Managers Urged to Build Stronger Relationships in Organisations

Managers and leaders of organisations are being urged to retool themselves, and to remain current and relevant in order to gain employee confidence and create better working environments and successful businesses.
This was put forward at a policy forum on leadership and management, which was hosted by the Management Institute for National Development (MIND) yesterday (Feb. 28) at the Bloomfield Great House in Mandeville.
The Forum, which was dubbed, “Leadership and Management – What Does It Take to Succeed in Difficult Times,” aimed to sensitize participants about the differences between leadership and management and how to identify the gaps between the two.
President of the Graduate Institute of Leadership and Professional Development in Namibia, Africa, Professor Earle Taylor said the difference between management and leadership is communication and that, “the significant difference between the two is change and improvement. Change involves taking risks that is the essence of leadership. Management is about managing, containing risk and herein lies the essential difference between both and note, there is a place for both”.
He told the participants that if they are in a leadership or management position of any kind then they need to acquire the skills that are needed to function in the current world environment.
The Professor said that attributes such as gaining employee confidence by allowing persons to share their goals, assigning specific tasks, creating a positive environment, providing encouragement, and rewarding people, are essentials skills to become a good leader.
“If you, as a manager or a leader are to remain at the leading edge you will need to encourage yourself to be a life time learner of leadership and management. You need to read books, listen regularly to good leaders and managers and keep attending seminars and whenever you come across golden nuggets of truths or any significant quote file it away in your memory for future reflection,” he added.
He said that as manager moves up the ladder, less technical skills are used and more tutorial, relational, motivational, ethnical, and people skills are needed to manage and relate to people.
“You are a leader only if you have followers and that always requires you to develop and invest in relationships. The deeper the relationships, the stronger your potential for leadership. Each time you enter a new leadership position or you are building a career path from management towards leadership, you must start your investment in building relationships. Build enough of the right kind of relationships with the right people and you can dramatically enhance your leadership effectiveness,” he said.
“Our unwillingness to recognize the need for and to value leadership on a continuous basis and our inability to ensure sound leadership everyday in our enterprises and economies is what lead often to crisis in management. This is precisely the dilemma we see so visibly and tangibly today in the world and this disease is spreading right across the globe,” he said.
The Friday Policy Forum, which is a monthly gathering of senior executives from the public and private sectors, is organised and hosted by MIND under the direction of the Cabinet Office.
The forums are designed to encourage interactions that create or improve knowledge and are designed to transfer information to senior executives in a convenient setting.