Gestalt Africa Leadership has begun a week-long training programme for practitioners drawn from different parts of the world at the Fiesta Royale Hotel in Accra.
The programme is aimed at creating awareness amongst practitioners to be accountable and responsible to the people they serve in their various fields of work.
The Gestalt Africa Leadership Programme also promotes personal and professional growth in individuals, teams and organizations. It empowers participants to take proactive steps in their work and social settings.
The programme comprises 7 modules with a total contact time of 200 hours over 12 months. Another set of the programme will also be held in Cape Town-South Africa and Mombassa-Kenya.
Addressing journalists, a Development Planning and Management consultant, Reverend John Nkum, emphasised the need for leaders to serve the people they lead.
He highlighted management of diversity of opinions, and conflict resolution as some coaching offered to the practitioners.
“Raising awareness amongst practitioners at all levels about the disconnect between our socialisation and who we are as a people. And the leadership training we get, which is usually Euro-centric or American-centered. We have leaders who know but don’t live it, so their inner person, and who they are, are different from how they live. This divide is what we are trying to integrate into the programme to let people be the leaders they want to be based on how they have been socialised and the people they are leading.”
“Because it is not integrated, what they know about leadership or what they have learnt is different from who they are, people have no internal accountability to the people they are leading. They lead to prosper themselves, and their families, but not leadership as a service to the people on whose behalf they are there. There’s no responsibility as such, coming from the leader, that they can be responsible or accountable. So that is what this programme is trying to bridge the gap so that you are part of the people you are leading through and through and not because you have the money to bribe your voters to get positions. This is what we are trying to do.”
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On her part, a founder member of Gestalt Africa, and faculty of the International Gestalt Organization and Leadership Development (iGOLD) Programme, Ms Chantelle Wyley, explained that the programme equips individuals to transition from generating new ideas.
“Nobody stops to look at their own behaviour and the impact on people, rather than the formula that comes from some research from somewhere else in the world. We invite people to look at themselves, and all the assumptions that they carry from their experiences in life. What we are offering is a place of the potential and power of competent people and organisations to come from themselves in their own experiences, through engagements with others and ideas, to learn how to lead more effectively,” she stated.
The Gestalt Africa Leadership Programme supports growth and development in people, teams, organisations and systems. We offer processes and inputs that heighten introspection and awareness, empowering individuals to use their agency in work and social environments. It equips participants to manage the shift from new ideas and awarenesses, towards action and system’s change, navigating the inevitable resistances that result.