For this 15th episode of VISCONTI Talks, Fabienne Saugier, former partner coach at VISCONTI, today welcomes Anne Lancelot, Regional Director for West Africa at GERES.

Anne Lancelot's career

After studying at ESCP and then at Sciences Po Paris and earning a DEA in political sociology, Anne had the opportunity to join the office of the Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac. When President Chirac was elected in 1995, she chose to change course and join Solidaritas, a humanitarian association that sent her to Kabul in Afghanistan to manage major infrastructure projects there.

Anne spent the next 25 years working internationally in humanitarian and development aid, where she worked as a country or zone director, and managed programs for major French or Anglo-Saxon humanitarian associations. To do this, she settled in Afghanistan, where she spent almost 10 years, in Burundi, Burma, Thailand, Senegal, where she spent almost 10 years, in Burundi, in Burma, Thailand, in Senegal, in Nepal.

She works on extremely diverse topics such as community development, rural development, the fight against HIV AIDS, reproductive health (access to contraception and abortion).

Back in France since 2021, she is now working on the energy transition and the fight against climate change for GERES, in four West African countries.

What led Anne to turn to humanitarian aid?

Humanitarian aid was a real departure from a fairly traditional Grandes Écoles course, Sup de Co, Sciences Po, etc. Anne wanted to do something useful and have a concrete impact on people's lives.

As a teenager, partly through Protestant scouting, she became aware of the ease of going wrong. When she went to Afghanistan, she said to herself: “Well, what do I prefer to be said on my grave? That I spent 30 years building a career and perfecting a resume or did I go to Afghanistan to do humanitarian work? ”.

Nourished by the imagination around MSF and the actions of Bernard Kouchner, she was thirsty for adventure, but also the freedom to leave.

What are the similarities between the role of a Country Director and that of a business manager?

Country Directors (or Heads of Mission) are those who, on a humanitarian mission, “keep the mission going, together”. Like a company manager, the Country Director is accountable to all stakeholders: at headquarters, on strategic, operational, and budgetary levels; to donors, with whom programmatic and budgetary commitments are made; to the communities served; to the communities served, to the national authorities, who have a right of control over the NGO's action.

There is a strong role of internal coordination, but also external, and therefore of representation, to best integrate the NGO into the local humanitarian ecosystem.

There is also a very big challenge on teams and on human resources. You have to know how to recruit, find skills, keep them, and then advance them; in environments that are often very difficult, such as a country at war.

Another point of similarity is that there is always this back and forth between the short term (operational follow-up, daily, emergency) and the long term (the strategic, which is important). This requires a lot of agility, as the context and environment are extremely fluid.

What makes the difference between Anne's missions and those of a “classic” CEO?

The first big differentiator is safety. When you're in high-risk countries, managing safety takes a lot of time, a lot of mental space. This can be up to 20% of a Country Director's time.

When we talk about countries at high risk, it can be a country in civil war or a country with a high risk of kidnapping personnel, like Afghanistan when Anne was there. Or Mali and Burkina Faso today.

This requires the Country Director to know how to manage this accumulation of stress over the long term. He can surround himself, get help, have consultants, but he never fully delegates responsibility for safety.

So, the first difference is context and security. Another difference?

Managing multiculturalism is a major challenge. Know how to exercise your mission as a manager, and in particular the management of teams, in a multicultural environment that is very varied at all levels.

There are not only obvious differences between Westerners and nationals, members of the team, but also almost as many differences between Westerners. Everyone communicates and behaves in very different ways.

Anne believes that it is very important to establish a collective responsibility to “function together.” The Country Director has the responsibility to adapt, but so do the others. Together, they have a responsibility to ensure that things go well between them as a management team.

This requires a lot of communication, formalization but also reformulation, both by the manager and by the teams, so that “the word is really a shared word” and that everyone is well aligned.

Are there other differentiators compared to the mission of a “traditional” business manager?

There is certainly a differentiator in terms of people's motivation to join the development assistance sector. In humanitarian associations, this is mostly because of a social vocation, even if the salary aspect cannot be overlooked.

Therefore, a manager's mission is to ensure that the team does not lose the meaning of its actions. Humanitarian aid and development assistance have become professional. This has resulted in a lot of compliance, and the constant submission to technical and financial audits.

Today, a management team in the field will mainly manage risks (compliance, security...) and ultimately spend much more time on this than managing new programs or designing new ways of responding to a humanitarian emergency, for example.

Despite this, the manager must continue to give meaning to what he and his teams do, to ensure that the teams always perceive the impact and usefulness of their actions.

It also includes celebrating successes together, thanking the teams, and always bringing action and daily life back to meaning.

It is also a question of staying attentive to the feelings of the teams. Anne regularly checks the energy level of employees and tries to allow them to free up time to do what really motivates them.

These topics are present in all businesses, but in the humanitarian field, they are amplified.

Anne was ultra-mobile and took over Country or Zone Management for periods of 1 to 3 years in several countries in Asia and West Africa. What lessons does she draw on the challenges of taking up a job?

Today, humanitarian associations have structured onboarding or induction courses, which makes it easier to take up a position. On acculturation, Anne always advises the new Country Director to take the time to meet everyone.

In her case, when she takes up a new position, she tries to understand everything that is done, why we do it and how we do it; and how her NGO fits into the local ecosystem, therefore with other NGOs, with government services...

