Change agent: Zanele Njapha says jobs will be more hybridised, dispersed and flexible in the future
From primary school educator to boardroom re-educator, Zanele Njapha now teaches adults to transition to the workplaces of the future, honing skills all children have but many adults lose, such as curiosity. She spoke to Tshegofatso Mathe about her career, writing the book that ‘saved’ her and the skills that employees need now
You asked that we conduct this interview at 8.30am, in this chilly weather. Are you an early riser?
I’m not part of the 5am club or anything. But I have always been a morning person. I like waking up when the world is asleep and I can get some work done. After this, I am going to a yoga class. I started using these thick blankets, and it’s now harder to wake up. However, I always think: “What is on the other side of the time? What do I need to do on the day?” And that always jolts me out of bed.
Why do you go by the nickname The Unlearning Lady?
I am a young person with a very old soul. I have always felt like that. My mom’s name for me since I was a kid is “Gogo”. She called me that because of how I would conduct myself.
My biggest obsession, which comes through my work and everything I do, is my fascination with change. We have missed the boat when it comes to understanding that life is a constant journey of change. I think we always look for places to arrive at — and I have been part of this trap. But there is no place to arrive.
Based on that mindset, I teach organisations and myself the idea that we are always changing. I have gone through my own journey of changes in my short life, hence I call myself The Unlearning Lady. The work that I do with the Tomorrow Today Global Foundation is help organisations and individuals get excited and manage change as easily as possible.
Yet just a few years ago you were teaching primary school kids natural sciences, technology and languages. What made you transition?
I think teaching is something I was called to do. When I was young I used to play teacher with my little brothers. When they studied, I stayed with them and told them, “This is good for you.”
But I felt like my growth was stunted in teaching. What sparked the change is that I started getting interested in speaking and professionally facilitating conversations. So I joined a professional speakers association. Speaker Factor is a Professional Speakers Association of Southern Africa competition for new speakers. I entered the competition as a teacher and I won it. My speech that helped me to win was titled: “Children could run your business better than you.”
It was based on the concepts that future skills are children skills, and that we have so much to learn from children. After that, I realised there was a demand for what I was saying and it made sense to go into the field of the future of work.
What does that mean, that the skills of the future are children’s skills?
As children, we naturally have the skills of curiosity, resilience and inquisitiveness. These are all skills that businesses are trying to build — but they forget that we always had them. The biggest job now is how to unlearn who we were taught to be and show up so that we can go back to that curiosity.
Many people are scared of change as it leads them into uncharted territories. How did you adjust?
Being in the private sector is very different from the public. Teaching is very much structured. You have a clear boss, a team and everything is set out for you.
Now I have to independently develop my own teaching material. There are also different energies. With teaching you can tell when you are doing a good job because children would express it: they give you a hug or half-eaten chocolate. But the corporate world is different, there is a culture of “every man for himself”. It’s also harder to gauge progress. I mostly do keynote speaking, so it’s harder for me to see if people will practice what I say. I sometimes wonder if people have absorbed the information and they are using it. I had to rearrange what it means to be valuable and having support and connections here.
What is the hardest thing that you needed to unlearn yourself?
That I am not and will never be perfect, and no one is. That has led me into a journey of forgiving others and also myself — for the times that I do not show up as my best self. I think because of my personality, I can become a perfectionist, and I have always expected myself to show up a certain way, and when I did not, I would beat myself up about it.
I am my toughest critic. But with a lot of self-love and reflection, I am easier on myself. This is going to sound woo-woo and fluffy, but I was able to forgive because I realised, I think that we all deserve to be loved a little bit more than we are. It’s a journey that I am on every day.
What will the jobs of the future look like?
Hybrid and flexible. We used to mould things in our lives around the work we did. From the car you bought, who you marry and where our kids go to school was determined by work. In the future, people will start looking at how work can fit into their lives, so that our lives are central and work fits into that. We are looking at flexible working hours and a distributed workforce — not everyone will be permanently working in the office and not all employees will be in the same country. Skills such as adaptive intelligence, where you look at how you can change your skills to fit into this future, and personal intelligence are crucial. That means knowing yourself, knowing what you bring and lack so that, if necessary, other people can support you.
You wrote a novel, An Eye For Love, in 2016. How did that happen?
My masters in international relations and diplomacy in the US was cut short because my scholarship did not cover everything. I thought at the time that if I do not write this, then I am going to live on earth without saying what I wanted to. This book is my biggest message to the world. Coming from the US after spending just a couple of months there was one of the most painful experiences in my life. I never processed it until I wrote the book. It was a way to self-soothe. Everything fell apart for me, but I learned that loving myself will help me to pick up the pieces again.
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