In 2020, Umar was asked to provide leadership facilitation services to the UN Women Country Office Team of 15 people in Kyrgyzstan. The main objective was to empower the core team to mobilize the key players working on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in Kyrgyzstan, including government, civil society, UN agencies, and other players to address the root causes of this complex challenge through a new paradigm. This was delivered as part of UN Women’s global flagship “Spotlight Initiative” to design, deploy and assess programmes and projects differently.

This work involved close engagement with the Country Head for UN Women CO to assess the progress of the team, surface unproductive group dynamics, and co-design actions to empower the core team.

Through an experiential Case-in-Point methodology, Umar helped cover topics as follows:

i) Navigating Reality in Times of Crisis;

ii) Understanding Complexity, Technical vs. Adaptive Challenges

iii) Distinguishing Authority from Leadership and Function of Roles

iv) Art of Diagnosing the Challenges (Observe, Interpret, Intervene)

v) Connecting to Purpose

Tools used: Adaptive Leadership, Adult Learning, Immunity to Change.

Mode: Online.