The following is a blog by Farhod Nabiyulloev, Press and Public Affairs Officer
As part of the first week back at work in the New Year, I and some of my colleagues at the Embassy took part in several training sessions, organised by the Foreign Office’s Regional Training Centre in Dubai. We held our sessions in the beautiful Ismaili Centre in Dushanbe, one of only eight such buildings in the world.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office invests heavily in learning and development opportunities for staff. This is an important element of the FCO’s Diplomatic Excellence programme, which aims to make the British diplomatic service (combining UK-based and local staff) the best in the world.
We began the training with sessions on performance management and personal effectiveness, which helped to improve our skill with time management, planning tasks and implementing them, and also demonstrated how to prioritise different objectives. I found this really valuable and noticed how such skills are important in my work at the Embassy. I often work on a number of different areas at once in my job; for example, in the morning I could be writing an article for our website, while at the same time keeping our social media channels up to date, when suddenly I have to respond to an urgent press enquiry which might need the input of the Ambassador, political section or visa section (or even all three!).
The final session of our training was the best of the lot. Entitled ‘Team Village’, this session brought together almost the entire staff of the Embassy. The training covered how we can work more effectively as a team – not just within the different sections of the embassy, but across the whole mission. The exercises helped me to understand the pressures and challenges that are present in different jobs within the Embassy, and got me thinking about the weak and strong aspects about our work as an entire team. I also really enjoyed learning more about my colleagues outside of the office – I can only begin to imagine Jack Nicholson playing our DHM in a film of his life.
As press and public affairs officer at the Embassy, I’d like to end on a final plug: did you know that our embassy is on both Facebook and Twitter? You can click on the links to follow or like us – and please tell us what you’d like to see on both channels.
The training was definitely a very interesting, informative and fun experience for all of us. I will look forward to more training where all of us can participate.
By the way, nice pictures!
Dear Mr. Farhod Nabiyullev,
dear Mr. Robin Ord-Smith,
1st. of all a big THANK YOU for giving us – the readers – these 5 links in re. of additional ( background ) informations about Tajikistan and “Trainee – Work” of the FCO. It was also very interesting – even if only for me – of how the training “Sessions” at the FCO ‘s Training Center in Dubai were/are organized. Even if they were in your case actually held in Dushanbe. But – dear Sirs – there is 1 fact that impressed me most of all : These last “Sessions” which you ‘ve described as “Team – Village”.Remarkable to me are some words of you: “…to understand the pressure and challenges ….” of working in a, I guess , team. Or in your words : An “Entire Team “. Really interesting. So, thanks for your very proper report.
BW, Ingo-Steven Wais, Stuttgart/Wuerttemberg