Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University

Mr. Etsko Odilo Francisicus Schuitema (Leading Partner, Schuitema Human Excellence Group) gives a lecture at a RCAPS Seminar:

On Tuesday November 11, a RCAPS sponsored seminar was held at APU.

The seminar welcomed Mr. Etsko Odilo Francisicus Schuitema (Leading Partner, Schuitema Human Excellence Group). His lecture was titled, "Leading in times of calamitous change".

The RCAPS invited Mr. Etsko Odilo Francisicus Schuitema, Leading Partner of the Schuitema Human Excellence Group on 11th November. His talk was titled Leading in Times of Calamitous Change.
The speaker has had an exposure with the mining industry from a very young age and is very closely associated with the South African chamber of mining. He is noted for his eloquence as a speaker in South African academic circles.
In his talk, Mr. Schuitema pointed out that the group he works with, The Chambers of Mines Research Organizations, has developed an idea about what constitutes an ideal leadership. The repercussion of this idea, he claimed, will form a golden thread in all disciplines of social sciences and even all sections of humanities.

In the beginning, the speaker elaborated on conventional structures of business firms. He observed that success of an enterprise is measured in terms of the degree of surpluses it produces. Thus any group succeeds to the degree individual members in that group give for the group cause. And therefore the subordination of the individual to the group cause is the key behind the success of the group. Thus, leading an organization is to be based on the following premise: the organization structure works efficiently when it is supportive to the core idea of an individual giving more to the organization than he will take.
The speaker then threw an open question on what quality we can choose a boss to work under. The audience came up with different answers, many of which centered on the concept of altruism.
Elaborating the concept, the speaker then spoke of the idea of caring growth. This can be expressed in a nutshell as: people tend to follow the leader who they perceive will help them grow. For an imaginary worker, the main motivation for working under a certain imaginary boss is: he wants to work for a boss who grows him. Caring growth is the fundamental concept behind all growth. The first instance of caring growth that an individual experiences in life is the parent child relationship. Parents are the big authorities, the children are subordinates. However, in this relationship parents serve the subordinates. In an analogy in the workplace, the boss plays the parent, i.e. the boss actually serves the subordinates. In 1987 the speaker and his colleagues surveyed the mining industry. In that year 4 managers were executed in a brutal way. This led to a fierce fight between two tribes who worked in a mine shaft. The new manager, who was appointed during this crisis, went to the hostel that was a virtual battlefield, unarmed and spoke personally to the battling subordinates. He intervened personally into the feuds and he managed to restore order in the shaft with amazing speed. He gave this example to prove that the forces of altruism and care actually hold the structure of an organization together, or restore is in times of trouble.
Mr. Schuitema concluded his talk by saying that there are 2 universal variables involved in human interaction, Get and Give. If an individual focuses on the Get variable, satisfaction is never possible. Every time one engages the world with the Get variable as objective, he is in a position of weakness. Every time one engages the world on the basis of the Give variable, he is in a position of strength. Therefore the success of life and peace and harmony in society depends on mutual benefit based on the best interest of the other which in turn fulfills one’s own interest.

Report:CHAKRABORTY Abhik (GSAD, 1 first year) RCAPS Student Staff

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