The ‘power of daring’ for new opportunities

Dar es Salaam. Theobald Sabi, the managing director of National Bank of Commerce (NBC), talks to The Citizen Rising Woman about the unknown realities of having a woman leader in an organisation... And how the power of daring for new opportunities can influence the prevalence of higher leadership positions in their line of work.

Sabi has been in the banking industry for about 18 years, working in Tanzania and abroad. He joined NBC in 2014 as a corporate director before being promoted to the managerial level in December 2017.

As he grew up, Mr Sabi had aspirations of becoming a banker, but little did he know that his aspirations would one day change to being the MD of the national commercial bank.

His biggest achievement as the MD is the transformation of NBC to a digital bank.

Mr Sabi explains that transformation of any organisation to a digital organisation takes a long unpredictable time.

“Transforming an organisation is exchanging how people look at things, changing automated ways of working, making your customers comfortable to be using your services or products, because at the moment there are changes globally that demand digitalism,” says Mr Sabi.

However, he says the bank’s transformation has been a success to a greater extent, because even the manual processes have been changed to go hand in hand with the global digital demands.

Mr Sabi addresses the challenges that affects the banking industry including NBC itself.

“The biggest challenge we are currently facing is the coronavirus pandemic whereas it has taken a toll on every business, as much as it has affected our customers, we are also affected because we have had to support our customers in their time of need,” he explains.

He praises the central Bank of Tanzania (BoT) for lending a hand to NBC, because this has made the bank to increase the number of customers to be supported during their time of need.

Women empowerment

Mr Sabi defines ‘women empowerment’ as part and parcel of diversity - and to look at diversity is directly proportional to inclusion of women.

“From that perspective, our view as the organisation is that women empowerment means giving equal opportunities, which can be in the form of training, promotion and appointments to women in our organisations,” says Mr Sabi.

According to him, NBC looks at elimination of barriers that have been set up from historical backgrounds at different levels, by understanding the reason of the problem and finding the means that can instilled in the institution to rid it of the lack of diversity as well as other issues that adversely affect women. “When you look at many organisations, it is a reality that the proportion of women in leadership positions is lower compared to male leaders,” says Mr Sabi.

He adds that many organisations do not appreciate the need of having a woman as a leader.

“Women can contribute to the evolvement of organisations due to their God-given talents as they reach their full potential - and, at the same time, benefit the organisations in terms of profitability,” he asserts.

Clear gender policy

Mr Sabi says that, as an organisation, NBC helps in clearing bottlenecks that distort women empowerment issues by enforcement of gender policy.

“NBC has a very clear gender policy, namely that every employee is given equal opportunities in targeting balancing and maximizing women participation in different departments within a given organisation,” he explains.

“Every job within an organization is filled after a very competitive process. We at NBC also ensure that there is no discrimination of any sort between men and women. But, the challenge still remains with women being willing enough to fully participate in leadership roles,” Mr Sabi states.

He also says that it has been noticed that the number of women participating in higher leadership positions is lower compared to those in lower positions.

“We analysed the leading cause for lack of women participation in higher positions - an it was found that women face difficulties in juggling family tasks with office work responsibilities,” he explains.

Mr Sabi also says that, in recognition of the importance of executing all these responsibilities, NBC has established supportive policies and processes that permit women to have time for all responsibilities, both family and workplace responsibilities.

“Some policies apply to both men and women - and, at NBC, we have policies that allow even men to take paternity leave,” he reveals.

Initiatives

Mr Sabi says there are initiatives within his organisation that are set to push women in lower positions to desire being in top positions.

“We mostly refer to positions like the operations department, legal department, marketing department, human resource management and compliance functions, ensuring that these are managed by women, promoting the ones in lower positions so that they can also occupy higher leadership positions,” he explains.

Mr Sabi further says that all the women in the higher positions at NBC have never let the organisation down - meaning that womcan do better than what the society generally expects them to do.

“There is definitely a good reason for wanting to promote the welfare of women. For one, it contributes to the overall profitability of the organisation by simply harnessing the full potential of everyone in the organization,” he says.

He advises other organizations to include women in their high-level operations from the commercial perspective.

Mr Sabi also advises women to believe in their capabilities, and to grasp all the opportunities that come their way - and at all times avoiding self-doubt, as this is a serious setback.

“It begins with you raising your hand,” he says, somewhat enigmatically. “I highly encourage women to always work hard, because hard work does actually pay. They must be open to new opportunities - be in their line of work or not, as they can rearrange their vision as a result of those lessons,” he concludes.