Organisation Coaching : Rotary Youth Clubs

Introduction

Rotary Club of Bintulu, Sarawak, Malaysia organised "Rotary Youth Leadership Award" - East Seminar on 27/2-1/3/98. There were 44 participants from schools, colleges, workplaces from East Malaysia and Brunei.

This writer was honoured to be invited as a speaker for one hour on "Nurture Our Youth Towards Responsibility". This write up is a summary of the learning process of the session, and brainstormed ideas from the participation.

This write up is shared with the participants, interested parties and Internet community.

The Programme :

• Introduction
• Youth and the New WORLD
• Understanding of our own WORLD VIEWS
  • Future World in 5 Years
  • Our Current Reality
  • O.P.V. of Youth
• Responsibility in the Real World Context
  • Maslow's Law perspective
  • Sphere of Concerns : Sphere of Influence
• Responsibility in terms of Knowledge, Techniques and Skills
• Where are the Practising Fields?
• Meeting Evaluation

Youth and the New WORLD

• Youth = Source of Energy
• World = A Creation

This speaker created a starting thinking space for the group under the above concepts of Youth = Energy, World = A Creation. Some brainstormed ideas from the group :

Youth = Energy = [Power, Strength, Inspiration, Motivation, .....]

Resulting in [Creativity] in which we all co-create a New World.

Understanding of our own WORLD VIEWS

• Future World in 5 Years
• Our Current Reality
• PMI on .......
• O.P.V. on Youth

The group brainstormed ideas on "Future World in 5 years"

• Automatic Society
• Digitised world
• More and more social problems
• More new technology
• More corruption

The group learned that there is a great diversity of views, perspectives from participants about the future world. There are no absolute right or wrong perceptions, there are mere perceptions : how people see the world, due to whatever background influence they received. Diversity of views represent [Energy]. {Energy] if creatively managed, can lead to synergy or new ideas to co-create a better world for everybody, or if poorly managed, can cause much conflict, contradiction and hurt feelings.

Discussion on Current Reality:

There is still poverty. Lack of friendship. No co-operation among students in project. Difficulties or mis-understanding with school teachers, brothers and sisters. No community spirit. There are many volunteer groups wanting to help. Generation gaps between parents and children. Some schools are privileged to have very good facilities. Good response from students on some worthwhile community project etc. etc.

Current Reality is again a mix of good and bad, plus and minus, difficulties and challenges, sorrow and happiness, success and failures etc.

(Due to lack of time, PMI (Plus, Minus, Interesting) thinking tool not used. Hence this technique was not demonstrated.)

The above only represents the Youth (participants) perspectives. How will Other People View the Youth? (O.P.V. = Other People View).

Some brainstormed ideas :

In the light of the above, how does one see "Responsibility"?

Responsibility in the Real World Context

• Maslow's Law perspective
• Sphere of Concerns : Sphere of Influence

This speaker shared with the participants a theory on "Maslow's Law", with the purpose to help participants to understand themselves and general human behaviour better.

A slide on Maslow's Law

• BASIC NEEDS
  • Food, Living Standards,
• SECURITY
  • Shelter, Accommodation, Job, Career, Promotion
• SOCIALISATION
  • Friendship, Fellowship, Team spirit, Affiliation
• RECOGNITION
  • Position, Famous, Respected, Title
• SELF ACTUALISATION
  • Ultimate expression of self
  • Inner Energy: Influence, Expansion, Explosion

Sphere of Influence / Sphere of Concern

This speaker also shared with the youth a model on "Sphere of Influence" and "Sphere of Concerns".

The initial small dot represents us, (you and me), with little influence and with many immediate concerns, difficulties, problems, goals etc. as expressed in the above world view, current reality or OPV. without bringing in world problem like wars, environmental pollution. How to over come our "little, little" immediate concerns so that we can increase our own sphere of influence to tackle larger concerns. Differentiation was made between Influence and Power (which is normally associated with Authority). There is much limitation what Power (Authority, e.g. President, Boss, Chairman, Governor, etc,) can create improvement to sphere of concerns, but there is enormous potential in the Sphere of Influence that can motivate, lead, show the ways, etc. to others to share our ideas to do good or to serve.

