162015Jan

Communication: The Leader’s Secret Weapon

THE Public Relations and Communication Professionals Association of Mauritius PRCPA(M),held a networking diner at Imperial 10, 2010. This dinner welcomed Mrs Sandra Aveleira Viljoen as guest speaker who runs a successful ‘Business Revival’ & ‘People Development’ consultancy, called ‘New Beginnings’. New Beginnings has created many unique trainings and coaching programs to ensure that businesses inspire their people, create customer obsession at every touch point and realign their culture to deliver their service and brand promises.

Before coming to Mauritius, Mrs. Viljoen has been an active business counselor in South Africa and has decided to restart ‘New Beginnings Mauritius’ here. She intends to Authentic Leadership, NLP coaching and Sales and Marketing. She also plans to introduce and implement the Strategic and Planning Tool, C@PS (Compass Aligned Performance System) to Mauritian businesses.

While doing her presentation, she interacted with the audience about, “Why communication is a Leader Quality”; which can also be found in the New Beginnings’ modules. She pointed out that leaders always hire her for non-performing employees but the reason behind is often lack of communication between the leader and their personnel. Consequently, in order to solve the miscommunication in the company, leaders should constantly communicate with their staffs, stating that “Communication is a leader’s secret weapon”.

“Communication does not only mean having a conversation, it means expressing your own thought in a language that somebody else can understand and listen to what they have to say in return… It does not only mean the sharing of ideas but it means to collaborate with one another in deeds and exchange of help..” says Mrs Viljoen.

As stated by the guest speaker, the key to become an Authentic Leader is spirituality. Spiritually here, not being related to religion but what’s within the to the level of leadership, leaders will have a more balanced personality, will listen to others and will be able to handle any kind of situation. She puts an emphasis on the uniqueness of the true African culture, which according to her, differs in mentality from that of the western culture. Through ‘LEKGOTLA’, the African culture uses the saying ‘Ubuntu meaning, “I am because WE exist, if there was no WE there would be no I”, whereas the western culture says, “I think therefore I am”. The African culture exists as members of a group as unique individuals.

According to Mrs. Viljoen, if leaders adopt an ‘Ubuntu’ culture, it would be the same as adopting an authentic leadership culture. ‘Ubuntu’ brings positive energy and makes employees feel that they are part of the company because they know that, “I am because WE are”.