UOB Leadership Retreat February 2013...

Group Photo with some of the UOB leaders

Two nights and three days (February 22-24), UOB Leadership Retreat took place at Lake Kivu Serena.  This is the second year of this kind. Managers and higher ranking officers all joined except three who were sick. They totaled 33. It represented approximately one tenth of total number of staff working at UOB, including temporary staff of 60.

Leadership Retreat includes praise, worship, thanksgiving, testimonials, fellowship, team building and learning. Learning has a theme and this year it was "Lead Like Jesus."

I has the privilege of leading a 6-hour session on Lead Like Jesus, based on a book with the same title, authored by Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges. According to them, a leader is anyone who influences the thinking, development, or actions of others, including parents, siblings, and friends, as well as coaches, congresspeople, and CEOs. In other words, at some time or other we all are called on to be leaders. Ken and Phil assert that the greatest leadership role model is Jesus as a servant leader.

Praise and Prayer

The workshop was a great blessing to us all. We all did Lead Like Jesus Readiness Exam and evaluated our leadership styles using the Evaluation Form and Action Planning Guide in the book. It is my prayer that all of us apply at least a few lessons that we learned to our daily life to be like Jesus in our leadership roles.

Also, we practiced team exercise with group discussion and presentation on the 2013 spiritual and management theme of "TRANSFORM." Nine teams worked on their assigned themes to respond to three questions: where are we? where do we need/want to go? and what do we need to do to get there? They all worked hard and well to come up with their presentations that were evaluated on the basis of substance, styles and sensitivity to time limits. These will be documented and shared with them all.

Team Presentation

Also, we all agreed to be more proactive in reaching out to other leaders to learn about what they are doing, rather than waiting for a training session put together, and to be available and responsive to such requests for mutual learning. It will help us form and develop a learning culture and learning community. May the Lord bless each and every one of us in realizing and accepting the leadership opportunities to be a privilege that may not be neglected or abused.



Of course, the foods and fellowship were priceless. - Jeffrey