The Power of Ubuntu Intelligence with Coaching Legend Dumi Magadlela

Ancient wisdom for modern leadership

Renowned coach and “people whisperer” Dumi Magadlela is co-founder of the Ubuntu Coaching Foundation at the Coaching Centre in South Africa. He served as chair of the International Coaching Federation and in 2024 was inducted into the Thinkers50 Coaching Legends. His latest book is Ubuntu Coaching and Connection Practices for Leaders and Managers: Selected practices to grow your team in a fast-changing world.

In this conversation with Marshall Goldsmith, Dumi reveals how the ancient wisdom of ubuntu can address modern leadership challenges and he provides three key words for next generation leaders:

• Connect – practice “conscious greeting” and genuine relationship-building
• Systems – recognise the interconnectedness of all things
• Humanise – create safe spaces where everyone can express their unique gifts

“We need leaders that can see systems everywhere, can see the connections, because it is these connections that nourish human life. One of the things that has made humanity or human beings as a species succeed over millennia is the capacity to collaborate, cooperate, and work together.” 

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH DUMI MAGADLELA BY MARSHALL GOLDSMITH

Transcript

Des Dearlove:

Hello, I’m Des Dearlove, co-founder of Thinkers50, and it’s my great pleasure to introduce the latest episode in our Coaching Legends series. In these sessions, we talk to exceptional coaches: individuals who have worked with top business leaders. Our aim is to bring you insights and learnings that can make you both a better leader and a better coach. This is a collaboration between Thinkers50, 100 Coaches, and BetterUp. And I’ll be introducing our special guest in just a minute.

But for those of you who don’t know Thinkers50 so well, our mission is to be the world’s most reliable resource for identifying, ranking, and sharing the leading management ideas of our age, ideas that we believe can make a positive difference in the world. That mission dates all the way back to 2001 when we published the first ever global ranking of management and business thinkers, and we’ve published a new ranking every two years ever since.

In 2011, we introduced our Distinguished Achievement Awards and Gala, which the Financial Times very helpfully calls the “Oscars of management thinking.”

In 2023 with our friends at 100 Coaches in BetterUp, we added our Coaching Legends list, which recognises and honours the lasting influence and contribution of exceptional coaches.

So what’s the red thread that connects all of our work at Thinkers50? Well, we think Thinkers50 connects the most practical thinkers with the most thoughtful practitioners. Our mantra is thinkers plus doers equals impact, and that’s really what this series is all about. Coaches play a vital part in developing leaders. They are the connecting tissue between the world of ideas and the world of practice.

So let me, without further ado, introduce our special guest. I’m delighted to say that joining us today is Dumi Magadlela.

Described as a people whisperer for his ability to establish genuine connection with his clients and teams, Dumi is the champion of Ubuntu Intelligence, a concept and practice that ignites greater human engagement and connection. Promoting a philosophy of doing human better, he co-founded the Ubuntu Coaching Foundation, a non-profit coaching organisation that provides access to coaching for leaders and community members who would otherwise not be able to afford coaching services.

He is in the recent past president chair of the global board of the International Coaching Federation. That was in 2023 and 2024. With over 30 years experience in human development work, including contributions to the United Nations Development Programme, Dumi is co-founder of the Ubuntu Coaching Foundation at the Coaching Centre, in South Africa, where he delivers a module called African Wisdom in Coaching. He’s also on the international faculty at Coaching.com’s Team Coaching Programs. Dumi is an avid gardener and loves planting vegetables and ideas, so he’s a great fit with Thinkers50. He lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dumi’s recent book is titled Ubuntu Coaching and Connection Practices for Leaders and Managers. Dumi, welcome.

Asking the questions today we are delighted to welcome another legend of the coaching world, Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall, welcome and over to you.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Hello.

Dumi:

Thank you, thank you, Des. Hello, hi, Marshall.

Marshall Goldsmith:

How are you doing?

Dumi:

I’m doing great. It’s winter now in South Africa, so it’s quite crisp and chilly, enjoying it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, before we get started on the other questions, tell me a little bit about your journey through life, how did you get into coaching anyway, what led you into this journey?

