Recently I have had the honour to work for UN in cooperation with UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research) on a Project for Medical and Para-Medical personnel deployed to the top 5 high-risk UN peacekeeping operations.
You can ask- being a trainer for 16 years- why did this ’mission’ so intensely touch me? Here are some hints:
💡 believing in a higher GOOD
💡having a strong feeling of saving lives
💡 working for a common vision
💡 changing the perspective (environmental and political facility on the field)
💡 using an extremely high-level of empathy
💡 knowing the effect and irretrievable consequences of not doing the planning & training properly
💡 100% commitment from the Project team & participants
Isn’t it the usual characteristic of a training?
Having the above-mentioned principles, the project focused on building the capacities through training and mentoring of medical teams operate at Level 1 (providing first aid, primary health, and emergency care).
Remembering back to some previous assignments, especially when training expectations were covered during negotiation with leaders and at the beginning of the session with participants, I can recall some common comments like:
❓’We have some budget for developing soft-skills- let us do sg…’
❓’Communication is a hot topic- everyone could always improve their skills on this’
❓’I came here because my manager told to do so…’
❓’I want to have good lunch and delicious cookies…’
❓’it is a waste of time- skill building is useless…’
How can we rephrase these comments to get the feeling experienced during the Medical project? How can we ‘save lives’ in a business environment?
➡ Help employees to find their motivations
➡Give them time to express their feelings
➡Demonstrate that we are listening to them and they do matter
➡Show them how to be resilient
➡Support their personal needs
Can these actions create the same feeling of satisfaction and pride?
What can we learn from these extremities of training requests?
✅ We (leaders, participants) must believe in developing our people
✅ It should go beyond firefighting
✅ People are keen to have equipped to succeed in their work
✅ ‘Saving lives’ cannot be a budget request
✅ Remote working requires even more care from leaders
✅ Trainings have 1000 new aspects nowadays (online leadership simulations, e-learning modules, one-o-one discussions, a few months process with blended-learning etc.)
So my questions to you Managers and Leaders?
☝️ To which direction do you want to lead your organisation?
☝️ What do you think, your ‘Level 1’ (Level 2, 3 …) staff need?
☝️ What can help them to feel the power/energy and having the proper skills for ‘saving lives’ within the company?
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