#HSS2015 Day 7 - Helen Storrow Seminar 2015 - Me, leading others

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others” – Jack Welch

Saturday marked the last day of the seminar, focused on “Me, Leading Others”. It was time to finalise our action plans for taking home, reflect on our journey through the seminar, and say goodbyes.

We started the morning with some chair yoga to energise us, before playing a game where we silently acted out different ways to use a paper cone. Through this activity we learnt about our individual ways of interpreting situations, the benefit in generating ideas from those around us and the merits of creativity and observation. We each filled in a hot air balloon diagram for our project – which things would help us get to reach our goal, hold us back, help us and change our pathway?

We spent the rest of the morning completing our action plans for the projects we will take back home to roll out in our member organisations. We then had the opportunity to look at everyone’s ideas, giving our suggestions and comments. We are all keen to take what we have learned this week and put it into action in our home countries, working to improve the environment through leadership of projects on a local, regional or national level.

We discussed that leadership is not just about us individually taking on the whole project. Bringing together our learning from the week, we can conclude that to achieve the biggest impact we will need to involve others in our project, empowering them to use their own skills and experiences in a team towards a common goal. Our journey is as much about helping to develop others as it is to develop ourselves.

In our final session we did what is important to round up any project or event: evaluation. We completed this both on a personal and a group level. It gave us time to reflect on the week and what we had learned and achieved.

The theme of the day was “Plant” and as we prepared to grow our own projects back home, we each planted some seeds outside Our Chalet. During the closing ceremony, those of us who had completed it were awarded our Our Chalet Challenge badge, sharing our personal challenge stories. We also all received certificates for our participation in the Helen Storrow Seminar – accompanied with kind words from the planning team on our individual strengths and development over the week. As we said our emotional goodbyes, we reflected on how lucky we were to have shared this week with such an inspirational group of people; one which we know will go on to change the world.

By Rosalyn

Helen Storrow Seminar 2015 Contents: #HSS2015 home page Day 0 Arrival day (19/04) Day 1 Me, myself, my environment (air) (20/04) Day 2 Me, the leader (sun) (21/04) Day 3 Me, the influencer (fire) (22/04) Day 4 Me, the achiever (earth) (23/04) Day 5 Me, the team worker (water) (24/04) Day 6 Me, the advocate (wind) (25/04) Day 7 Me, leading others (plant) (26/04)