As part of its Capacity Building programme, the WCO organized a Leadership and Management Development (LMD) workshop from 19 May – 9 June 2017 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Twenty senior and promising middle managers of the General Department of Customs and Excise (GDCE) of Cambodia were inspired to strengthen their leadership and management capacities, as well as their personal effectiveness to drive reforms within their organisation.

In the LMD workshop participants learned that knowing yourself and self-awareness, strategic and people management, outstanding communication skills, negotiation skills and change management are very important to address the organisation’s future challenges. The participating managers represented very different areas and different levels of the organization, but they shared their willingness to learn and improve. The participants will have a very challenging task to change and modernize the management culture of their organization. Especially replacing the friendly but somewhat autocratic way of managing, by a method based on self-management and influencing and impacting others through better understanding of the other, were intensely discussed and reflected upon.

During the LMD Workshop first drafts of the future vision statement of GDCE were discussed. It became clear that GDCE is not only modernizing the revenue collection side, but also ready to improve facilitation, service delivery and internal effectiveness and efficiency. Many of the foundations and requirements to get there were discussed at several moments during the workshop, especially on the topic of integrity. 

The opening and closing ceremonies of the workshop were attended by the Director General of GDCE, Dr. Kun Nhem, Deputy Directors, JICA Advisor on Customs Policy and Administration, Mr. Shigeaki Katsu, as well as by some of the directors and senior managers of GDCE. They stressed the importance of improving leadership and management skills for driving GDCE’s reforms. During the closing ceremony of awarding the certificates and closing speeches, they also witnessed the participant’s feedback, evaluation and personal “take-aways” from the workshop.

The LMD workshop was made possible thanks to the financial support of the CCF Japan.

For more information on the WCO Leadership and Management Development Programme, please contact Capacity.Building@wcoomd.org