International share of best practice

Nivin El Aawar, Head of Admission at the International School of London Qatar was invited in September to the German European School in Singapore (GESS) to provide workshops for the admission team and support staff as part on their professional development plan in terms of integrating customer care and coaching skills into the support team best practices.

Nivin holds an Executive Diploma in Human Resources Management from Cavendish College UK. With 15 years of diverse working experience in International and Multi-national companies between Lebanon, Abu Dhabi and Qatar. In addition, Nivin is a Certified Life Coach, Certified Family and Parental Coach and preparing for her Masters in Protocol and Soft Diplomacy.

Nivin developed the workshops in an action oriented set-up, in which the journey of the admission team from Admission practices then Public Relation and Marketing and ending it by Soft Skills, starting from the Inquiry until enrolment, involving other departments interaction through the different processes, the result of the presentations and brainstorming were all summarized in action plan by each member of the admission department highlighting current challenges and the action to be taken in elevating the admission department to a higher level, all the action plans were combined by the Admission Team Leader in a master plan to implement in the department development to move forward. Second step was demonstrating the admission role in selling the school and the marketing projection through maintaining good Public relation (PR), finalizing the sessions with soft skills/coaching skills and the wellbeing of the admission staff starting from self-awareness, Emotional Intelligence and thrive in new coaching skills to reach out to the total balance in the team, resulting in effectiency in the work place and increase of productivity, performance, better PR, customer orientation and professional development.

In the full day with the whole school support staff, Nivin developed workshops which satisfied all the different departments interests, under the main objective “Cross- Cultural Harmony Across Departments”, started with the big picture of the global view of international schools, the diversity impact in any international school and how as unique individuals can add value to the school community by improved communication skills. A projection on the leadership role and the emotional intelligence impact of the leadership style in international schools, in addition, referring different findings of market researches about Singapore, and interlinking the diverse community in Singapore to the international schools communities. Case studies about handling difficult communication challenges through different channels of communication skills and ending up with very informative self-reflection activities demonstrated with a lot of common challenges, high will for a change and great individual interaction.

Coaching is an essential component of an effective professional development program. Coaching can build will, skill, knowledge, and capacity because it can go where no other professional development has gone before: into the intellect, behaviors, practices, beliefs, values, and feelings of an individual.