By Tebogo Tabane
Dr PK Smit, an expert with more than 30 years’ experience as a Human Resource Manager in industry and Head of the Tshwane University of Technology’s Department of People Management and Development (PMD) at the Faculty of Management Sciences, has been invited to facilitate a Leadership webinar for the Gauteng Provincial Department of Education on 28 February.
His presentation will focus on a very contentious issue currently - how effective leaders form resilient teams. The presentation will be based extensive research conducted for his Doctoral thesis on Transformational Leadership, Work Engagement and Talent Management and his, are relevant and very important in addressing the concept of leadership.
“This is quite a contentious issue in our industry currently. How do you bring different cultural groups to develop together; how would you manage them; how would you engage with them; how would you make them resilient and make them have compassion in what they do to be successful as a team? We do not work as individuals only, but success lies with the group that you manage,” says Dr Smit.
He adds that the way in which leadership is applied, drives success.” When you build these resilient teams, you should also enable members to be competent and adaptable to different changes your organisation and industry pose every day,” he said.
Dr PK Smit
“I am glad GDE invited TUT to be part of the Leadership webinar because we have the academic knowledge and practical experience to support the need for the Gauteng Department of Education to improve leadership. This will also give us the opportunity to show the professionalism and quality with which we conduct our academic HR programmes”.
Dr Smit said he will use the most current and recently published, as well as double peer-reviewed material to address these leadership issues in his presentation. In addition, through interactive discussions he will create scenarios where attendees of the webinar will discuss and verify these issues based on their current work experience, relate it to the theory provided to them as well as research they have conducted themselves.
He added that the Human Resource Management modules presented in all TUT’s HR qualifications address real-time South African HR problems and link them to industry. This approach gives our students an advantage when they join the labour market and enables them to be appointed in the most prominent HR positions.