The Learning That Was Igniting

THE LEARNING THAT WAS IGNITING: Mrs. Donnah G. Kamashazi: In a training session of SFH-SMT about enhancing team building.

Mrs. Donnah G. Kamashazi, the SFH board vice chairperson, today 1st December 2014 provided an exciting career training to SFH Senior Management Team (SMT) on team building and how to become highly effective managers and subsequently leaders. The training was grounded on principles of different practical experiences and a wide array of scholars and authors in management and leadership. This dynamic mix of authors and scholars seemed instrumental and mind shaping to many in driving innovation into leadership, governance and employee engagement and management as key strands for success as individuals and as an organization. In the training, members were encouraged to share their knowledge and expertise by way of participation, seeking clarity on what they understood and what they didn’t understand.

In her start, she emphasized that a participatory approach is a cutting edge learning strategy for active engagement for members to (a) think critically or creatively, (b) speak with confidence (c) express ideas throughout with no reservations (d) explore personal attitudes and values, (e) give and receive feedback, and (f) reflect upon the learning process.

Ultimately, this approach assisted and facilitated an active learning environment and set everyone’s mood in motion to spend greater proportion of time thinking through every topic and insights thereby developing own understanding and skills (promoting deep learning) and a lesser proportion of time transmitting information on her side. In addition, during the training she provided an opportunity for members to (a) apply and demonstrate what they are learning and to (b) receive immediate feedback from peers and/or self.

The training workshop proved to be one of the highly effective and very useful trainings the members have attained this year and requested Mrs. Donnah to spare some other time for the same cause. The feedback received was fantastic, with 100% rating and approval of the methods and content value addition.

Finally, all of us ended the training with lots of take a ways including glossing over the traditional boundaries of our molds, speculating constructively, maintaining an open mind while exploring a wide range of options, and reflect critically on ideas and outcomes. The training had a perceptible and positive impact on every one of us, and was in fact a preparation for life beyond SFH Rwanda, if need be.