Zealous lecturer and short course developer moving and shaking the world

Desiree Gases

Reinhardt Stanley is a born Namibian from South African descent. Stanley has 20+ years of experience in the hospitality industry. He has been fortunate enough to work in several other countries in Africa and Europe. After studying hotel management, Stanley pursued a certification in wine as this was a passion at that stage of his life.

Over the years as Stanley climbed up the ranks towards executive management and GM levels, he had added several qualifications in the areas of management sciences such as project management and managing high-performance teams through management development programmes. Currently Stanley is lecturing, which is something that he never really had imagine himself doing, “although I’ve always had a passion for mentoring, coaching, training people and imparting knowledge.”

As a lecturer and course developer, Stanley is responsible to firstly impart knowledge in a way that not only gets students a qualification, but ultimately makes them employable.

“The other philosophy or agenda I have is to try and create entrepreneurs for the future. Developing short courses is another aspect of the job and this entails sourcing the most relevant and newest information on the topic especially now in this Covid-19 age where we have to think differently and almost reinvent how we do things.”

Stanley ended up with this job mostly by chance. he was in the process of acquiring his own property (small boutique hotel) before Covid and still aspires to own his own hotel one day to settle him into retirement. Stanley would like to run a big organisation as that is where he can make a big impact on people’s lives.

“For now, I intend to be the best I can be. Deliver to the best of my ability and challenge myself to do more than what is expected and make this school a success,” Stanley says.

“By grace the deal never went through as that would have posed a challenge as you can imagine. It was my lovely wife, Mill, who had the wisdom to send in my CV for the position so needless to say that i was very surprised to get the call and the rest is history.

“The highlight for me is actually being in the lecture room and imparting knowledge. On a day-to-day basis after classes it’s all about preparing for the next day and making sure that my presentations, notes and any other material are ready.”

Being a new school, things are very busy with administration and development of many things, so this comes with a lot of reading and reviewing of documents. Stanley’s biggest challenge in Namibia specifically was to deliver on international standards required by the company while his team did not necessarily possess the needed skills and knowledge.

“In saying that I think that for me personally it was always great satisfaction and gave me a great sense of achievement (although in private) to transform a team through playing on every individual’s potential in achieving set goals.

“I love my family and talking to my kids. I love spending quiet time with my creator and I love working with people and being able to assist or help or learn someone something and even better to be able to learn from others.”

What moves and inspires him is when he sees people getting up from the ashes. “When people get out of a dismal circumstance and make a success out of their lives... and success is different to everyone so one needs to look at what it means for that person to better their own situation.”

Stanley’s advice to the youth is: “Do not be scared to work hard. Master every job, every position and every season in your life before moving onto the next. Try not to skip levels to the top as the gaps and cracks will show up there. Also find your passion and do what you love as that is an indication of your purpose. Please don’t try to change your purpose for the sake of money.”