Dumi:

Yeah, I studied human behaviour, call it behavioural science and just understanding the psychology and sociology and anthropology and of human behaviour in general. I grew up in a rural context where we ate what we grew really. I learned to farm and to really live off the land in a true sense of it. And I have huge respect for people that grow our food because I know what it takes to grow something and harvest and that, and in a large family.

And then sometime in the early-2000s, Marshall, I was on an executive development program with the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, in fact, in the US. And that program exposed me to incredible work around intervening in organisational systems. That is after I’d been a lecturer-teacher, faculty. In the US, they’re called professors in universities. That was my first job after graduating with a PhD in behavioural science.

And in that program of Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, one of my senior teachers, hopefully you remind me of him because he was a bald man and grey-haired, Edwin Nevis.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And very good-looking, I might add, very handsome.

Dumi:

Yes. Edwin Nevis, yes, I have huge respect for gray-haired human beings because where I come from, Marshall, that’s a sign of wisdom.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I agree, by the way.

Dumi:

Yeah. This teacher of ours, Edwin Nevis, said to me, “Dumi, you have such a beautiful coaching approach,” because I kept asking what later on I learned with open-ended questions and then just being silent while another person is speaking and really tuning into them and listening to them. And I didn’t know then what coaching was really. And he said, “You have to go and get to find out what coaching is. You are a natural coach. Dumi, you’re a natural coach.” And then from then I got to find out what it is, and as they say, Marshall, the rest is history.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And here we are.

Dumi:

Here we are.

The ancient wisdom of “ubuntu”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, my next question to you is ubuntu, ubuntu is a concept meaning humanity, at least in some definitions. Tell me all about its history, and what does it mean to you?

Dumi:

It’s a great question, and we’ll need about half a day of lecturing and talking and all that, but I’m going to try and put a synopsis of it. There’s a concept called Ma-at. It’s M-A-hyphen-A-T, like Ma-at, which is an ancient name that has been given to ubuntu beyond Egypt and ancient days. What it means is the godliness in all of us.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I see.

Dumi:

So ubuntu is really about the essence of being human, Marshall. It is humanity at its greatest or human beings at their best. What Ubuntu means is humanness, the quality of being humane, human with an E. It is something that is globally available. In other words, it is a universal phenomenon. Ubuntu is not an African way of being only. The word ubuntu is African, it’s Nguni, it’s from Zulu ethnic group, which is my background, and what it means in my language, it means I am because we are. In other words, I cannot be fully me if you cannot be fully you, we are here to co-create spaces, safe spaces where everyone can be their best selves. How amazing is that?

Marshall Goldsmith:

I love that, I love that. And if you had to look at this concept, which is a beautiful concept, how would you say, number one, it influences your work? And then if you look at coaching in Africa as opposed to coaching around the world, how might coaching be different in Africa than every place else? Because I know a lot of it is similar because people are people. Are there differences?

Dumi:

Yes, there are. And they’re very complementary differences. I always use the word in Africa, coaching is a hybrid practice.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Okay, tell me what you mean by that.

Dumi:

What I mean by that is that you seek to connect first. And in the global well-known practice of coaching, we call this, you develop and grow the rapport with the client.

Now, in the African sense, you see the person and all that they’re connected with. You don’t see the individual here. You see all that they are. One of the greetings in my language isiZulu, we say Sawubona. I’ll write it out. What it means is I see you and all that you are and all that have come before you that brought you here, your ancestors, your heritage, your language, your culture, everything that you are, I’m meeting it here. This is why we spend a bit of time connecting with each other because we are connecting not just with the individual in front of us, we’re connecting with all that they are connected to or with in their background.

And in most African coaches that I’ve interacted with, that I’ve had the pleasure to work with, they value that. But what we see because of global corporations and organisations and human beings travelling around the world, Marshall, we adopt a lot of other ways, especially the dominant paradigm of the Western way of doing business. And we take that, and it becomes the dominant way of doing business, including connecting and greeting.

