The Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) has called on managers to imbibe the character of trust and accountability to advance national progress.
The institute gave the charge at this year’s Fellows’ Awards and Spouses’ Day Luncheon, held in Lagos, where it stressed the need for managers to imbibe a culture of transparency.
Speaking on ‘Building Trust and Accountability: The Human Element of Decentralised Command with Divisional Structure’, guest speaker, Rear Admiral Babalola Egbedina (Rtd) highlighted responsive communication, trust-building mechanisms through feedback and performance metrics, with monitoring as some of the requirements and prerequisites for building trust and accountability in a decentralised management structure.
According to him, empowering teams to take ownership of their work, make decisions, and remain accountable for their action, as well as fostering a culture of transparency, openness, and honesty among team members, encourages them to share information, concerns and ideas.
In the decentralised workplace, Egbedina harped on the pillars of REAR as an acronym, noting that they were essential towards building trust.
According to the military strategist, ‘R’, which stands for Reliability, is the bedrock of trust, while ‘E’ stands for empathy, which speaks to understanding and caring for others.
He said ‘A’ stands for authenticity represents honesty, transparency, and genuineness, while the ‘R’ stands for Responsibility, which is about owning actions and holding others accountable.
President and Chairman of Council, NIM, Commodore Abimbola Ayuba (Rtd), urged the new fellows to see their upgrade as a call to higher responsibility and service to the institute, the management profession, and the nation at large.
He also commended other individuals and corporate members, as well as non-members, who also received various awards from the institute for excelling in their different areas of calling and businesses.
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he NIM boss said his administration, in conjunction with management, is set to establish the NIM Resource Centre.
This, Ayuba said, would not only transform and give a facelift to the existing facility but would upgrade it to a one-stop digital information hub of the institute.
Chairman of the Board of Fellows, Stella Olaniyan, said accountability begins at the personal level, urging individuals to cultivate trustworthiness in their daily lives before seeking to influence organisations or society.
