Management Course Helps Mumbai Clergy Improve Organizational Skills

Mumbai – To improve their organizational and interpersonal skills, several Church leaders of Mumbai, including Cardinal Ivan Dias and other senior bishops and priests, took part in a recent 3–day workshop in management skills.

During this workshop, the church leaders took part in several lectures on topics that ranged from leadership, communication, motivation, planning, organizing and controlling functions, to participation and delegation, time and stress management.

However, this kind of workshop is not new to the Mumbai Archdiocese. And, the participants of this workshop were so impressed by it that they wanted more of the same and, presently, courses are being planned for most of the priests in the Mumbai Archdiocese.

"Priests have to deal with people all the time. New skills can be taught to help them deal more effectively with people," said Bishop Percival Fernandez, who coordinated the seminar–cum–workshop at St Pious Seminary in Goregaon. Church officials also claim that the management courses will help the church run its projects and institutions better.

Fr. Gordon Daniells of the Xavier Institute of Communications, who conducted the session on motivation, said that while dwelling on the theories of motivation, he had to take into consideration that priests are a special class of people. "Priests live with one foot in time and the other in eternity. Spiritual issues play an important role in their lives," he said.

In one session, Fr. Daniells also asked the priests if they could learn from corporate leaders "what they do to keep their employees motivated and adapt some of their ideas to running their institutions".

Management consultant Ruth D'Souza, who lectured on change management, says the feedback she got showed that the clergy was open to change. Priests are normally trained in the scriptures, not in management techniques, so this was a new and exciting experience for them.

Indeed, if this continues, the Catholic community of Mumbai Catholic parishioners of the 116 churches in the city should not be surprised if senior priests and bishops begin spouting the management principles of Peter Drucker or talk of Maslow's ‘hierarchy of needs' while going about their organizational work – all for the glory of God.