As part of its Capacity Building programme, the WCO organized a Leadership and Management Development (LMD) workshop from 18 until 28 April 2017 in Mangochi, Malawi.  Twenty senior and promising middle managers of the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) were inspired to strengthen their leadership and management capacities, as well as their personal effectiveness to drive reforms within their organization.

In the LMD workshop participants learned that knowing yourself and self-awareness, managing strategically, people management, outstanding communication skills, negotiation skills and change management are very important to address the organisation’s future challenges.  The participating managers were very participative and showed a strong motivation and commitment to know, improve and manage themselves as well as to better understand others in order to have more influence and impact.  The courage it takes to demonstrate these leadership skills was one of the important themes in this LMD workshop.

According to their recently updated vision statement, MRA strives to be the best performing Revenue Authority, one of the reasons why in this LMD workshop managers from the different divisions of MRA participated.  Another important element of MRA’s strategy is excellent service delivery, for which the foundations and requirements were discussed at several moments during the workshop, especially on the topic of integrity.

During the opening ceremony of the workshop, the Deputy Commissioner General of MRA, Mrs. Roza Mbilizi, and the Commissioner Customs, Mr. Fatch Valeta, stressed on the importance of improving leadership and management skills for driving MRA’s reforms.  As part of the closing ceremony, participants testified on the progress they made during the LMD workshop, after which Mrs. Mbilizi closed the workshop with a personal testimony from her side.  She emphasized how the importance of knowing yourself, being aware, having the courage to be different and demanding concrete results, define her own leadership style and how proud and happy she was recognizing this same development in the participating managers.

The LMD workshop was made possible with the financial support of the Finnish government, as part of the project to progress the TFA in the ESA Region.

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