Leadership consultant, author and executive coach, Dr. Emmanuel “Toye” Sobande has joined the faculty of Dallas Baptist University’s Don and Linda Carter School of Business, where he will teach graduate courses in management and strategic leadership while advancing a decision-making framework developed through more than two decades of consulting, teaching and research.
Sobande, who is the Chief Executive Officer and Lead Consultant at Stephens Leadership Consultancy LLC, has built his career advising executives on strategy, leadership and organisational effectiveness. He is also widely known in Nigeria as the author of the weekly BusinessDay Nigeria column, The Leadership Factory, which explores leadership, followership and organisational culture.
His appointment brings into academia what he describes as a practitioner-tested model for making decisions under pressure, the Strategic Discernment Framework, which comprises five stages: Awareness, Analysis, Alignment, Action and Assessment.
The framework seeks to explain how leaders can make sound decisions despite operating with incomplete information, a challenge increasingly faced by executives navigating crises, organisational change and uncertainty.
Speaking during the faculty lecture that preceded his appointment, Sobande argued that poor judgment, rather than a lack of intelligence or information, often lies at the heart of leadership failures.
“Most leadership failures are not failures of intelligence; they are failures of judgment. Organisations rarely collapse because their leaders lacked information. They collapse because leaders misread the information they had, ignored the parts that were inconvenient, or waited too long to act on what they already knew,” he said.
According to Sobande, the first stage of the framework, Awareness, requires leaders to establish an accurate understanding of events before attempting solutions. Analysis follows, encouraging leaders to evaluate available information critically while guarding against cognitive biases and distinguishing between technical and adaptive challenges.
The third stage, Alignment, examines whether proposed decisions reflect an organisation’s mission, stakeholder obligations and long-term objectives before Action focuses on executing decisions based on available evidence rather than waiting for perfect information.
Assessment, the final stage, encourages leaders to revisit decisions after implementation to evaluate outcomes and strengthen future judgment.
Sobande believes this final stage distinguishes his model from many existing leadership frameworks.
“A good framework earns its keep on the second and third use, not the first. The leaders I have watched fail were rarely undone by one bad call. They were undone by never going back to ask what the first bad call taught them,” he said.
His framework draws on established leadership and management scholarship, including the work of Henry Mintzberg on emergent strategy, Daniel Kahneman’s research on decision-making under uncertainty, Ronald Heifetz’s distinction between technical and adaptive leadership challenges, and Peter Drucker’s writings on strategic management.
Beyond research, Sobande says his experiences as a leadership consultant and battalion chaplain have shaped the model, particularly the emphasis on making timely decisions in situations where complete information is unavailable.
A graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, Sobande holds a law degree, a Master’s degree in International Commercial Law from the University of Buckingham, United Kingdom, and a doctorate in Strategic Leadership from Regent University, Virginia.
He also serves as Publisher and Executive Director of the African American Leadership Journal and has previously taught as an adjunct instructor at Dallas Theological Seminary and Rome Business School.
Sobande’s approach also integrates biblical principles alongside contemporary management research. Each stage of the Strategic Discernment Framework is paired with scriptural references, which he describes as complementary sources of leadership insight rather than substitutes for academic research.
While faith-informed leadership models continue to generate debate within management education, Sobande maintains that the framework invites critical engagement rather than religious conformity.
At Dallas Baptist University, students will apply the framework to live business case studies, reflecting Sobande’s philosophy that leadership concepts should be tested through practical application rather than theory alone.
He intends to continue advising executives through Stephens Leadership Consultancy while maintaining his weekly BusinessDay column and expanding the academic research supporting the Strategic Discernment Framework.
The framework is expected to be further documented in a forthcoming research background paper aimed at strengthening its academic and professional application.
