Brazil update: Mental Models and workshops that are not workshops
- Written by Henna Kaariainen
- Published in Archive, English
- Permalink
One week of coaching in Brazil is now behind, and it’s time to reflect a bit the process. First 2 days were like flying – digging deep in TA tools and methods, that were totally new for our brazilian teams. Of course there was enthusiasm, and also some zombies were created and killed…and a lot of dialogue was gone through, especially about the Leading Thoughts, and later in the workshops about Learning Thoughts as well. One of the most challenging and inviting actions was to fill in an empty Rocket Model plan. What’s needed to build up entrepreneurs? Which processes are the most complex and therefore the 4th year stuff – and what you have to take care of in the beginning? Those were the key questions for overcoming this challenge.
Well, to describe the process in here a little more concretely: we made a plan of 8 workshops (4 hours each), during the first days with all 30 people participating the TA experience. Plan is based on the themes this group found the most interesting in TA model and this is how it looks like: 1. Innovation / Knowledge Management 2. Learning / Learning Tools 3. Leadership 4. How to implememt TA model 5. Individual Learning 6. Leading Thoughts 7. Dialogue 8. Community Learning (Torture days).
We are now half-way of the workshop-process, and it has been getting better and better all the time. I think the reason is both that we are developing as a coach-team, and also that the participants are able to constract understanding about TA and coaching style of TA. Our workshops are dialogue workshops, not any magic tricks or constructing some tools or guidebooks. We try to talk about the things that matter and follow the results, that’s it.
Some insights along the way are worth of sharing, for getting a picture about the environment, habits and culture of doing in here. For example: ”I’m used to deliver education in a way that I send the ready material for the participants to read before the sessions, and they get everything served in a training session. And I’m asking them to be protagonists… So, should I maybe them some questions about the topic instead?”
”Challenge for protagonism is more the culture, we have a command & control systems that makes it impossible to develop protagonism.” For Team Academy protagonism is so deep in the culture that it automatically is the way to behave for each of us. Leadership and protagonism are like our clothes or like our shoes, we just wear them every day and feel good using them…we don’t see any big thing in being proactive. But that’s not the case in an organization filled with normal Uni. Alumnis who didn’t have to lead themselves so much before the Masters thesis and the working life. It’s new for the existing culture in here to ask for portagonism.
In my opinion, SENAC would have good possibilities to implement TA coaching in the organization because the mood of SENAC’s people is so straight forward. One comment describes well their ”Make an initiative, don’t wait for instructors. –attitude. ”I love education, that’s why I like my work in SENAC, and I like to do initiatives. Our boss is not saying yes to all of them at first, but still we start to do what we think is good, and when he finds out what we have done he normally likes it.” Yes, TA woudl fit well in the brazilian impulsive workstyle. Here we have a lot of action-orientation!
May the story continue after more workshops and more insights.
