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NIM tasks managers on effective leadership to de-escalate crisis

By Gloria Nwafor 
26 November 2020   |   3:04 am
The Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) chartered has tasked managers of organisations with committed leadership to enable them to navigate successfully through the crisis.   The institute submitted that emerging economies, like Nigeria, are today inundated with a host of management challenges, which demand careful planning and approach for survival.   President and Chairman of…

The Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) chartered has tasked managers of organisations with committed leadership to enable them to navigate successfully through the crisis.
 
The institute submitted that emerging economies, like Nigeria, are today inundated with a host of management challenges, which demand careful planning and approach for survival.

 
President and Chairman of Council, NIM, Patience Anabor, said this during the 10th edition of the annual Management Day Lecture, organised by the institute.
 
She maintained that the crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted traditional management and leadership techniques, forcing managers and administrators to rethink and apply management techniques to keep their organisations above water.
 
According to her, managers have had to think out of the box, devise new management techniques in order to overcome the challenges posed to their organisations by the novel virus, which has come to be known as the new normal. 
 
Anabor, who spoke on the theme “De-escalating Crisis: Management Issues, Challenges, and the Way forward”, acknowledged that without doubt, effective crisis management was one of the hallmarks of modern-day managers. 
 
She said any manager that buckles in the face of crisis could not rightly be said to be a well-rounded and complete manager. 
 
According to her, such a manager needs to get some experience and refresher courses in the art of crisis management, as a manager does not need to be confronted by a crisis to start learning how to manage it. 
 
She pointed out that the ability of the manager to manage crisis situations had not been more tested before than in recent times, adding that “Since the turn of 2020, a lot of crisis situations that called the manager’s crisis management prowess to task in the home front, workplace, the society and government have been witnessed.”
 
Speaking on the theme, Chairman of the Governing Council, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomosho, Oyo State, Bade Adeshina, defined crisis as an unstable event or series of events that can emanate from an individual, group, corporate and government, which can cause disruption in normal business operations, economic, social, reputation and political damage in the society. 
 
He said Nigeria since its last economic recession in 2016-2017, had witnessed a collapse in the price of crude oil, volatile movement in the exchange rate, rising inflation and food prices, dwindling Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), increasing unemployment, reduced public confidence in the government, and northern region unrest coupled with the global pandemic, among others.
 
Adeshina, who is also the Chairman of Goldfield Group, an investment advisory company, said the effects of crisis threatens to have calamitous human and developmental consequences. 
 
He maintained that if a crisis is well managed, it reduces the damage and impact on an organisation, and enables the organisation to recover quickly.

According to him, a credible crisis management framework is critical to help maintain confidence in the people, system, and Government and it minimises risks.
 
He urged leaders to take charge because when a crisis happens, poor crisis management would often lead to anarchy.
 
He maintained that the survival and growth of a firm in a crisis situation is a function of its competitive advantage and strategies deployed to de-escalate the crisis.

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