THE Board of Directors of the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) has contracted internationally known business development and communications consultant, Sandra Ann Baptiste to facilitate a one-day workshop titled “Leadership Excellence, Inspiring and Motivating your Team for Peak Performance”.

The workshop is aimed at improving the skills and competencies of new and seasoned business professionals (managers and supervisors) who wish to learn about cutting-edge leadership techniques, and will be held on Tuesday January 15, 2013 at the Regency Suites Hotel at 98 Hadfield Street, Georgetown.
Ms. Baptiste says that mastering leadership techniques first requires a commitment to become a transformational leader who understands and practises collaboration, team building and effective communication.
She insists that leadership by example is the key to creating a cohesive workforce of people who share and participate in an institution’s forward trajectory.
Leadership development programmes have been proven to boost employee morale and improve productivity through faster generation of new ideas.
Ultimately, excellent leadership techniques equip both seasoned and new leaders with requisite skills to face their challenges with greater confidence from an enhanced knowledge base. Naturally, this generally leads to a healthy ‘bottom line’.
Participants at the January seminar will learn, among other things, about the fundamentals of successful leadership, including the difference between leadership and management, and the less obvious characteristics of a modern-day leader.
Ms. Baptiste has said that the new techniques will enhance the participants’ “people skills”, and teach them to become nurturing leaders who are able to build and sustain ‘winning teams’.
Ms. Baptiste is a home-grown expert in international marketing, performance management and customer relations practices. She is the Founder and Chief Executive Consultant of CARIGOLD Associates, a group of Guyanese professionals currently involved in training and consultation in North America and across the Caribbean.
In the recent past, she managed projects for the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (World Bank). She was the communications consultant for several other projects with the European Union’s Caribbean Office and the Caribbean Export Development Agency (CEDA) that is currently organising a series of programmes for the GMSA and other local BSOs and NGOs.
Ms. Baptiste has also served in Canada as Public Relations Chair and Executive Board Member of the Ontario Chapter of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO).
In the mid-1990s, she was credited with establishing and heading Guyana’s agency to promote and attract foreign investment, GO-INVEST. She later became the consultant selected by the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) to manage an institutional strengthening project to reorganize and upgrade the Association’s capabilities.
This undertaking was funded by the Canada-based CPEC.
She subsequently received commendations from both the GMSA and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce for her contributions to private sector development in Guyana.
The ten-year-old CARIGOLD Agency is based in Barbados. Her international media and communications career has included reporting and editing for print and broadcast media institutions, including for the BBC, CBC in Toronto, and for the Barbados-based Caribbean News Agency (CANA), for which she was awarded for promoting Caribbean integration.
Ms. Baptiste holds an M.A. degree in International Journalism, a Post-Graduate Diploma in International Relations, and Diplomas in Business Management and International Trade from the City University in England and the University of the West Indies. She also possesses a Canadian “Teacher of Adults” Certificate, and is trained to teach Human Resources Management, Small Business Development, and International Investment Promotion.
Ms Baptiste is a member of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and the Forum for International Trade Training (FITT) in Canada.
This is the second training programme that Ms. Baptiste will facilitate for the GMSA. In April 2012, she facilitated a one-day seminar, “Successful Exhibiting”, for representatives/owners of companies that were preparing for the 2012  Building Exposition (July) and the national GuyExpo (September/October).
Business and social leaders should contact the GMSA’s Secretariat in Waterloo St., Cummingsburg, Georgetown for further information on the upcoming leadership seminar.