I am so honoured that I got invited to coach few training sessions in Team Academy Iringa in Tanzania. I just got back from that trip and I am still so excited of everything that happened in there.
First when I got that invitation I was a bit scared as I didn’t know what they would need and if my coaching would be any beneficial for them. But after contacting them, finding out what is the situation at the moment and getting their feedback for my ideas I felt a bit more confident.
This had been their first year to run the Team Academy, so the teampreneurs had started just eight months ago, but even in that short time, they had been able to create a real Team Academy atmosphere in there and the place felt so homely right away. That is so weird feeling when you travel to the other side of the world, but when there is something like Team Academy which connects you so strongly it feels like you almost know the people already.
International Challenge
I have been always really passionate about the international network, -collaboration and about the opportunities those can bring, so I decided to run my sessions mostly around them, as I had understood the teampreneurs hadn’t had that much interaction with the other Team Academies in the past year. After I told my story and about my passions and goals I told them about the Global Team Academy network and a little bit about each unit in it, showed them some channels they could use to get in touch with them and then I gave them a challenge. They would have 24h to get in touch with the other teampreneurs from the network, and on the next day they would have to present what they had found out. First we started to think what they would like to ask from them and then it was time to put the plans in to action. You could really feel the excitement from them, but it was still so difficult to know if they would be able to reach the other teampreneurs as it was such a short time, but now we just had to hope the best.
Results from the challenge
I was so excited to hear the results on the next day, everyone was in a good mood which even raised my excitement. We decided to give them 20min to create the presentations about their findings by using 5E (most people know it as 4E: Entertainment, Education, Escapism and Esthetics, but we also have our own eSpirit of Team Academy in there). First they seemed a bit lost, looked like they didn’t know where to start with it, but by the end of planning the room was on “fire” and I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. They were ready, so it was time for the presentations.
The presentations were all so different, one team was pretend to be a football team, one was travelling on space, one was a group of people who inspired them most and the last one was a group of pop starts, so the presentation were definitely very entertaining. But the most exciting thing was that all the teams had been able to get in touch with the teampreneurs, which was just amazing. They had been asking them about their projects, about what motivates them and what kind of goals they had, but also about potential future collaboration. They had learned that the others are facing exactly same challenges as them and what really warmed my heart was when they told that now they really feel like they are part of the big family, part of the Team Academy family. Also my favourite quote from the presentations was “If all TA’s could work together, we could do a real revolution”. That was so powerful and that is so true!
I was so pleased to hear all the results and to see the energy they got out of that exercise in such a short time and most importantly I hope this really helped to open the doors to keep the communication going on from both side of the network. As even we are physically far away from each other, that doesn’t mean anything anymore in this world as we can so easily keep in touch. This challenge also proved that correct.
Check-out
In the end we were checking out and one teampreneur suggested that in our check-out round we should tell a one thing what others can’t do, but what in TA you can. It was so empowering to hear all the things they confidently said aloud, I also checked out: “Others follow the paths which already exist, but teampreneurs know how to create their own paths.”
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