decide, and ultimately Do – a higher propensity for execution and a bias for action. South Africa requires a new calibre of leadership to navigate the unprecedented challenges we are facing today. Leadership has been examined extensively by leading academics, with a wealth of leadership frameworks and tools available to enhance leaders’ capabilities and enable more effective leadership. We believe, leveraging on previous works, South Africa requires its own, context-related leadership framework that emphasises the pertinent competencies required to lead in our unique environment.
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