What Makes a Good Boss?

When Chris Brindley was named the winner of this year’s Britain’s Best Boss competition*, he made his values clear when he attributed his success to the fact that “I want staff to feel that they are part of our family”.

For any cynics reading this, Chris’s family matters to him. In fact, Chris says, ‘money can’t ever replace time with children. I tell everyone what my priorities are and about my values. If I am a great boss that is fantastic but I also want to be a great dad.’

As every working parent knows, navigating the minefield born of combining work and family life is one of the toughest challenges of adult life. Despite all one’s best intentions, at some time or other one emergency can knock for six any carefully constructed balance you think you have achieved between work and family life. The ever-decreasing opportunities for spending time away from work are further undermined by our growing addiction to our blackberries, mobiles and e-mail.

This is where a good boss can make all the difference. Yes, we all want a boss who is able to deliver productivity (where else is our bonus coming from?) but we also prefer one who lets us enjoy the experience of being productive. We realise the reasons for targets; but we also feel the need for appreciation when we meet those targets and empathy when we don’t. We want a boss who will challenge our views and push us up the ladder of success but we are really grateful for a boss who will let us attend our kid’s sports day without having to take a day off. We hope for a boss who will promote us to the job that they are doing but we pray for a boss who will then let go and let us do the job in our own way. We want a boss who delegates a project and we crave a boss who trusts us to get it done.

So we congratulate Chris Brindley and the thousands of bosses like him who bring their values to work with them. “A person’s working life impacts on their home life and on the wider community, so being a good leader is about supporting your staff in both their professional and personal development," he says. Amen to that.

In this month’s ReConnect Africa magazine, we take a closer look at the temptations of self-employment and ask what it really takes to be your own boss.

Leading coach Lin Sagovsky offers some tongue-in-cheek advice about what not to do if you want your audience to stay awake during a presentation. We report on the launch of Sister Circle London at the House of Commons and look at how this new networking group will benefit Black women in London.

DIVERSE COLOURS 2008 is a brilliant exhibition of paintings by artists from Africa and the Caribbean and we speak to the show’s organisers about this unique event. The multi-talented Gibril Faal, founder of RemitAid, is the subject of our ‘5 Minute Interview’ this month, sharing some of his life lessons with us.

Our Career Coach tackles the question of whether poor A’ levels will haunt you throughout your career and we look back through our ReConnect Africa Archives to re-visit Carol Pineau’s celebrated article on the Africa the world never sees.

As ever, we report on news from the UK and around the world and bring you an overview of news and business from across the African continent. Finally, don’t forget to check out what’s happening in April in our Events section.

Thank you to those of you who have registered onto the Forum and posted your comments; if you haven’t yet joined, why don’t you do so today?.

Finally, we are delighted to announce that the winner of the Akan ‘day name’ T-shirt designed by Pauline Brobbey of ALTERNATIVES is Forum member Carol, who we think deserves cheering up in her job search struggle! We wish you all the best in finding the right job – whether in the UK or Africa.

Enjoy this issue - and write in and share your comments!

* Working Families American Express Best Boss Competition.