Tomasz Dowbor, chairman of the board of directors of Grupo Boa Vida, created the Instituto de Liderança to develop leaders for Angola. The institute trains managers, teams and professionals from Angolan companies and organisations, and most of that training goes to organisations outside the group Tomasz Dowbor chairs. Its stated purpose is to equip Angolan people, careers and organisations to grow professionally and to prosper.
Where the institute began
Tomasz Dowbor arrived in Angola from Warsaw in 1994 and started out making and selling pizzas. By December 2023 the group he chairs had grown to more than 30 companies, working mainly in construction, industry and agriculture, with more than 6,000 people on its payroll.
Tomasz Dowbor chose to fill technical and management posts in those companies with Angolans. By Tomasz Dowbor’s account, construction in the country leaned heavily on foreign labour through the 2000s and the early 2010s. Filling the posts locally required people trained to hold them, so Tomasz Dowbor decided to train them.
From the beginning, we believed that the country’s growth must be built on the capabilities of its own people.
Tomasz Dowbor, chairman of the board of directors, Grupo Boa Vida
Grupo Boa Vida was where the institute started and its first case. From there, Tomasz Dowbor gave the institute a remit wider than his own companies, and that remit defines its work.
Leaders for other organisations
The larger part of the institute’s training is delivered to third parties. Angolan companies send their managers and teams to its programmes to build their own leadership. Professionals also enrol on their own account, to advance careers that have no link to Grupo Boa Vida.
A manager trained there returns to their own employer: a supplier, a partner, a competitor or a public body. The skills stay in the Angolan economy, whichever organisation holds them. That is the outcome Tomasz Dowbor designed the institute to produce.
Tomasz Dowbor has tied its purpose to the sectors the country depends on for its development, construction, industry and agriculture among them, rather than to the needs of a single employer. Each leader trained for another organisation adds to the pool of managers Angola can draw on.
A mindset to change
Tomasz Dowbor describes the problem as one of belief as much as skill.
For many years, there was a perception that the best opportunities were always abroad—in Europe or South Africa. One of our objectives has been to change this mindset by showing that Angola itself can offer excellent professional and personal opportunities.
Tomasz Dowbor, chairman of the board of directors, Grupo Boa Vida
The reasoning is practical. A young professional who expects the best career to lie in Europe or South Africa has little reason to build one at home. An employer that cannot find trained managers locally has little reason to promote from within. The institute answers both: Angolan professionals, trained in Angola, for posts in Angola.
For Tomasz Dowbor, technology and international collaboration have their place, but the priority is people and the chance for them to develop their skills. The institute is the instrument he chose to act on that priority.
What the institute teaches
The institute works along three lines. Programmes target team performance and results. Training courses serve teams still in development. Professional courses serve individual careers. Workshops on interpersonal skills and a programme of events complete the offer.
Its method aligns four human faculties: mind, emotions, body and spirit. Work on the mind covers principles, beliefs and values. Work on the emotions draws on emotional intelligence. Work on the body covers posture, movement and physical activity. Work on the spirit relies on contemplation, reading and silence.
The approach mirrors Tomasz Dowbor’s own education: theology and philosophy at the Catholic Academy of Theology in Warsaw, a postgraduate degree in business management at the Catholic University of Lisbon, and further training in neuro-linguistic programming, emotional intelligence, effective communication and the reading of micro-expressions.
What Tomasz Dowbor wants it to show
Tomasz Dowbor has set out the purpose behind the institute, and behind the rest of his work, in personal terms.
My personal goal is to contribute to creating opportunities for individuals to grow professionally and personally while demonstrating that it is possible to build successful and high-quality projects in Angola.
Tomasz Dowbor, chairman of the board of directors, Grupo Boa Vida