Leadership and team development at Ministry of Justice in Kosovo

On invitation from Vector Europe I’ve spent 5 wonderful days with extremely energetic and bright managers and their teams in Ministry of Justice in Pristina.We run a two part programme: one designed to improve team effectiveness and the second part to develop and up-skill newly appointed management team.
I found a team effectiveness extremely interesting. Most of the people who work together have known each other for a long time. Most of them are good friends outside work. It’s hard to understand that if you come from London where you can spend whole day in town not bumping into anyone you know but if you come from the same region like I do it all makes perfect sense. Because the population is much smaller (comparatively speaking) and much less mobile (again, compared to London) people get to know each other much better and quicker. In addition you have the networks from your parents and other family members so it’s not surprising that when you meet an older person they ask you about your family as they’re trying to find a common link.
Anyhow, I digress slightly. The point is that from a professional stand it was great to see what team effectiveness can do in such a different environment and how indeed effective it can be. What I experienced was that when you provide people with structure to articulate and deal with issues it’s always very useful and in many cases lead to many “Aha!” moments. One team in particular benefited a lot from the team effectiveness exercises and they were able to address the issues which all of them recognised but didn’t know how to express or deal with without compromising their off work relationship as well. The other three days were spent with the managers working on their leadership skills. We used the mixture of self-awareness, teaching and brief personal coaching sessions.

I had a brilliant time. It was very interesting to see how these concepts work in a very different culture to the UK corporate world. As I come from the area (Bosnia) I was keen to see if a society that faces so many transitional issues will be receptive to the notion of people development. To my great delight they were very receptive and I went home feeling elated! My vision is that RTA Coaching will expand working in the region, hopefully in Bosnia too! Fingers crossed.

Pristina is lovely albeit not very intuitive in terms of the structure of the city. There are constructions sites everywhere as Pristina is trying to accommodate a growing population. Saying that I had most wonderful coffee everywhere I went (see picture), the food was wonderful especially see food which is surprising for a in land country. The city shows entrepreneurial nature of Kosovars who cater very well to the large number of internationals - you can eat perfectly nice Thai, sushi and French food in a bistro straight from a French village.

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