Blog – Montigny Nhlangano Heads of Department Development Boost
Leadership is the act of guiding a team or individual to achieve a certain goal through direction and motivation. Leaders encourage others to take the actions they need to succeed. To be a great leader, it is necessary to learn and cultivate the skills it takes to be effective. Fortunately, anyone can develop these skills with time and practice according to www.indeed.com.
Montigny Nhlangano’s General Manager Coenraan Kruger, the Human Resource Team of Ms. Thembi Maphanga, Mzwandile Ziyane and Ayanda Hlophe engaged Mohale Emmanuel Consulting Services (MECS) to take the leadership team at Nhlangano through development. This with the view to refresh knowledge and skills, bring in the latest in leadership trends globally. This initiative was met with much enthusiasm by the Heads of Department at Nhlangano. A pre-training meeting was held with the Heads of Departments to further establish their needs so that the programme can be tailor made to suit the challenges they face and prepare for the future.
The programme is structured in blocks which allows for implementation of projects and application of learning. Programme Block Approach is designed to afford the time and space to apply what they have learnt. This gives them experience, confidence, exposure, it gives them better understanding and an opportunity to practice what they have learnt. For this reason, the programme is spread over a few months. These will be done over 12 days spread over 5 to 6 months. These will be run in blocks of 3 initial days, 2X2 days in the middle and 3 days at the end.
The Heads of Departments Reggie, Dave, Sipho, Stephen, Joel, Dawie, Phillip, Kumie are also coaching the Foreman crew as part of their development. Foreman present section identified projects for input and guidance by the collective Heads of Departments. Projects recentlyapproved by Heads of Department relate to improving housekeeping, improving on quality, reducing near misses and improving safety, reducing waste and gathering information that will ensure a quicker turnaround time and less downtime when machines break down or during maintenance. This has improved relationships between the Heads of Departments and the Foreman Crew.
In the words of General Manager Coenraad “this I see as a 3 year journey to transform Nhlangano to be best deliver and perform to the best of its ability”. We want to place Nhlangano on the top by also improving working relationships at lower levels as well. Over time we will look at programmes that relate to Supervisors and the rest of the Staff. We want to create fun and joy in the workplace and therefore have also painted our canteen in the our favourite popular colours of Kaizer Chiefs and Pirates. We are also grateful for the support we are getting from Head Office in our efforts to be better. The HR Team has expressed the desire to have similar programmes conducted by MECS running across Montigny as we raise the Montigny flag.
The Foreman session was graced on its first day by Mr. Rijkenberg Senior (Mkhulu) who took the team through the history of Montigny. He also explained that Montigny is French which means “from the mountain” in English. Minister Neal Rijkenberg’s Mom’s side of the family comes from France and owned a Chateau called Chateau de Montigny. A chateau is an impressive country house (or castle) in France. Mkhulu as he is affectionately known mentioned that they waited 7 years for the first harvest to come around. The first farm was in 1989. Mkhulu also mentioned that most of the work back then was done manually. He closed off his emotional opening by saying that he would like to see the company continue to grow into the future and create more employment for the people of Eswatini. He thanked God for carrying them until now!!