In an effort towards making civil servants more mindful, resilient, and accessible, a five-day training of trainers on Search Inside Yourself is underway in Thimphu.
Experts believe developing mindfulness and building emotional intelligence among civil servants play a vital role in smooth public service delivery.
Over 100 civil servants, some participants from private educational and training institutes, and private individuals are taking part in the training which began from yesterday. The Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC) in collaboration with the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) based in the USA is organising the training.
“One of RCSC’s focus areas is to build the soft skills of civil servants at all levels and especially at the leadership level. Through emotional intelligence, you know yourself and you know your colleagues and you know the needs of citizens. We hope that when we have highly aware civil servants, we will deliver services better and our objective and purpose would become much clearer,” said Tashi Pem, the Director of RCSC.
The SIYLI has been providing similar training for businesses, schools and hospitals on mindful intelligence in other countries. And it is found out that the training helped participants in managing emotion and developing mindfulness on what they are doing.
“What we are seeing is big differences and helping people to manage stress, increasing wellbeing, supporting them being more connected to themselves to each other and really realign their lives with goals and values. There are stress, depression and anxiety in all sectors. So, these practices really support people cultivating wellbeing, a deeper connection to themselves, more empathy and compassion for other people as well,” said Lori Schwanbeck, from SIYLI, USA.
Once the training concludes, this group of participants will be certified as Search Inside Yourself teachers in Bhutan and will then share their skills to the rest of the civil servants from next year.
“We found that Search Inside Yourself Leadership is very useful and at the same time, I think it is at the right time. We are mindful about ourselves but when we deal with ourselves and other agencies at a wider forum, we tend to give importance to our work but we need to understand others’ view and others aspect also. I think it will go a long way in improving our work output, maintaining our cordial relationships and communicating with other staff or other agencies,” shared Dr Tashi Tenzin, a participant.
The RCSC signed the Memorandum of Understanding with SIYLI in March, last year. The MoU mandates the institute to train civil servants on emotional intelligence, the practice of mindfulness to become resilient and compassionate civil servants. 25 executives were trained in March this year. Furthermore, 126 teachers have also been trained as trainers and have imparted these training to over 10,000 teachers during the schools’ summer break.
