The Tribune

By PAVEL BAILEY

Tribune Staff Reporter

pbailey@tribunemedia.net

 THE Commodore of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force congratulated members of his team who completed the National Training Agency’s Leadership Programme on Friday.

 Commodore Raymond King, along with the Executive Director of the National Training Agency (NTA) Terry Murray, commended the 22 graduates of Cohort 8 of the Institute of Leadership and Management as they received certificates of completion on Friday.

 These graduates include members from The Department of Immigration, The Royal Bahamas Police Force, Royal Bahamas Defence Force, Ministry of Disaster Preparedness, The Parliamentary Registry, Department of Social Services, and the NTA.

 Instead of a traditional examination, the students in this programme produced a portfolio to show their completion of classes.

 Mr Murray said that the programme aims to increase productivity within the work place and enhance students’ innate leadership capabilities. He also stated that the programme will continue to grow and reach out to different agencies, both public and private in the future.

 “The aim of the programme is to increase productivity within the work place,” Mr Murray said. “It’s geared toward managers and supervisors to help them, like I said, increase productivity. Graduates are better prepared to do their jobs. It’s for employed persons so it makes them better prepared to do their jobs which creates increased productivity and production within the work place.

 “We will continue growing and this is one of our largest cohorts and we hope that continues in the future. We have a line up of a few other agencies, private and public, that intend to sign up and have their cohorts.”

 Commodore King said the Defence Force officers are encouraged to enroll in the programme and hopes that recent graduates will impart their newly learned skills to their squad mates.

 “The Defence Force embraces training, like the leadership management training,” Commodore King said. “A lot of officers would have done initial training and this training will actually enhance what they would have learnt and put it into practice. So we do encourage this type of training for our mid-management and senior leadership.

 “Our graduates are in leadership positions so we hope that they carry this training to their branch units and actually encourage them to do the training and impart some of the knowledge to them as well.”

 Lieutenant Commander Chetaro McDonald, a graduate of the programme, said that while it can be difficult at times, he would recommend it to others seeking to hone their leadership skills. He also said that he has already started to integrate some of the training into his everyday work.

“I thought it was a pretty effective programme.” Commander McDonald said. “It helped nurture our existing leadership abilities and enforced some new management skills upon us. Honestly and truly, we’ve been able to implement some of the stuff already. And moving forward I think it will help improve our different organisations.”