Financial institutions are facing challenges to cope with greater uncertainty, complexity and interdependency in all aspects of their operations, both externally and internally. Central banks, as organisations entrusted to play a critical role in ensuring financial and price stability, and growth of their economies, need to possess the authority to carry out their mandates - the agility to weather uncertainty, and the resilience to create sustainable results and impact. These requirements can be fulfilled through effective leadership at all levels in central banks, where individuals and teams are expected to possess strategic leadership in their thinking and actions when they strive for excellent performance.

Translating the needs of leadership into an integrated set of knowledge, skills and attitude, The SEACEN Centre has designed a competency-based learning programme to enhance the effectiveness of leaders to play their roles as strategists, executors, talent managers and human capital developers with high trustworthiness in the context of central banking.

This learning programme was organised in collaboration with the International Centre For Leadership In Finance (ICLIF), a leadership centre established to provide leadership development programmes for senior executives from financial institutions and business corporations in Malaysia, the region and beyond. This one-week intensive learning programme prepared the participants to apply leadership skills at the workplace, supported by individual leadership development goals and implementation plans. The delivery mix included self-assessments, case studies, role-plays, group discussions, games, feedback, action planning and lectures.

Objectives: The key objective of this Course was to help leaders of central banks to expand their capacity to be effective in their leadership roles, setting direction, creating alignment to organisational goals and motivating a high sense of commitment from the people. In the context of central banking, this was be achieved through: (i) self-awareness/discovery of individual leadership effectiveness; (ii) enhancing agility to learn; (iii) gaining insights on the application of leadership competencies in central banking core functions; (iv) identification of developmental needs and commitment to development plans; and (v) taking charge of developmental processes to close gaps in key competency areas.

Resource Persons: The faculty of resource persons was invited from reputable academia and training professional. Experienced leaders from central bank fraternity/regulatory authorities and industry leaders were invited to share their leadership insights and experience with the participants. They included Dr. Sukhdave Singh, Assistant Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia; Dr. Luke Novelli, President and Chief of Intellectual Capital, Leadership Development Resources – Global, who also acted as the Course Director; Lt. Col. (Rtd) Edwin Godfrey Johnson, Trainer of the Institute of Training and Development; Mr. Roshan Thiran, CEO of Leaderonomics; and Mr. Mohd. Adhari Belal Din, Director of the Human Resource Management Department of Bank Negara Malaysia.

Target Group: A total of 38 participants representing 17 institutions of 16 countries attended the Course. Participants were mainly middle-level leaders from central banks/ monetary authorities who play leadership roles at the departmental level, with significant managerial responsibilities and likely to play strategic roles in the running of their organisations.