Anne is also looking for “bridges”, that is, people who will understand both cultures, either because they have been there for a long time and speak the language, or are married to someone from the country, or people from the country who have studied in France or abroad.

These people will be in a better position to make the “cultural bridge.” They are valuable people to start understanding things. After a few years in Afghanistan and Burma, Anne herself was a “smuggler” for new arrivals.

Another feedback: to slow down and take the time. The rule is to do nothing structural, irreparable, in the first three months.

You have to take the time to observe. It is also about having the modesty to tell yourself that you are not going to “understand everything right away”. When you go too fast, you sometimes pay a lot for it later.

During this moment of observation, it is important to clearly specify to the teams: “Now, I am in the observation period, then we will be in the period of consultation on the changes and then we will be in the time of decision and implementation”.

This is to be sure that the teams see these different moments, because, otherwise, the Manager is subject to intense lobbies to make quick decisions.

What does leadership mean to Anne?

Anne learned that leadership... can be learned. She has been coached twice, learned that there are many leadership styles and that hers is not the only one. You have to accept being sometimes confronted with very different styles and, over time, Anne has learned to judge leaders, that is to say the Country Directors she supervises or the heads of departments, on the results, on the quality of their relationships with the teams, on how they will absorb shocks, on the dynamism of their teams, on the dynamism of their teams and not necessarily on their apparent style, which can be extremely different from hers.

Anne believes that the first role of a leader is to empower others. Empowering them is giving them the vision, and bringing it to life. It's not about telling the teams exactly what they should do and how, but about making them want to, to make them dream. “Don't give people the planks and nails, give them the blueprint of a boat and a map of the world and they'll go get the planks and nails to make the boat.”

Creating trust in teams is an important issue, which is based on the authenticity of the manager. Sometimes, you also have to know how to show your own vulnerability, your weaknesses, say when you were wrong, when you have no idea, or even when you feel a negative emotion.

However, when you are in crisis management, you go back to extremely top-down, very directive leadership. However, it is in this context that we see the quality of the relationships of trust built with the teams and how ready the teams are to obey very directive leadership.

If there is no trust, there will always be a team that is not going to do what they are told and “at the last mile, will derail the train.” So, even in a crisis phase and when leadership is very directive, the best teams are those that operate with confidence.

Anne has dealt with sensitive issues in countries where women are poorly valued. So how was she able to assert her leadership as a woman?

It has seldom been a topic. In part, because, as a Western woman, for example in Afghanistan, the Taliban see the Western first and then the woman.

Anne was sometimes confronted with funny situations that are emblematic of this somewhat bizarre relationship that the Taliban could have at the time with Western ones. In a way, they exempted them from constraints.

On the other hand, when Anne worked in West Africa, on very taboo subjects such as access to contraception and abortion, she met women who sometimes risked their lives. The role she could have as a Westerner was to help these women “find their voice.”

It is preferable for social issues to be brought by a local woman, otherwise it is perceived as Western interference and limits the impact. In this environment, Anne's role is more of an influence, of supporting civil society organizations, local women's or feminist associations, in particular in order to help women advocate.

Anne Lancelot has been involved in humanitarian aid for twenty-five years. What are its drivers for continuing today? Or conversely, what sometimes makes her doubt?

Anne had neither an academic background nor a family environment that led her to do humanitarian work but she never regretted it.

She can sometimes feel some professional wear and tear, after twenty-five years of experience in the development sector. Today, with digital tools and globalization, there is a “standardization” of experience.

When Anne left for Kabul in 1996, she had no mobile phone or email; she communicated once a day by radio with her bases and the reports were sent once a week by bus to Pakistan on a 5-inch diskette! This left considerable autonomy and freedom on the ground, which we no longer know today.

Nowadays, whether you are in Paris or Bamako, the work experience is not that different. Over the long term, the professionalization of the profession, and therefore the fact that we are a lot in risk and compliance management, can be exhausting, but Anne maintains the same driving force: that of serving, of helping people.

Anne's current motivation is the people she works with. To be a “servant leader.” Recently, one of her greatest pleasures was to train a Senegalese woman who took over in Dakar when she left, a Nepali who succeeded her in Nepal; to help them find their leadership, their personal way of leading and integrating into major international organizations.

In 2022, Anne still has the same desire to change the world! What seems essential to him today is the climate transition. It is a global issue with an urgent need to act. It is now in this field that she wants to get involved professionally and where she can apply what she has learned over the last 25 years.

Talking about climate transition, Anne is now working for GERES. What is its role and what are the challenges?

Anne has been Regional Director for West Africa at GERES since 2021. Her role is to develop programs, and to lead Country Directors and Project Managers in Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Senegal.

GERES is a French association that works on the energy transition. There is a real idea that we need to fight climate change, but in a way that is socially just.

For example, at the moment, in Mali, GERES has a program for the development of electrified activity areas. These are buildings equipped with a solar platform in which entrepreneurs or artisans will set up shop.

For them, the challenge is to replace energy that is often not very clean with energy from a photovoltaic source of good quality, clean, available 24 hours a day and seven days a week. It is an energy that they do not necessarily have with village mini-grids or with the national electricity network, which often does not reach their village.

At the same time, this approach allows them to develop their business. There is a “business incubator” side, and GERES supports them in their development. This is an example, but it continues to fuel Anne's motivation to have an impact both on people's living conditions and on the fight against climate change.