Neil with a group of Bahrain's Future leaders at the Oil & Gas Academy
The other week I had a request to send some slides to a former boss who had lost his copy in an IT disaster! Having had the same problem myself I happily obliged. I searched my old external hard drives and found what Mark wanted and also a load of other material from 11 years running Leadership programmes in Bahrain.
The memories flooded back, happy and sad, and I thought I would share some with you in this 440th Blog! The first was a group of students who I was asked to train in "Leadership" . I gave them some theory and then a practical task ( Pyramid from Northgate) so they could put what they had learnt into practice. The task involves making a decision based in a load of data and then making a presentation accompanied by a scale model and sales slogan. The leader has to allocate the tasks based on peoples ability, co-ordinate their work and motivate them to complete everything within the deadline. After everything was finished the girls said the boys wanted to know if they could have a hug which I duly obliged when I presented their certificates after lunch.
As well as the Leadership Training I ran during the week I was often called upon to run series of programmes for specific departments at the weekends. I spent many happy Saturdays running customer care programmes for our Hospital in Awali for the Nurses and Patient Affairs office. As usual we mixed the theory with practical exercises to work on their communication and teamwork skills ( this example is from MTa Learning) . The MTa kit was also much in use on our Diploma Programme which I ran with Pinoy colleague Hazel for 17 and 18 year old students just joining Bapco from school. One of the highlights was on their first day when we ran an exercise called " Over the Bridge" for 60 students at once using three rooms! Another series of Saturdays was spent running team building programmes for our security officers ( around 60 people over 5 weekends)
As well as work I managed to take some photos for the press and write some blogs in Bahrain!
I saw last week on Facebook that one of the many Chief Executives I served under in Bahrain , Gordon Smith, had his, I think, 70th Birthday. I found this in my archive- a letter from him congratulating him on a year without absence. The bizarre thing was my then Manager tried to mark me down on my appraisal for poor attendance!
During the COV19 Pandemic we were forced to run our training online and I ran a series of sessions for the University of Bahrain as part of their work experience programme. We sent them all the Belbin questionnaire to complete online before the session and then Zainab printed and analysed them all for me and I shared the results with each group, and explained how they could use this information at college and at work.
The programme I was recruited in 2009 to run
I ran 30 groups, sometimes 4 a year, with up to 20 in a group - and the sessions were held in the refinery, Bapco club and Academy ( they kept relocating and renaming the training department, I think I had 10 offices in my 11 years there!)
This programme ended up being 14 days over 6 months and was run for Bapco, Tatweer and Banagas supervisors. They would attend for two days at a time in class ( and in the pandemic on line) and complete a mix of theory and exercises, to build their team and leadership skills. So for example on the first day they did a team exercise ( MTa Over that bridge) and then on the second day Time Management . Then they had a month to complete an assignment to show how they had put their time management skills into practice back at work.
On each session they had a book on the subject covered ( e.g. "Eat that Frog" by Brian Tracy for Time Management ) and a gift to remind them of the topic.
Back in 2011 I got a really good price for our ILM frogs- 500 fills each!
Every ILM delegate, their Manager, delegates on Time Management courses, Overseas scholars, Diploma students , friends, L and D and TDD teams got a frog- but I am told there are still 3000 left! oops.
I also had stress cards made for the stress management session with a special black square which detected your stress level when you touched it
Later these ran out and I ordered 500 more but they forgot to put the special material in the black box- so everyone though they were tense!
Only in Bahrain!
Back in 2010 I ordered these cheap looking satchels for the ILM 2 delegates- then when Peter went back to UK and I took over ILM 3 and found out how much he was spending on gifts etc for his delegates we upgraded the ILM 2 bag and bought leather briefcases for ILM 3!
Special thanks to Ate Hazel for sourcing these for me!
ILM 3 was a big challenge for me, firstly trying to fit it in with my existing workload. Then I had to prepare all the materials, getting guest speakers ( The CEO, DCE, Various Directors and GM's, former delegates), source new exercises from Northgate and MTa ( we had two world Premiers from Mike and the team at Northgate - "Rob the Bank" and " Escape room" so I knew no one had seen those before) and some new DVD's .Then we had to get Project topics, Mentors, and brief them all and monitor their progress, and hole one to one meetings . We also had delegates from Banagas on ILM 3 and had to film many sessions as people could not always be made available.
One of the Challenging exercises Hazel ran from Northgate with Level 3
In the exercise above they had to build the tallest Giraffe with the materials provided ( as well as completing many other smaller tasks). Luckily they had some tall people in each team as well as some short ones. Hazel did a great job resourcing all the materials for each exercise, getting laptops and printers for the business simulations, and running the exercises to give me a break in each programme. the delegates loved to get up and be active rather than sit and listen and of course they were always very competitive. Most importantly the experiential learning helped reinforce the learning and helped the younger delegates practice their leadership skills in a safe environment.
I think, looking back, one of the things that gave me greatest pleasure in my 11 years in Bahrain was meeting someone at interview when they joined Bapco ( e.g. Overseas scholars) , helping them on their summer workshops, see them on ILM 2 when they became supervisors and then ILM 3 as they were promoted to Superintendents.
Special thanks to Mohammed Hussain , the L & D Manager back then, who created the Oil & Gas Academy and making it such a beautiful place to work - and only a kilometer from my home!
So on that note I will sign out and if you want any more memories from my life in Bahrain or anywhere else just let me know
I thought you might also like to see this video that Steve Lever and the team in the Bapco archive made about the history of Awali
If anyone is reading this in Bahrain- Eid Mubarak!
Hello, I am The British Kabayan! Feel free to read my stories.
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