News

Yemen, January 2009

Teambuilding Workshops for Ministry of Education

In December 2008 IMA was delighted to work with the Ministry of Education in Yemen to deliver teambuilding workshops. The workshops came about after two senior members from the Yemen Ministry of Education attended our scheduled course on Effective Management in Bangkok in May 2008.  Subsequently, IMA worked with GOPA to deliver workshops for the Leadership team of the Ministry and for three other teams who work in the Ministry.

It was quite a challenge for us all as we needed to present the workshops in Arabic; however, the materials were very well translated prior to the workshop and the two IMA facilitators were joined in all the workshops by a highly experienced Arabic speaking facilitator.

As ever our approach was highly interactive, providing a mixture of solution focused conceptual frameworks and practical techniques they could use in their challenging context of managing cross-sectoral teams to plan and deliver an integrated Annual Work Plan. The approach was very well received and the energy levels were very high throughout. In their words, these frameworks and techniques provided “new spectacles with which to view and overcome old challenges”.

In total, there were 4 workshops: one for the Ministry Leadership Team, attended by the Minister of Education, and for three of the teams involved in planning and delivering the Annual Work Plan. One of these workshops included all three teams working together, thus providing excellent opportunity to enhance understanding of their differing perspectives. We focused especially on building on their current successes to enhance team working within and across these teams and so overcome some of the conceptual and logistical challenges they faced.
Each of the participants received a workbook detailing these frameworks and practical techniques. We also provided detailed reports for all of the workshops outlining the sessions, and our recommendations for sustaining the work they had done.

The feedback from all 4 workshops was highly positive. We were delighted to work with all the staff from the Ministry, and learn about the Yemen culture; we wish them every success in their future work together.

To see the photos from this course, visit our Flickr page on this link.