UOB Leadership Retreat - Feb. 2012

Listening to a team presentation

Giving feedback on presentation

UOB Leadership Retreat took place in Gisenyi over Friday through Sunday, February 24-26. Gisenyi is at the North-Western corner of Rwanda, bordering DR Congo. Because of its proximity to the Lake Kivu, many people come to Gisenyi for retreats and short leave.

The only business session was held on Saturday. The business session took the form of workshop.

Workshop was the right format for a group of 30 people, all managers or higher level officers.

A team presentation

The morning session centered around the theme of "Customer Care." Customer Care is a buzz word now in Rwanda because the President urges Rwandans to improve the customer care and the Prime Minister is meeting with business leaders to monitor the progress. But we are motivated by our own mission to serve our clients as if we serve the Lord. (Colossians 3:23,24) We have established "The UOB Way" for our own customer care spirit. They are: C.S.A. Ways.

The UOB Way or C.S.A. Ways are:

Courteous -- the basic,
Speedy -- the competitive, and
Accurate -- the credible.

Praying together after team presentation

I am not going to get into details, but all participants took part in the process of identifying the issues, defining the resources and constraints, identifying options for solutions, conducting cost-benefit analyses and concluding and making recommendation for implementation. We will soon have five reports from five teams.

In the afternoon, we also conducted the workshop on five different topics. They will also produce five different reports.

Through this workshop, we learned about problem solving skills, priority management and time management, on top of dealing with the issues that we face now. I was grateful for the opportunity of holding the retreat at a place where we were able to appreciate the facility and food, to rest and to recharge. It is my prayer that the teamwork and morale will be boosted for another great year to be able to honor our Lord at the end.
- Jeffrey