THE MOUNTAIN WAS NEVER KILIMANJARO

I have stood at the top of Kilimanjaro.

It is one of those experiences that stays with you. The cold. The exhaustion. The moments when your body asks whether continuing is really necessary. The strange discipline of focusing on the next step because thinking about the entire climb becomes overwhelming.

And then eventually, the summit.

People like summit photographs.

They capture the moment when the difficult part appears to be over.

Life is rarely that neat.

Because Kilimanjaro was difficult, but it was not the first mountain I had climbed.

This Women’s Month, I have been thinking about the mountains that women climb every day that nobody takes photographs of.

The young woman trying to become the first graduate in her family.

The mother returning to work and wondering whether she can still compete.

The woman sitting in a meeting with an idea she has not yet found the confidence to voice.

The employee studying after hours because she knows the life she wants will require more from her.

The woman starting again after something did not work out.

I recognise parts of that journey.

I grew up in the Eastern Cape. If somebody had shown the younger version of me a photograph of the life I live today and said, “This is where you are going,” I am not sure I would have believed them.

Joint CEO. Business owner. Commissioner. Author.

We tend to describe lives from the summit backwards.

We list the achievements.

We leave out the kilometres.

When I was told that we were writing Ubuntu 3.0 and that I needed to write my chapter, my first reaction was not certainty.

I remember thinking that I had never imagined myself writing a book.

Then I realised something.

I did not need to invent a story worth telling.

I simply needed to tell the story I had lived.

Women are often told to be more confident. Speak up. Take the opportunity. Back yourself.

There is truth in that advice. But confidence is not always a prerequisite for movement.

Sometimes you take the step while you are still uncertain.

Anybody who has climbed a mountain understands this.

You do not stand at the bottom feeling completely prepared for every metre ahead.

You move.

One step.

Then another.

And somewhere along the way, the person who once doubted whether she could do it becomes the person doing it.

There is another lesson mountains teach you.

Very few people reach the summit completely alone.

There are people guiding. People encouraging. People noticing that you are struggling before you say anything.

That is why Ubuntu has become so central to the way I understand my own journey.

I am because we are.

My achievements belong to me, but my journey does not belong to me alone.

I was shaped by my family and the community I grew up in. I have built a business for more than two decades with people whose backgrounds are very different from mine. I have learnt from employees, clients, colleagues, friends and people who challenged me.

Relationships have carried me through parts of the climb that determination alone could not.

Perhaps, then, we should spend less time asking women how they managed to reach the top and more time asking what would make the climb possible for more women.

Who needs somebody to open a door?

Who needs development?

Who needs somebody to say, “I think you are ready,” before she believes it herself?

Who is halfway up the mountain and simply needs somebody to remind her not to turn around?

And for those of us who have reached some of our own summits, there is another responsibility.

We cannot pull the ladder up behind us.

In Ubuntu 3.0, we speak about building a cathedral: doing work today that may benefit people you will never meet.

I think about that often when I think about women in business.

Success cannot only be measured by how high I climb.

It must also be measured by whether the climb is easier for the woman coming after me.

This Women’s Month, there will be many photographs of successful women.

I celebrate them.

But I am also thinking about the women who are still climbing.

You do not have to see the whole mountain today.

Sometimes all that is required is the next step.

I learnt that on Kilimanjaro.

But perhaps I had been learning it my entire life.

Learn more about Ubuntu 3.0 and the leadership journey behind the book or get your hands on a copy today: info@globalbusiness.co.za

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