Example of many great men (or women) like Gandhi etc. or social workers who come close to the highest Maslow's law hierarchy of Self-Actualisation, have reached high degree of Sphere of Influence.

Responsibility in terms of Knowledge, Techniques and Skills

• How much responsibility can society expect from a child?
• How much responsibilities can society expect from a world leader?

From the above discussion, an important point was raised : Responsibility goes along with the amount of Knowledge, Techniques and Skills one has. Without appropriate Knowledge, Techniques and Skills, a person in a so called "responsible position" can fail terribly. Likewise, one cannot take up a higher level of responsibility without acquiring appropriate Knowledge, Techniques and Skills.

How to do understand "Knowledge, Techniques and Skills"?

This speaker steered the group to focus on what learning had taken place during the session just conducted, by asking "What is the roles of this speaker, as demonstrated and perceived by the participants?"

Some Brainstormed ideas

• Ideas Generator
• Writer (on flipchart)
• Listener
• Talker, Speaker
• Advisor
• Resource Person
• Expert
• Joker, Comedian
• Sharing
• Motivator
• ......

This speaker also contributed the following : "Facilitator, Coach, Servant-Leader, Thinking Framework Designer, Observer and Time-keeper" and explained the concepts behind as demonstrated during the session.

It was explained that all the above roles are necessary to enable successful outcome of a group of people interaction e.g. meeting, carrying out project, discussion, conversation etc. Then one should try to find out and understand the underlying Knowledge, Techniques and Skills behind these role-play. For example:

Knowledge = [Theory : Maslow's law, Creativity, Management, Principle of Servant-Leadership, Technology, Current affairs, Science, Arts, History, etc. etc.]

Techniques = [Thinking framework design, Model like Sphere of Influence / Concern, O.P.V., Brainstorming, Flipchart writing to capture ideas, Meeting Evaluation, How to do effective study or homework, etc. etc.]

Skills = [Facilitating, Coaching, writing, articulating, learning from mistakes etc. etc.]

Where are the Practising Fields for Knowledge, Techniques & Skills?

A person cannot learn football without playing at football-field for practice. Neither can a person pick up necessary Knowledge, Techniques and Skills to achieve one's goals in life, if there is no appropriate Practice Fields.

A question was asked : What is Practice Field?

A place (or state of mind / attitudes) where activities carried out with LEARNING taking place - Learning that can further help us to carry out more effective action to realise our mission, or goals in life. The participants' club at school can carry out a lot of activities, but if there is no learning taking place among members in term of developing their own potential and influencing other people towards your good cause, there is no learning and it is not a Practice Field.

Where are the Practice Fields?

There are plenty such Fields and Opportunities if one's focus is on LEARNING that can help us to explore our own inner energy, to develop our own potential and thereby help others to grow also. For example : every little thing we do : homework, conversation with people, meeting, project work, community work, washing plates at home, helping a poor child. etc., with deep reflection and evaluation as to what LEARNING take place - for ourselves and for others.

Meeting Evaluation

"Success Factor" & "What Can be Improved?"

The group brainstormed ideas :

Success factors

• Co-operation
• Participative
• Trust to express freely
• Better understanding

What Can be Improved:

• We need more practice
• We need to read more - gain more knowledge
• We need to put in more hardwork to LEARN.

This speaker again encouraged participants to conduct their own simple Meeting Evaluation like above with openness, in every meeting or project work. The president, chairman or leader should be matured enough to take the brainstormed ideas : even perceived as negatively expressed. The Main Objective is to LEARN continuously, as we are all not perfect.

The participants are encouraged to write / email to the speaker : Personal Coach and Organisation Coach

The session ended with some questions and answers.

End.