Enhancing Conflict Management and Leadership Skills

The LEAD “Leadership and Conflict Management Skills for Electoral Stakeholders” training, is designed to accommodate not only CSOs, but also electoral management bodies, governments and staff from the security and justice sector to name a few. The LEAD methodology aims to strengthen the conflict management, mediation, dialogue and leadership capacities of stakeholders and also support legitimacy of an array of stakeholders, and particularly vulnerable development actors such as women, grassroots organisations or youth. A new and particularly valuable feature of the LEAD training is its focus on stress-management both for individual leaders but also for organisations as a whole. Beneficiaries will learn stress management techniques meant to increase the level of control over the well-being during periods of potential elevated levels of stress. This is an area, which is of great importance for key stakeholders during the intense election period to enhance endurance and balance when dealing with high-tension environments and tasks.

Built into the LEAD methodology are the resources and skills to replicate the training methodology and thus guarantee the sustainability of participants’ newly-acquired skill-sets. Through the first step of the LEAD training, carefully selected participants, who hold leadership positions or aspire to be leaders in CSOs, will benefit from a ‘training of trainers’ workshop. In a subsequent cascade training, previously trained persons who have obtained the status of being ‘semi-certified’ will be given the chance to grow into certified trainers. This will then mean they qualify, under the supervision of LEAD certifying trainers, to train their peers in the LEAD curriculum. Not only will this help to keep costs down over time, but it also increases the legitimacy of particular stakeholders, most notably trainers from civil society, who can go on to train colleagues and also a wide range of stakeholders including EMBs.

Through the LEAD curriculum, high-quality leadership development becomes affordable and accessible via specific customisation for each beneficiary. In this project, the LEAD is customised for the five target groups trained on three separate occasions and targeted at strengthening their conflict management and mediation skills especially in relation to electoral dispute resolution and electoral violence prevention, while at the same time providing them with the resources and skills to replicate this training and thus guarantee the sustainability of the Project during the post-electoral period. Through the Training of Trainer component, 26 persons drawn for a range of professional fields will be trained over 3 days. Thanks to the replication component, these previously trained persons will become ‘semi-certified’ and then be able to carry LEAD cascade training occasions in all 11 districts in Zanzibar, reach over 260 persons, under the supervision of ECES trainers, and become fully certified at the end of the training scheme.