Conscious greeting

There’s a concept I use called conscious greeting. I believe that we need to bring this back to all our interactions as leaders around the world. Conscious greeting, meaning I connect with another as they are here and now, mindfully, intentionally, hence conscious greeting. It’s a gift we give to ourselves and the relationship of the one in front of us. And many coaches in Africa do that. Others adopt the other ways and cut it short, and we find that it’s the same as in the global metropoles.

Marshall Goldsmith:

See, I love what you’re doing. I have a question, if you look at the changing world today with social media, with people’s limited attention spans, I completely agree with your philosophy. By the way, I’m a Buddhist, but I completely agree with your philosophy. My Buddhist monk, Thích Nhất Hạnh, was a great believer in what’s called interbeing, very similar to what you’ve just said. So I think what you’re doing is beautiful, number one, and really important, number two. Give me some of the challenges of dealing with younger people who are brought up in this hyperactive environment where really taking the time to recognise who you are, your history, your culture, what you bring can easily get lost.

Dumi:

Yeah, easily. And I love that. That’s why I’ve got this concept called you need to understand that in everything you do in this world now more than ever before you can really succeed if you are able to establish working relationships. And it’s about working with that. I work a lot with young people around the world, but of course, the African continent is the youngest continent on Earth right now. And in 10, 20 years time, we’ll have the youngest working age population globally on the African continent. And I’ve had the privilege of being invited to train, talk to, engage with workshop with young people on this concept of ubuntu and Ubuntu Intelligence, which is the practice of living with ubuntu as norm.

And what my invitation to answer your question is we need leaders that can see systems everywhere, can see the connections, Marshall. It is these connections that nourish human life. It’s the disconnections that corrode what we all need, the disconnections that we feed by emphasising separation is a cancer in human evolution, in human nature. As a species we all know that. One of the things that has made humanity or human beings as a species succeed over millennia is the capacity to collaborate and cooperate and work together like we’re doing now. Very important to see each other and to understand that we can learn from everyone we encounter, hence conscious greeting because everyone we meet is a teacher or a mentor, a coach.

Connecting authentically

Marshall Goldsmith:

Like I said, I love what you’re doing. If you look at leaders in Africa, what might be some differences in terms of leadership? I’m writing a new book right now or in 50 new books, but one of my books is about situational coaching, and it’s about different coaching styles in different situations. If you look at leaders in Africa, what are some of the differences perhaps in leaders there?

Dumi:

One thing I worked with recently, I was with the CEO of a media company earlier today, in fact, we’re doing our last coaching session, and what we spoke about was his interest in the concept of leadership transformation. What we see is that the speed of change has accelerated recently. So we have leaders that need to be available with heart, Marshall, and this is one thing that I’m seeing across the African continent, young leaders that are coming into executive roles are combining what they learn in the Harvards of this world, in big business schools, with their, what they call traditional wisdom, such as the concept of ubuntu. We’re very busy on ubuntu now being brought and invited to give talks on ubuntu.

So to answer your question directly, it’s where I’m seeing leaders that have a hunger and a thirst for wisdom that makes them refine or grow or develop, sharpen their ability to connect and build relationships. Not the individual hero or the CEO who takes care of the company, but more someone who is able to be an orchestrator or a conductor who even faces their back to the audience, but making sure that they conduct something that will… a number of instruments producing harmony in that together. That’s understanding resonance, understanding the capacity of different people to pull together and produce something magical. That is the leadership that’s needed now. And many African leaders that know this but have adopted other ways so that they can be effective in the corporate world. They’re now hungry more than ever before for this indigenous wisdom, ancient wisdom that helps them connect authentically. Not to fake it; to be real.

Marshall Goldsmith:

What you’re saying, I think, is important, not only for leaders, but just human beings around the world. If you look around the world right now, especially with young people, what you see is in spite of dramatic increases in economic wellbeing, a country, let’s take South Korea, huge positive economic growth with massive amounts of depression, anxiety, world’s top suicide rate, no babies, lots of problems. Ideas maybe, how can some of the wisdom that you’re sharing really be useful to help? I originally was asked about leaders, but I just changed it to human beings because really it’s not just about helping leaders, human beings need this. I mean, human beings, there’s a massive amount of emptiness around the world right now. What are some of your thoughts?

