The Executive Education programme at CERP held a pilot workshop titled ‘Policy Skills and Leadership’ on 2nd January 2020. The participants included over twenty professionals from the public and development sectors.
The session was opened by Ms. Aamna Aqil, Lead Executive Education at CERP, followed by modules led Mr. Maroof A. Syed, President and CEO CERP, Dr. Adnan Qadir Khan, Co-founder and Board Member CERP, and Mr. Shahzad Bhatti, former faculty of negotiation skills and theory at Harvard Law School. The training focused on analytical tools and frameworks, with a key emphasis on soft skills including policy skills, leadership, and negotiation as a means of establishing effective collaboration to aid the process of policy reform. The workshop also involved lively interactive sessions delving into the idea of leadership in adaptive environments, with participants reflecting on their past leadership challenges as well as the best leadership approaches they had encountered. In discussing proactive negotiation, partakers considered scenarios of potential conflict and engaged in role-play exercises designed around policy and administrative challenges.
Dr. Adnan Khan explored skills for smart policy design and implementation in his talk, touching on the concept of heresthetics, as well as emphasising the importance of being reform oriented for bringing about meaningful transformative change. The workshop concluded with engaging anecdotes from the participants, as well as reflections on the need to focus on the challenges to coalition building, and the importance of connecting the skills and content learned with the respective organisational contexts.
An extended three-day workshop on Policy, Skills and Leadership is upcoming, scheduled to take place from 15th to 17th April 2020, with open enrollment, details of which can be found here. If you would like further information, connect with us at contact@cerp.org.pk.