Senior Leadership Training Report: Leadership Development Program (LDP)

The project supports government efforts to address the challenges that Tanzania faces in developing an adequate health and social welfare workforce. The project functions primarily through a local partner coalition, which works with local government authorities and their counterparts to document and scale up Human Resources for Health (HRH) approaches and to design interventions and tools to assist in better management of the health and social welfare workforce. Under the THRP, Management Sciences for Health (MSH) is tasked with building the capacity of local implementing partners, including the Christian Social Services Commission (CSSC), to take on a greater role in the effective leadership and management of the national effort to improve Human Resource Management (HRM) for health in Tanzania. CSSC is an umbrella for faith-based organizations supporting service delivery in the health and education sectors. The organization is undergoing a considerable growth in terms of staff, projects, resources, and geographical expansion to include five zonal offices. In order for CSSC to effectively respond to the challenges, there is a need for CSSC to build leadership on the senior managers so that they can have the ability to contend with emerging health problems, scale up and sustain delivery of health services, modernize health service institutions, and to respond to variable resource levels and changing political and economic circumstances. In strengthening leadership and management of these local organizations, Management Science for Health organized a three-day training to the senior and mid-level managers of CSSC focusing on key areas of leadership and management. The training was facilitated by the consultant named Mr. Isaac Kiwango in collaboration with Mr. Geofrey Nyombi, MSH technical advisor. This training took place in Oasis hotel, Morogoro region. The training was designed to develop key competencies that senior leadership of the CSSC will need to successfully discharge their duties and achieve the desired program results. Some of the initial challenges mentioned to the consultant included issues of introducing and managing change, work delegation, organization structure and reporting relationships, visioning and strategic thinking in terms of prioritization. The training was conducted for three days, from 22nd to 24th August 2012 at the Oasis Hotel in Morogoro municipality. The training was led by Isaac Kiwango, a consultant with MSH. Training was designed to be very participatory and of adult learning nature. Participants were free to air their views and ground rules were set such that peoples' opinion was one of the things to be highly respected. This was necessary in order to create an atmosphere where learning and sharing could take place freely. The training was carried out for 25 participants and they all came from CSSC ranging from senior management to middle-level principles. In addition, MSH manager namely, Mr. Geofrey Nyombi provided additional insights on the success of the training. A number of training materials and tools were developed to support the Senior Leadership and Management training. These materials and tools included participants' manuals, power point presentations, facilitators' guides, handouts, books, and CDs. The following key topics were covered during the training: introduction to leadership and management, difference between leading and managing, leading and managing practices, organizational review, work group climate assessment, mission and vision, challenges and problems, prioritization, leading through change, effective request and reducing complaints, acknowledging others, and inspiring others. The results of the pre and post-training tests suggest that significant learning took place especially in the concepts of leading and managing practices.