In January I visited the Middle East for the first time in my life. Everywhere in Europe it was snowy and cold, but I traveled to the best of climates: warm and sunny about 25 degrees Celsius. Just perfect! As a member of the EFQM faculty of trainers I was requested to visit Abu Dhabi and to support the new partner there with introducing the assessed-version of the EFQM Assessor Training course. This partner is the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award (SKEA) organisation and is the latest addition to local partnerships of the EFQM in the Middle East.
SKEA has been running the local excellence award program in Abu Dhabi for some years now. Although it has been running successfully they wanted to take their award program to the next level. From the beginning the program has been based on the EFQM Excellence Model and the assessment procedures have been similar to those of the EFQM Excellence Award. This includes an award ceremony concluding the cycle for the year. During the ceremony the Sheikh personally gives out a Diamond, a Gold and a Silver Award to the organisations that proved to be the best in Abu Dhabi. The next level for SKEA means running the award program based on the EFQM 2010 Model and the next SKEA award cycle will be based on it. After the summer the 2011 award assessments will take place and for the members of the Abu Dhabi assessor pool to be ready they are provided with additional EFQM Assessor Training.
I was very happy to support the local trainers, Hadi Eltigani and Tony Bendell, with training the first group of local assessors according to the assessed version of the EFQM Assessor Training course. The people selected and asked to participate in the first course are considered to be the best-of-the-best of the assessor pool in Abu Dhabi and without exception this proved to be true. They evidenced to be skilled in performing assessment procedures and were eager to learn about the EFQM way of working during the training course. This has been my most enjoyable EAT course so far. I have made some great new friends and I wish Waheeda, Doaa, Aline, Abdulqadar, Grant, Srijayan, Kanak, Rachid and Mahmoud good luck and good fun with their next award assessment job!
