• Thursday, March 28, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

PenOp retools top players for leadership skills

PenOp, 10Alytics partner on data analytics strategies for service improvement

With the growing realisation that effective leadership is what makes the difference in an organization, The Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp) in conjunction with Philips Consulting have organised a leadership masterclass for professionals in the pension industry.

The masterclass which is part of PenOp’s monthly knowledge sharing session was tagged ‘Leading Self, Leading the Business, and Managing an organization.”

The session was facilitated by Paul Ayim, who is a senior partner at Phillips Consulting Limited with direct responsibility for the Digital Learning Strategic Business Unit (SBU). He has over 25 years of experience in sales, leadership, people transformation and other pertinent areas.

The session, which was attended by over 100 pension professionals, sought to highlight the need for transformational change.

To begin the session, Oguche Agudah, chief executive Officer of PenOp set the tone for the session by emphasizing on the fact that everything rises and falls on leadership. He further stressed that a team, organization or Nation cannot rise above challenges if there’s no good leadership.

To begin the session, participants were first asked if they could recognize good or bad leadership around them and to discern what a good leader looks like.

Read also: Hyperspace Technologies launches NFC-based hardware wallet

He then went ahead to speak on leadership challenges faced by the organization across the globe. These are lack of a culture of execution, inspirational leadership deficit, shifting attention from developing employees, failure in change leadership, silo mentality, and managing internal stakeholders. Going further, he went on to break down to three major steps needed to be taken to leading oneself, leading others, and leading the organization.

To properly lead yourself, you have to be self-aware, emotionally intelligent, and develop empathy for others. To lead others, you have to improve your communication skills, learn to coach in the moment, lead through change, and motivate others; and to lead a business, you have to have the skill of fostering a culture of execution, leading innovation, and being fast at problem solving and decision making.

To end the session, Paul Ayim said, leaders must be accessible (open door policy), good communicators, ready to listen, not be dictatorial, praise and reward when it is deserved, and equally impose discipline when there has been wrongdoing.

The CEO of PenOp ended the session by asking participants to rise up to the leadership challenges in their organization and the nation at large. He said Penop will continue to organize sessions that add value to industry, organizations and nation.

This session was part of PenOp’s monthly knowledge session. The session is a forum that enables operators in the pension industry to network, share ideas, and listen to subject matter experts discuss topical and relative issues.

Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp) is an independent, non-governmental, non-political and non-profit making body.

PenOp was established to promote the operations of the pension industry, provide for self-regulation and ensure that international best practices relating to the industry are observed by the operators registered in Nigeria. It is the umbrella association for all the Licensed Pension Fund Custodians, Pension Fund Administrators and Closed Pension Fund Administrators (PFCs, PFAs and CPFAs) operating in Nigeria.

Its role internally, is to add value to its members across all levels; information, education, visibility, networking, strategy, product development, etc. Externally its role is to increase the awareness and visibilities of the pension industry and enable external stakeholders understand and participate in the development of this financial sub-sector, wherever and whenever possible.