At a company with such an international reach as Uhde it is no surprise that the spotlight has increasingly turned on global engineering, global contracting and global networking, nor that ever greater emphasis is being placed on management skills especially in an international context. It is against this background that Uhde has devised the "International Leadership Development Programme", or for short ILDP, an intensive training programme for future managers. It focuses not only on staff leadership, but also on interpersonal and intercultural leadership skills and handling projects which extend beyond national borders and organisations. "We set up the international training programme at Uhde this year," said Katharina Kusenberg, who is responsible for staff development at Uhde. "The pilot project involving 14 international participants from Uhde companies around the world, including Mexico, Russia, Egypt, South Africa, Australia, India and Germany, is currently underway." The programme comprises three one-week training modules within the space of a year, supplemented by project work. The first module took place in Germany in June 2008. After providing an introduction to the programme, this week focused on self-management and motivation training.
The Executive Board members Klaus Schneiders and Dr. Michael Thiemann took time out to appear as guest speakers and interact with the participants. The second module, which will deal with intercultural leadership and people leadership, will take place at Uhde Engineering Egypt in Cairo in October 2008. The third module on team management in Dortmund in March 2009 will round off the programme by presenting the results of the project work carried out by the participants in international teams over a period of several months. In total, there are three of these teams and they were formed at the start of the programme. The first team is studying the question "Is the second generation of biofuels for Asia and Africa a business area for Uhde?", the second team is exploring the area "Uhde in the next decade" and the third team is examining "harmonising the quality management systems of Uhde Shedden and Uhde Dortmund for joint projects". "Each team is assisted by an expert and has an Executive Board mentor. The result of the teamwork is not the only thing that interests us, but above all what the team members learn from this task," explains Rik de Jong, who is supervising the projects. "As each team is international, employees from Uhde companies around the globe are able to get to know each other and work together on a project. This helps team-and networking," Ms Kusenberg adds.
So far the feedback on the ILDP from both the participants and the Executive Board has been extremely enthusiastic and the project work is in full swing.
We are looking forward to the results.