Dumi:

Marshall, I cannot emphasise enough, I so agree with you. Mine and other coaches, African coaches, coaches around the world who resonate with this and yourself, Marshall, we believe that we need to find ways to serve, and that’s the key. We talk sometimes glibly about servant leadership, the ability for leaders to serve. For me it’s the practice, the way of being a servant, the way of attunement to values that serve humanity.

I love your idea that this is not about leaders and coaches, it’s about humanity, Marshall. This is why this concept on ubuntu and Ubuntu Intelligence is an invitation to all humans to come back home to humaneness, the ability and capacity to connect with others and to know that we are here to… of the over 8 billion of us on this planet to help co-create safe spaces where everyone can express the unique gifts that were placed in them because we are all unique, and we all have a gift. The work we need to do as fellow human beings is to co-create safe spaces for everyone to be their best self. Imagine what we can do with that. That’s the work.

Marshall Goldsmith:

As I said, something I think that’s needed not just in Africa, but around the world. What you’re saying is very, very important.

If you look at the new world of social media, I mean, I spend hours on social media. And I wake up this morning, I do a LinkedIn post, thousands of people see it. I did one the other day, a hundred and something thousand people read it. It’s mind-blowing. And as you know, I’m working on my own artificial intelligence computer bot, marshallgoldsmith.ai, where I give everything away anyway. If you look at what is the impact of AI in the new world, give me your thoughts, I’ll give you my thoughts. We’ll have a talk about it.

Dumi:

Yeah. I follow you on LinkedIn, I read your posts, I quote and comment on it, and I love your AI bot. I think we all need to have that as coaches, we need… So my response to that, Marshall is that-

Marshall Goldsmith:

And before we leave, thank you. Now, go ahead.

Dumi:

Every leader today needs to get on with the technology. We need to partner with the technologies today, with AI especially. We need to all understand what it is and how we can leverage it and work with it, partner with it. Yes, they’re not sentient beings as they are tech beings, they’re alive and living and learning fast. They have access to vast knowledge that they can compute things in a millisecond that human beings cannot do. So we’ve got to partner with it.

My view of it, Marshall is every leader, every coach especially, but every leader, every human being who has access to technology, to the internet, because it’s not everyone, everyone who has that access needs to get on with it. We need to understand what it is and how it works. Now, not tomorrow, because tomorrow it will be different tomorrow. So we need to get on with it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I agree. And as you know, I work very hard.

Let me ask you a question on a personal note.

Dumi:

Sure.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I’m always doing… and I appreciate your comments because you make comments on a lot of my social media stuff, so I greatly appreciate it. What is some of the value-add you found from that? And then I will get to you about stuff we collectively can do.

Dumi:

You mean besides the fact that this grey-haired man is way ahead of me in developing his own AI, I need to get on with it. So it’s the inspiration for me from your messages, it’s just rallying and mobilising us to really understand what’s going on and that we are connected. Because what your messages say is the world is systemic, and we need to see each other, we need to connect because you give everything away. Imagine we all did that.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And one thing I didn’t think about until this conversation, we should have a meeting with all of the Coaching Legends, and code for old people. But anyway, we should have a meeting for all of the Coaching Legends.

What’s something that collectively, people like you, people like me, some of the other people who have been around for a while, what can we do? Because right now, there is a need in the world. I want to go back to what you said, and the need goes beyond just leaders. The need is for human beings. There are a lot of human beings not doing well out there, just lost in a rat race, what I call the winner-take-all economy. Just what can we do, what can you do, what can I do to make the world a little better?

Dumi:

I’ll use a metaphor. I love using metaphors in coaching, Marshall, it’s a dance flow. We are all dancing, and we need to be willing and ready to leave the dance floor and allow others to continue to dance. And sometimes the music changes, so we need to change step. Sometimes we need to get out of the way for others to come forth and do what they need to do. And we need to see that we are together in this. And there are many leaders like ourselves.

