The beginning of a training program sets the scene for the learning journey ahead. It should be scripted and prepared, with no room for error. I was running the first module of a three month action learning program for the Economic Commission in Africa and my Spanish Co-Facilitator had a new idea for this programs opening.
I enjoy her risk taking, and was willing to start with her idea for a silence meditation; to set the stage for introspection and insight; of deep leadership learning.
What happened next will go down in training folklore as the end of a great beginning.
As the meditation deepened, a slow ‘doof doof’ sound broke the silence. The drum beat then went into full swagger, echoing around the volcanic rim. Normally, I’m a fan of the lively up-tempo rhythm of Africa.
But not today, not now.
Then it stopped, no idea why. But as this story unfolds you’ll see why it was perfect synchrony.
The omen began the night before. After a yummy meal of Injera (bread) and Wat (stew) we left the restaurant after a light rain.
The wet, sloping tile pathway outside took my footing. I put the other foot down to save the fall. The combined full body weight and velocity of the second foot scooped both feet upwards to slam me down on my back. In rugby I think they call it the jackknife.
I lay motionless, wondering what had just broken, and stayed that way for five minutes, spasming every once a while. I knew I would be o.k. structurally, But I also realised this was going to hurt like a car accident.
The next morning, our group were bussed to the venue for the program, an hour out of Addis Ababa. The conference centre was built down the sides of a volcanic crater, with steep stairs leading all the way down to a lake
For me, each step up or down the stairs was met by the other foot, while my hands held tightly to the railing. The restaurant, my villa, and the toilets, were strategically placed as far away from the training room as possible, as though an evil spell was cast by some voodoo volcano vibe.
Nonetheless, I was there to do a job, and we began with our meditation, and the pulsing African drum beat sailing across the lake.
I’d asked for four flip-charts stands before the program, the first of many requests, but in Africa, service comes with a caveat: Maybe. It’s unspoken, and you never really know for sure if it will happen. But you ask anyway. And wait.
Earlier that day, knowing the participants would arrive by mid afternoon, I’d asked for an iron to press my shirt. As it turned out, the 4:30pm start time came and went and I was buried deep in the back lanes of the staff quarters, knowing the only way I would get my shirts were to find the laundry and iron them myself. Which I did.
The next day, one flip chart stand appeared. The kind with the backboard that slides down loose screw holds so you end up writing on it while kneeling on the floor, like everyone is in kindergarten.
As it turned out the venue didn’t actually have four flip chart stands, so they borrowed two from the music resort across the lake.
We got them the next morning. Around the same time the projector disappeared, to be replaced with one that didn’t work. No reason given. Just a new projector that didn’t work.
The necessary detective work revealed the other projector was rented because, quote, ‘government officials’ had the only projector the resort owned, and those officials had now left the resort.
The group we were working with for this project were a smart bunch of economists, lawyers, and environmental scientists doing the development work Africa so sorely needs. Anyone who has been on an offsite knows how important email contact is back to the office. Your work never stops.
But here in lakeside Ethiopia, the internet does.
So with no internet for three days and a participant mutiny on our hands we had to commander a private bus to take us to the nearest towns internet cafe. I know there is no conspiracy that the resorts brother owned the internet cafe, and his cousin owned the bus company, but I couldn’t help thinking it.
Later, safely caught up with work emails, we all enjoyed one of the many buffet meals on offer. And Ethiopian food is a wonderful mix of spices and herbs that, for the uninitiated, can be a lively dance on the palette.
At this venue, that dance continued down my intestinal tract. A number of participants had already fallen ill, but a brisk trade in charcoal tablets and hydration supplements kept things, um, intact.
I was grateful for my own intestinal fortitude at this time too. That is, until the final piece on day three: emotional intelligence. With an hour to go, I noticed my belly rumble, my forehead sweating, and bubbly burps brewing.
I had to sit down for the last 20 minutes; slowly rubbing my hands down and back up my thighs in a self soothing mechanism. Toward the end of a session it’s common to get some clarifying questions, but every now and then you get a participant who asks one too many questions; knows the answer anyway, but just wants to test you out. I had one of those.
Lovely fellow, but now, at the end of the session, he was standing between me and losing my, please excuse me, shit.
I spent the next 12 hours in bed, waking to the sounds of a disco over the lake, mosquitos, my vomit and the kind of ‘soaking-in-sweat’ sleep you have when you think you’ve been sleeping all night, but it’s only been half an hour.
The next morning, the training room flooded. Trails of water trickled down from the sewerage, and into the training room. The smell was especially sprite for my tender insides. As was the rush to save the training materials from ruin.
The water wasn’t cleaned up by the time the participants arrived, but many number of venue staff were quickly mopping things up as we peered around them to say good morning. For good measure, the maintenance guys were hard at work resetting the new projector that didn’t work.
Which was just as well, the power went out. Soon after that, the flip chart stands arrived, and that would have been lovely, but we didn’t need them for the final days activities.
I have a favourite piece I do when training leadership; it comes from research done on the Australian workplace culture but I share it around the world and it rings true most everywhere.
The research shows that folks in organisational life are either O.K., or not O.K., with their work, and how things are in their environment. Imagine this as a line drawn down a flip chart page on a vertical axis.
On a line drawn across the page on a horizontal axis, it suggest people either feel they can speak easily about this ‘o.k’ness’, or they shut up, deny their feelings and don’t own up to their displeasure.
The result is four quadrants that reveal four characters I’m sure you can identify with: the volunteer, the whinger (complainer), the survivor, and the prisoner.
This week, I, and my co-facilitaror, bless her soul, worked through each one of these characters methodically. The irony not lost on us.
As luck would have it, the final session with the group was a deep, still, silent meditation. Down there, by a volcano lake in Ethiopia, we taught best what we most needed to learn 🙂
