| Grant Profile: |
| Project Title: |
Communication and Leadership Capacity for National Renewal |
| PCF/LICUS/SPF: |
LICUS |
Status: |
Closed |
| File Number: |
51
| Region: |
EAP |
| Sector: |
Law and justice and public administration |
Country: |
East Timor |
| FY approved: |
2007 |
Grant Theme : |
Public sector governance |
| Keyword(s): |
Leadership training |
Approved Amount: |
$1,078,100.00 |
| Related Documents |
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Grant Recipient:
Bank-executed |
Grant Purpose:
The objective of this grant is to support training and capacity building in leadership and communication in Timor Leste. Specifically, the grant aims to support the improvement of skills (at the individual level), signals (at the managerial and leadership levels) and systems (at the unit level), in order to enhance effective communication and leadership during the recovery and reconciliation effort in Timor-Leste.
The intended beneficiaries of the project include formal and informal leaders of state and non-state groups, senior managers within state institutions, and non-state actors and community representatives.
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Grant Activities:
The grant is composed of three main components:
Component 1: Leadership Capacity for National Renewal:
(1) Transformative Workshops for Leadership and follow-on coaching
This activity involves workshops, based on a successful model used in the 2001 Governance in Transition workshops, to both mobilize senior leadership coaching expertise and provide follow on coaching. The workshops will include mixed groups of formal and informal leaders.
(2) Skills Workshops in Communications, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Team-building and Managing, and other Leadership-Critical Skills Sets
This activity involves targeted shorter workshops and training interventions to enable leaders to acquire and improve specific skills sets.
(3) Strategic Considerations of Leadership and Communication in State-Building
This activity includes a series of discussions with leaders on the strategic state-building challenges that have manifested during Timor-Leste's independence transition and recent crisis.
(4) Sub-grants to Support Leadership Training Through Existing National Capacity
This activity provides resources for sub-grants to be channeled to non-governmental organizations, community groups, or government units who demonstrate experience, meet designated criteria and are approved by the Leadership SubGrant Selection Committee. Through the sub-grants, existing initiatives and new projects in the area of leadership and communication will be supported.
Component 2: Communication for National Renewal
(1) Institutional Information and Communications Stocktaking
This activity explores the current patterns and flows of institutional information in four communication channels. It will identify perceived gaps in communications, information sharing, impediments to communication, and describe current staffing responsibilities. The stocktaking will cover the: (i) Office of the Prime Minister, (ii) Office of the President, (iii) Parliament, and (iv) Sensitive Line and Critical Service Delivery ministries.
(2) Training for Chiefs of Staff, Directors, and other designated staff
This activity involves a series of two-hour training sessions and facilitated discussions for a group of approximately 10-15 senior staff to enhance their formal and informal communication skills.
(3) Technical Assistance in Re-orientation of Staffing and Systems
Under this activity, participating units will sign a Memorandum of Understanding outlining their commitment and responsibilities under the project. It is anticipated that the specific components of this activity for each unit would be customized based on details learned in Activities 1 and 2.
(4) Training of Working Level Staff
This activity involves a series of training sessions for staff at different levels on topics ranging from correspondence, filing, and maintaining phone lists (for staff assistants) to outreach and information dissemination via media and civil society networks (for mid-senior level staff).
(5) Joint Review of Training with Participating Units
In this activity, the communications team will mobilize a series of discussions with senior staff and operational staff in the units to jointly assess changes made and challenges remaining in the areas of communication. Based on the findings, each unit will produce an action plan.
(6) Sub-grants to Support Communications Training Through Existing National Capacity
This activity provides resources for sub-grants to non-governmental organizations, community groups, or government units. These sub-grants will serve as a catalyst for communications improvements and help to ensure a sustainable channel for communications efforts after the end of the grant-financed activities.
Component 3: Coordination Support for Communication and Leadership Capacity
This component will finance:
(1) the Program Coordinator who will serve as the general liaison point with the recipient institutions and implementing partners in order to promote synergy and prevent duplication or miscommunication across the diverse activities envisioned
(2) the cost of the independent evaluation and the final audit.
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Lessons Learned:
In May 2006, after several increasingly unstable months, Timor-Leste entered a complex political, social and security crisis. The violence which erupted was attributed to a lack of communication and an autocratic leadership style. The Leadership and Communication Capacity for National Renewal Program was launched to address these governance challenges, with the main objectives to induce systemic behavioral and perceptual change at the individual and institutional level through enhancing leadership ability across state and non-state actors, as well as communication, information sharing, and trust within and amongst state institutions, civil society, and the public. To achieve these objectives, the program has established two components: Leadership and Communication trainings/retreats, and a sub-grants component. The beneficiaries of the project include formal and informal leaders of state and non-state groups, senior managers within state institutions, and non-state actors and community representatives.