Like I was saying to someone earlier, I’m close to 60 now, and two years or so, and I’m aware that I’m an elder in my community, and I’m supporting others more now. I’m more interested in watching and supporting and mentoring and coaching and supporting other leaders to emerge. It’s very, very important that we all need to do our part to support younger leaders, other leaders. Sometimes that support is getting out of the way. Sometimes that support is opening more opportunities. Sometimes that support is giving away what we have, the wisdom and knowledge that we’ve gathered over the years like someone I know.

Marshall Goldsmith:

What are some of the things that people like you, like me, the other people in this group, what can we do to help younger coaches? And let me give you a little context to see. When you and I got into the coaching business, there weren’t 12 million people in it. Today, there are too many coaches, there are more coaches than there are people. And a lot of the coaches, it’s really tough for them today because they’re good people, they want to do well, they want to contribute to the world. It’s hard, and it’s, by the way, only going to get harder. That’s just the numbers and the reality that exists. What advice do you have for young people who want to be like you or me when they grow up someday?

Dumi:

Find your niche, find that thing in you that drives you. It may be coaching, it may be something else, it may not be, but what is it? There is that unique gifting that you are here to express through your life and deliver. Find what that is. Don’t try to be a copy of Marshall or someone. See what they do, learn from them. But you’ve got to find your own magic. What is it that I can and will do with my life that’s unique to me, that is really true to me?

Marshall Goldsmith:

I like that, I like that. And I think in the new world, that’s not going to become less important. In the new world, it’s going to become much, much, much more important because if you’re just a generic coach, you say, “Well, I’m a coach.” Well, okay, that’s nice, but why you, what’s special about you? There’s thousands of generic coaches out there. And I like your idea of what’s in your heart, what’s special in this for you? So I thought that’s a wonderful point.

Now, if you look back on your younger years, what’s the toughest challenge you ever had in coaching?

Dumi:

One of the challenging ones, early on in my career, I was part of the coaching panel. It’s an interesting example. I used it in teaching too. In this manufacturing company, about eight executives, and one of them, the chief financial officer, CFO, was a woman. But if they were by the coffee station over there, you would not see that there’s a woman there because she dressed exactly like the men, wore pants and a suit and a jacket and short hair, and then a scarf around her blouse. She turns around until you saw in the face and said, “Oh, that’s a female, that’s a woman. Okay.”

And she chose to work with me. And she said to me when we got into a private room for coaching in confidence, she says, “Dumi, I have to tell you I’m not in this coaching thing. I do not need a coach. I deal with numbers and spreadsheets and balance sheets. I work with numbers, and I don’t need this psychological babble in my career.”

And then we were supposed to be for half an hour, so I asked questions, and it was early on, I was feeling myself sweating, like okay. And I had been coaching for, I think, about five years, thereabout. And so I thought I have some experience, and I’ve been working with leaders before. So I find my way around the boardroom quite easily. This was one major challenge of I’ve got to pull this off because this is big. And here is my client saying she doesn’t want this. How do I navigate this? And all I did, Marshall, was to ask her questions about what are the challenges she’s facing in her role. And something opened up, she said, “People don’t normally ask me this because they know I’m a high performer, I’m on top of my game, I get things done.” And from that half hour, we ended up over an hour of just her pouring her heart out, and she said, “When is the next session?”

Marshall Goldsmith:

I see.

Dumi:

And 12 sessions later, she became the poster child for coaching in the company.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, what are you working on right now that’s exciting for you?

Dumi:

This one I was thinking as you asked that, I can’t share that at this moment, but I’m working a lot with young people across the African continent who are doing… young innovation leaders across the African continent. I just did a webinar with them last week, 90 minutes talking to them about values that the new world needs. And they loved it, even sent me a message of appreciation about that today. So young people and understanding that they don’t need to join any tables to be invited to a table, they need to make their own tables.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I like that, I like that. I want to go back to another point you made with a little story. Years ago in Las Vegas, I went to a show, and the singer was called Frank Sinatra Jr., was Frank Sinatra’s son, and he looked like Frank Sinatra, and his voice sounded like Frank Sinatra, and he moved around like Frank Sinatra, but he wasn’t Frank Sinatra.

