Highways

Building Leadership within Highways

By: Rachel Roper

In September, the Highways Division held a three-day training that brought together staff from across the Division.

The purpose of the training was to strengthen attendees’ facilitative skills with a specifi c focus on collaborative leadership.

The skills presented will not only assist in conducting productive meetings, promoting leadership, and building relationships but many attendees commented that the skills could also be applied to their personal relationships with friends and family.

Donna R. Ching, founder of the Pacifi c Center for Collaboration and the workshop developer and facilitator, designed the agenda to include a mix of lecture, discussion, and group exercises.

This format created a positive environment for learning, practicing skills, and strengthening relationships among attendees.

As many of us have attended or led challenging meetings for our projects, the attendees were able to embody their roles with ease while Donna pointed out tips for making meeting participants feel heard/legitimized, handling disruptive behaviors, gathering eff ective input, and ensuring the meeting accomplished its intended outcome.

A half day of the workshop was set aside for attendees to identify core values that are essential to carrying out the Hawaii Department of Transportation’s mission to provide a safe, effi cient, accessible and sustainable intermodal transportation system that ensures the mobility of people and goods, and enhances and/ or preserves economic prosperity and the quality of life.

Mission Mission

To provide a safe, effi cient, accessible and sustainable intermodal transportation system that ensures the mobility of people and goods and enhances and/or preserves economic prosperity

and the quality of life. ACCOUNTABILITY/ TRANSPARENCY/ COMMITMENT, INTEGRITY, SAFETY and SERVICE were identifi ed by the group. Based on those core values, attendees articulated example behaviors to illustrate how each could be carried out within the Highways Division. We all play a defi nitive role in providing the life supporting vein of our transportation system that allows for the mobility of people and goods to fl ow. Carrying out our jobs allows essential items like toilet paper to get distributed from the ports to the stores where we will go to buy it, ensures people can visit family and friends or go to the doctor or work, and helps build Hawaii’s economic vitality. Each of us is a critical component of keeping Hawaii operating and maintaining quality of life for residents. Due to the success of the workshop, another will be held early next year.