The program has supported three multi-day workshops for a total of 109 participants. Despite assassination attempts targeting the President and Prime Minister in February 2008, the trainings were considered important and worth attending by beneficiaries. The spacing of the different training modules, however, as well as the number of trainings, were highlighted as challenges by participants. One key lesson learned in this aspect is that training modules should be delivered over a short period of time, with a clear understanding how they fit together, to ensure sustained interest and participation. A series of trainings incorporated in a program is an unusual, yet highly desirable approach to increase impact. Ensuring that all participants are aware of this particular multi-workshop approach and its benefits, as well as carrying out the workshops in a short period of time, is important to project results and sustainability.
Participants in the workshops have also highlighted the importance of bringing leaders from different sectors and age groups together in the trainings, including representatives of civil society. Although rare in Timorese culture, mingling across sectors and age groups was outlined as highly desirable by participants, and deepening and maintaining contacts with a variety of other stakeholders was welcome by all beneficiaries. Inviting more district participants to the trainings and also bringing trainings to the people in the districts was also highlighted as important during the workshops.
The project provided grants to six local and international NGOs for programs that strengthen communication and leadership at the grassroots level. The selection of grantees observed Timor-Leste’s key governance challenges. Projects covered a variety of topics, to support activities centered around access to information, judicial reform, and democratization and decentralization. Ensuring that implementing agencies identify possible linkages to create synergies and discuss lessons learned and challenges came out as key lesson learned from the implementation of this component.
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News:
At the heart of the development challenge is the building of effective states – that is, states capable of delivering vital public to its citizens. Leaders of the state and its institutions, the private sector, communities, and civil society are the entry point to operationalizing a constructive engagement within and between these institutions, and to inspiring individuals and collectivities toward fundamental change. A large body of empirical evidence shows that governance – how power is acquired and exercised in a society through the mobilization and management of public resources and functions – plays a critical role in any effort to improve a country’s performance across all development dimensions, including growth. Leaders are at the center, determining opportunities for or constraints to development by how they exercise power and make policy choices. In this context, leaders are critical in both promoting institutional change and modeling public and private behavior that reinforces accountability, integrity, and institutional constraint on power.
Recognizing the importance of leadership, especially in fragile and conflict-affected countries, the Post-Conflict Fund and the LICUS Trust Fund have funded a range of different leadership capacity development interventions using a range of entry points, diagnostics and approaches. Leadership development is still a fairly new area of focus for the World Bank. A Global Leadership Review was therefore initiated to maximize learning, identify lessons learned, and suggest strategic and operational implications for future Bank engagement in leadership capacity development in fragile and conflict-affected countries.
The Global Leadership Review reviewed eight projects. The leadership projects were implemented in the Central African Republic, Timor-Leste, Burundi, and Tajikistan between 2000 and 2008. All the projects were intended to develop leadership in fragile and conflict-affected countries. However, they varied greatly in the design and the type and degree of change in leadership they sought. The projects all had different target audiences, ranging from state leaders to civil society leaders and youth leaders.
The Global Leadership Review found that the projects were generally very well received by participants and observers. At a minimum, the projects have increased participants’ awareness of skills, behaviors, and attitudes that could help them to strengthen the institutions of state and society to prevent the emergence of conflict. At a maximum, the projects supported the application of these new skills, behaviors, and attitudes in situations, groups and organizations playing a critical role in moving the war-to-peace transition forward. Also, the review found that impact of the interventions was greatest at the individual level, when participants had the motivation, knowledge, opportunity, and authority to apply what they learned. At the group and organizational levels, the impact of an intervention seemed to be greatest when it trained a critical mass of people who were in constant communication with one another and could reinforce the new skills, attitudes and behavior.
One example is from a project in Timor-Leste, where project participants holding positions of authority found it considerably easier to understand and resolve disputes after having participated in the training.
Some other key findings coming out of the Global Leadership Review were related to the issue of monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Without adequate and appropriate M&E the value of funding is reduced and the risk of unintended consequences of interventions is increased. The absence of systematic and informed oversight, support, and accountability of interventions during the project implementation phase significantly reduces the knowledge available to staff implementing leadership development interventions, as well as the requirements for project monitoring and reporting that might increase the effectiveness of interventions.
Other findings and recommendations of the review relate to intervention strategy and design, implementation arrangement and impact. More information can be found in the report available in the Key Documents section at http://www.worldbank.org/fragilityandconflict.
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