IDM DELIVERS ITS INAUGURAL COUNCILOR DEVELOPMENT TRAINING FOR NORTH-WEST DISTRICT COUNCIL

The leadership of the North West District Council became the first recipient of IDM’s Councillor Development training this past week. The three day event exposed participants to various leadership topics covering Corporate Governance, Leadership Development, Organizational Strategy Development and Implementation, Fraud Detection and Crime Prevention as well as Personal Branding.
The training follows the launch of IDMs Centre for Local Governance in 2019 whose aim is to capacitate local government structures with the skills to enhance service delivery to the people. Since its unveiling, the Institute has traversed the entire country to engage council leadership and tribal authorities, sensitizing them about the training solutions developed to equip them with knowledge and skills to effectively deliver their mandate.
North West District Council Chairman, Hon Kebadire Ntswagotho expressed delight for the emerging partnership between his Council and IDM, saying the rich content provided for councillors will go a long way in enhancing their capability to effectively lead the people in his region. He particularly appreciated IDM for delivering thought-provoking discussions of how a modern-day council should be capacitated on issues of governance and leadership to be efficient in driving implementation of the district strategic plan.
“This training is coming at the right time when international borders have just re-opened after the outbreak of Covid19, helping us to prepare to receive tourists and travellers into the North West region. With tourism being the main economic activity in our district the opening of international travels gives us hope that the industry will be resuscitated, bringing back our status as the preferred destination for tourists,” he said.
IDM Country Director who coincidentally this week received a international award of Africa Woman Leader from World HRD Congress, Dr Onalenna Seitio-Kgokgwe took participants through Leadership and Management journey, indicating how important it is for one to understand personal attributes that may influence leadership style and approaches. Dr Kgokgwe emphasised that a good leader must be able to demonstrate a sound understanding of effective leadership, highlighting the relevance of Coaching and Mentoring, Communication, Decision-Making, Change Management, Negotiation and Problem Solving as essential attributes of a good leader.
“Problem solving requires team work and the need for joint conceptualisation of ideas, joint planning, joint project implementation and joint monitoring and evaluation. Councillors must have a common goal, common vision, mission and focus their energies in driving the vision of the district. Leadership development is a systematic approach to expanding the performance capability of individuals in leadership roles within an organisation,” she deliberated. 
Defining Corporate Governance, Course Director, Ketlhomilwe Moletsane said in addition to advanced ethical practices, a governing body needs to have effective leadership responsibilities that include; provision of strategic direction; approving policies to effectuate strategy; implementation and performance, and corporate disclosure.
He added: “Ethical leadership has core values that include integrity, responsibility, accountability, honesty, fairness and transparency. Effective leadership on the other hand is about the ability of the governing body to direct corporate performance and to always be result-driven. Bad corporate governance creates room for corruption because failure of oversight function is a recipe for disaster.”
Regarding Performance Management, Director of Corporate Services at IDM, Sipho Mbebe shared the importance of evaluating how well should employees perform in their roles against the set targets and overall standards within an organisation. He introduced them to the Balance Scorecard (BSC) concept and how it provides a framework to allow an organisation’s vision to be translated into realistic objectives, further encouraging participants to use BSC to achieve much desired results.
IDM further gave participants a presentation to appreciate insights on Corruption Detection and Corruption Prevention. This was facilitated by a renowned international consultant in Fraud and Corruption issues Kaelo Mokomo who walked them through definitions of fraud, how to identify and detect fraud, laws associated with this fraud and corruption and how corruption can work against their good intentions as an organization.