Conversations for Conservation - NZCMC Trains NGO Leaders in Pohnpei

As part of fulfilling our responsibilities as global citizens, every year NZCMC likes to do a piece of work in a developing country.

Last year, we were invited to deliver our Professional Mentoring & Workplace Coaching Skills course to a group of 12 managers and leaders of conservation NGOs (non governmental organisations) in Pohnpei.

Pohnpei is a small island in the tropical North Pacific and one of the four states in the Federated States of Micronesia, along with Chuuk, Kosrae and Yap. It took 5 flights and 2 days to get there.

The workshop was made possible by a grant from the Hewlett Packard Foundation who have invested heavily in building the capacity of conservation organisations throughout the Pacific. Sustaining and preserving the natural environments so precious to the people of these small Pacific nations is a key issue for the region, and impacts on both economic and community development.

Participants spent 5 days discussing the realities of leading and managing in the Pohnpei context and worked with tools and techniques to enable them to take a coaching approach to leadership. The size of the tasks these organisations take on is huge and if anyone needs everyone working to their full potential it is an organisation like the Island Food Community. Their mission is to get people to eat local. Their outcomes are primarily health related (there are huge problems with diabetes in FSM) but their work is also impacting on economic and environmental sustainability. They play a key role in educating people to prepare and consume traditional foods that are grown locally. We learnt a lot about the nutritional benefits of local dishes during the week - the lunches were catered by this passionate group of women and served in traditional vessels like banana bark and woven baskets.

The coaching approach to leading was challenging for some of the mature leaders on the course who were used to a more directive mode of managing staff and volunteers. Through a series of practice sessions and demonstrations, the tone and flavour of coaching approaches for both developmental and performance improvement conversations caught on with most attaining a proficiency in methods that were fairly new to them. ‘Conversations for conservation' was the theme for the week as participants were exposed to a toolkit for the wide range of workplace conversations they had to navigate.

One comment on the participant evaluation summed up the sentiment of the group on the final day:
‘Thank you for your time and effort. Please note that you have changed the norms of some organizations, including mine, when you leave Pohnpei.'

We then got to spend 3 days in a beautiful rain forest eco-hotel (The Village Hotel) whilst waiting for the plane home.