Toughest Training of my Career

God! Give me strength and wisdom to manage this group.

I had landed in front of a group of 120 people last week, eager to learn from me. The group included Scientists, Government officials, Priests (Church Fathers), Nuns, NGOs, entrepreneurs, farmers, and what not. They were waiting in the tent in front of the field where I had to train and demonstrate model on agroforestry and agri value chain.

I quickly realized that all the background information given to me prior to my arrival in Kenya was useless. The organizers also didn’t expect such crowd. ?The two critical elements of the training (planning and preparation) into which I had put lot of effort, were seemingly useless, and I had to rely on my training delivery skills only.

I silently took out the copy of my training plan, tore it into small pieces and threw them in the dust-bean. There was no use of the slides/PowerPoint Presentations I had prepared in detail for the training. Worst! I didn’t know what they were expecting from me.

I remembered my IIRR days when I used to manage participants from all over the world. I remembered Robert CHAMBERS as I had seen him managing big number of participants like this one.

I went down to my work, and followed the natural flow of the training/workshop, asking about their expectations, issues they are facing with the communities, their experiences, and ideas. I supplemented those ideas with my experience, gained from SAI. I used simple techniques of small group exercises, brainstorming, experience sharing.

I asked the organizers if there can be a facility of video conferencing with the Indian team. Surprisingly, they managed it in the tent. This session of experience sharing with SAI India through video conferencing went extremely well, where Kenyan team could connect with their work, and how they have addressed some of the issues which Kenyan team was facing

The workshop evaluation revealed that 88 percent of the participants found this workshop extremely well organized, while remaining 12 percent found it satisfactory. None of them rated it as Poor. When I informed that there was no preparation for this training, and everything followed a natural flow, they could not believe.

During the prayer and Church Mass next day, the head Priest (Father of the Church), who was also my student during the training, explained to Rev. Archbishop and the people on how encouraged and motivated he felt while interacting with SAI India team. He also told that the experience from India will be a source of inspiration for them

I kept my cool, quickly adapted and responded to the needs/expectations of the participants and followed a natural flow of the workshop by focusing on the DELIVERY part of the training/workshop.

AND WOW! THE MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. I am still getting the congratulatory messages from the participants.