Dumi:

No.

Marshall Goldsmith:

No, it was more sad than anything else. He wasn’t Frank Sinatra. So I’ll go back to your point, don’t be a copy of you and don’t be a copy of me. Now, you got to be yourself, and that Frank Sinatra Jr. thing doesn’t work.

Dumi:

Do you.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah, you got to be you, you got to be you. And by the way, Frank Sinatra was an original. Well, when you try to be a copy, you’re not Frank Sinatra because he was not a copy.

Dumi:

Yeah, that’s why I’m not going to try and be Marshall, but I’m going to be me. Beautiful.

Connect, systems, humanise

Marshall Goldsmith:

That’s right, that’s right. Now, talk about the next generation of leaders, which by the way, tough for a lot of them, it’s tough out there. What advice do you have for this next generation of leaders, and how can you or other coaches, me help them on their journey?

Dumi:

I’ve got three words for them; connect; systems; humanise.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And tell me what you mean by those words.

Dumi:

In a world that it’s easy to move on, the pace of change, Marshall, requires that people move on, move along very quickly, and that’s okay. Understand your own pace and things to understand relationships and humanity and fellow humans. So establishing connections, that conscious greeting that I spoke about, greet consciously, intentionally, and mindfully with everyone. And when you connect, you are able to do the beautiful coaching that you did with me now, which I’m grateful for. There’s a connection already right there.

And then the one about especially humanising, which links to the systems part, understand that everything is connected at some level, but climate change will show us that, whether it’s COVID or other things, illnesses, diseases, trade, commerce around the world, everything is connected. We need each other as fellow humans. So there are systems that connect us, understand them, and then know that the humanising part is building relationships that honour others for who they are and the gifts they bring into this world because we are together. So these three things are interrelated; connect; systemic; humanise.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, we’re in this little club called The Legends of Coaching. Who knows why we’re in the club, but we are in the club. So anything collectively you, I, and the other people like us, what should we be doing together maybe to help? Is there anything we can do together to help people because it’ll be fun for me to work with you?

Dumi:

The one thing that we should do, and we’re saying this in this public platform, is that we need, by the time towards the end of the year, we need to put together a book that you’re going to edit and we all write, or we can do this together. Does that… 

Marshall Goldsmith:

Let’s do it, let’s do it.

Dumi:

Everyone submit a chapter and we-

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, this book needs a leader. I nominate you as the leader of this book, is that clear?

Dumi:

Happy to do it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

You’re the leader. I’m happy to help.

Dumi:

Okay, let’s do it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

But you lead, I’ll help. How’s that?

Dumi:

Happy to take the initiative.

Marshall Goldsmith:

That’s wonderful. Well, this is wonderful. I’ve really loved talking with you. You’re such a good guy and you’re a good person, good guy, trying to help young people out there. It is wonderful to talk to you. Any final comment? Because I could talk to you for hours. Any final comments for everybody listening?

Dumi:

It’s magical being here, talking with you and seeing how you pick up on those things and point them out. And then, of course, I know that, of course, yes, it is. I think the beauty of it when you’re in a moment like this is being able to see the mirror, and you held that up so beautifully these couple of moments. For me, I want to say to you and to others viewing, listening is that we are the human family, and we are better off tuning in, being attuned to ourselves and each other and tapping into that gift that’s within each one of us and expressing it while we can in this world today that needs humane human beings.

Marshall Goldsmith:

In closing, I just want to say, number one, thank you, thanks to Thinkers50 for organising all this stuff, thank you. Very honoured to talk to you. And I think the world’s a whole lot better off because you’re in it, and I just hope more people get to know you. So thank you very much. And anything I can do with you personally, I’ll be honoured to do it. So thank you very much, thank you.

Dumi:

Thank you, Marshall. Thank you, Thinkers50.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Bye-bye.

Dumi:

Bye.

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