Entrepreneurial ubuntu: Why learning to ask for help is a crucial leadership skill

Starting a business often means navigating unfamiliar territory while making high-stakes decisions in real time. Entrepreneurs must build products or services that meet complex and evolving customer needs, manage cash flow, grow teams and respond to shifting market conditions, often all at once. And they must do it in an environment where the odds are not always in their favour.

In South Africa, small businesses play a vital role in the economy, contributing significantly to GDP and employment. Yet the path to sustainability is far from guaranteed, with estimates suggesting that between 60% and 80% of small businesses fail within their first few years of operation.

Against this backdrop, entrepreneurship can easily begin to feel like a solitary pursuit. Many founders believe they are expected to have all the answers and demonstrate constant certainty. But this expectation is often one of the biggest barriers to growth.

“The idea that entrepreneurs must navigate every challenge alone is deeply misleading,” says Allon Raiz, CEO of Raizcorp. “Asking for help is not a weakness. It is one of the most powerful leadership behaviours a founder can develop.”

The most effective entrepreneurs rarely operate in isolation. Instead, they rely on mentors, advisors and peers who have faced similar decisions before them. In many ways, this, says Raiz, reflects a form of “entrepreneurial ubuntu”, where progress and success are strengthened through community.

Globally, business leaders emphasise the importance of collaboration and seeking guidance. Entrepreneurs such as Emma Grede, co-founder of the fashion brand Good American, have spoken openly about reaching out to competitors when facing a complex business challenge. Her reasoning was simple: sometimes the person best placed to help you solve a problem is someone who has already solved it themselves.

This perspective highlights an important shift in how leadership should be understood. Asking for help is not simply about support or reassurance, it directly influences how entrepreneurs make decisions about pricing, partnerships, market entry and operational systems. Without external input, founders are often forced to make these decisions in isolation, which can limit growth, delay access to markets and reinforce inefficiencies within the business.

Why ask for help?

In the South African context, isolation is a common reality for entrepreneurs. Many operate their businesses without access to experienced mentors, banking professionals, strong professional networks or peer communities where challenges can be openly discussed. As a result, capability gaps persist, not because entrepreneurs lack ambition, but because they lack structured access to guidance and shared learning.

“Operating in isolation means having to make critical decisions without the benefit of perspective,” says Raiz. “This can lead to slower growth and costly mistakes, and missed opportunities that could otherwise have been avoided. Access to experienced mentors who have already walked the entrepreneurial path successfully, as well as peer communities of founders facing similar early-stage challenges, plays an important role in bridging the capability gap that still exists in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

Learning from others accelerates understanding and helps entrepreneurs avoid reinventing the wheel. Instead of spending valuable time solving problems from scratch, entrepreneurs can draw on the experience of others and focus their energy on building resilient and commercially viable businesses.

That being said, mistakes are also a crucial part of the learning journey and an inevitable part of building a business. The challenge is ensuring those mistakes become learning moments rather than fatal setbacks.

Structured entrepreneurship ecosystems are important

Programmes like Nedbank Pitch & Polish, powered by Raizcorp and with uMngeni-uThukela Water as a Gold sponsor, create spaces where entrepreneurs are challenged to test their assumptions, strengthen their decision-making and learn from both mentors and peers facing similar realities.

More importantly, however, these programmes create a safe environment where entrepreneurs can ask difficult questions, confront gaps in their thinking, learn from each other and develop the confidence to seek guidance in what matters most.

“Successful leadership and entrepreneurial journeys do not come from having every answer,” says Raiz. “Recognising when to seek guidance and surrounding yourself with people who help you think more clearly about the decisions you need to make is what helps build a stronger business”

As South Africa continues to look to entrepreneurship as a driver of economic growth and job creation, the focus must extend beyond funding and access to opportunity. The ability to draw on the experience of others is what ultimately determines whether businesses remain small or scale sustainably. In this context, asking for help is not a weakness, but a competitive advantage.