MANAGEMENT SKILLS COURSE


Insurance as a market is dynamic. Skills too need to be dynamic. In pursuit of this truism, in May, the Company pooled together its middle managers from all its three branches to an in-house training course at National Bank of Malawi Training College in Blantyre.  The course was facilitated by one of the country’s renowned high management trainer, Wilfred Chinthochi, Senior Management Consultant at Malawi Institute of Management and was aimed at equipping the company’s middle management with skills in strategic management and planning.

The two-day training, inter alia, covered such issues as strategic management, planning, stakeholder and environmental analysis, leadership and team building.

The course was opened by the company’s General Manager, Eric Chapola. In his opening remarks, Chapola said strategic management and planning is vital to the company’s managers since the company operates in a demanding environment where competition is tough.

“The introduction of new insurance products and expanding the customer base as well as retaining the existing customers have in recent times become of critical importance to the success of insurance business,” said Chapola.

He therefore challenged the company’s managers in the middle rank to be vigilant of their business environment as competition in insurance is no longer about infrastructure, but efficiency.

When asked to comment on the course, one of the participants, Martin Magomero, Assistant Claims Manager at our Lilongwe office, had this to say; “management is an art that needs to be nurtured and the course granted each one of us an opportunity to reflect on the skills that we have or lack. We were able to step out of NICO General and focus on the entire organization from both a long and short-term perspective.”

This was echoed by another participant, Dorothy Kapengule; “One of the topics from the course was that, as managers, we are supposed to have an understanding of team members’ personalities. This involves analyzing different personalities that may exist and devising ways and means of handling them.  I must assert that the course has helped me to appreciate that for there to be effective organizational communication between managers and subordinates, there has to be proper construing of the different personalities of individuals at all levels. I can avow that the programme was worthwhile.”

The course involved old and new managers in NICO General. For new managers, the idea was to indoctrinate them in the management world and the old ones, it acted as a refresher. At the end of the session, participants were awarded with certificates of attendance and treated to drink-up, thereafter.