Mentoring CEOS/C-SUITE

Impactful African businesses can only be built by strong, competent and ethical business leaders. In the course of its Advisory work, Africa Context has been engaged to support clients with providing leadership-related solutions critical to secure their investments. Such Services include CEO and Executive team Mentoring.

To this end, Africa Context has been inspired to create the AFRICA CONTEXT CEO MENTORING EXPERIENCE TM which curates relevant leadership practices from seasoned credible and successful leaders with practical experience in operating, managing and growing large businesses in and across Africa. This body of experience is now available to assist incoming, new and existing CEOs across Africa with Mentoring and Leadership support. Under this platform, Africa Context has provided mentorship to CEOs of large Multinationals across Africa including Nigeria, Ghana and East Africa across various sectors like Telcos, Oil & Gas, FMCGs etc.

More details are available at the Africa Context website

CEOs’ role is the most powerful and sought-after title in business.

Research has shown that a CEO has the biggest influence on the success of the company. Leadership is the Organization’s most potent strategic asset.

Despite the allure of the role, serving as a CEO can be all-consuming, lonely and stressful. These pressures are particularly pronounced when leading and managing medium to large sized growth businesses in complex operating environments in Africa.

CEOs’ development is usually weighed heavily in favour of experiential exposure on-the-job than functional training programmes. However, most Organizations do not consciously invest in, support or prepare incoming, new and existing CEOs to practically deal with the unique challenges of their roles.

Objective, practical and well-informed mentoring support from an experienced leader can prove to be invaluable in assisting CEOs in their leadership journey as he/she navigates the challenges of running the business. Such a Mentor can serve as an independent, objective sounding board and Adviser.

High-level Engagement Model

Introduction
Gauge & establish chemistry

Agree broad objectives
Establish other preparatory steps
Agree relevant Mentoring package and delivery details

Engage based on agreed Mentoring package and schedule
Deployment of specific Interventions based on needs
Ongoing review against set objectives

Reviews

CEO

Health & Fitness Chain, Nigeria

Mr. Michael Ikpoki’s work ethic is highly admirable. His rich corporate experience and leadership depth has consistently encouraged me in “raising the bar” in strategic thinking and strategic execution. In 6 years of engaging closely with him, he would always go the extra mile to provide needed guidance and support in the most difficult times. Within this period, I have led two different retail businesses - the former being a Mobile Electronics business, and now I am leading the first and fastest growing fitness chain in West Africa. Mr Ikpoki’s, input, support and leadership has been a reliable springboard to the successes recorded so far and more to come.

CEO

Multinational Telecom Company, West Africa

In 2019 I was appointed as CEO for the 1st time and reached out to Mike to mentor me. We had in person and virtual sessions and they were all very productive. He is experienced, knowledgeable and has a deep understanding of leadership, especially how to thrive under challenging circumstances. He brings maturity and rich context to the discussions without making me feel intimidated as a mentee or one being coached. He builds trust and makes it easy for me to be honest about my state of mind. It is therefore not surprising that after 2 years when I wanted to refresh my notes I opted to work with Mike again as my coach and mentor. I’ll recommend Mike to leaders who want to make transformational impact in their business or wanting to make a career shift.

CEO

ICT & Infrastructure Management Company, West Africa

Many people will be very successful in their careers as functional managers. However, the CEO role is a unique one that has no written operational manual. Many arrive at this point with a lot of talent as expected, however the actual job has to be experienced to understand the full ramifications of the leadership challenges of the position. I was a very successful general manager in a large global telecommunications company. I was vice president in the Nigerian operations of company that had a market capitalization of almost $60bn. Nigeria was almost 40% of the Africa operations so management attention ensured that performance was carefully measured. I left the company to lead an infrastructure management company as a first time CEO. I had to interact with Mike Ikpoki who was responsible for onboarding me and mentoring me on my role. The unique position of the CEO role is that it is a very lonely position. Without the right sounding board and an experienced leadership coach and management expert like Mike, we wouldn’t have achieved tremendous growth that we experienced. He has the knack of framing problems in very clear terms that facilitate the analysis that leads to breakthrough solutions. Over the years he has provided me with invaluable advice and support in developing organizational strategy, corporate finance, operations and personal effectiveness. This mentoring and coaching support is a very important and critical success factor for every CEO regardless of the background and sector.