Training Day, Part 3: The Afternoon

After lunch, we debriefed from the morning’s Lego exercise, and talked about what their responses were to each other during lunch about why they wanted to be leaders, and what the potential upsides and downsides were for them.

The next section of the agenda was a few lessons about creativity. Most leadership training comes from the business sector. I teach leadership and social entrepreneurship workshops and seminars coming from an arts perspective. Creativity – nurturing it, training for it, the reasons to think about it and consciously engage in it – then becomes an important component of this training. I explained, to many nodding “yes” heads, that as leaders, we all jump from one crisis situation to another, from one meeting to another, and then, BOOM! We’re asked to quickly come up with creative solutions to our agency’s challenges. We might enjoy the challenges, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

What does make it easier is being good at tapping into one’s creativity. And what is also true is that we can train ourselves to be more creative and to get better at idea generation. I took the group through four of the steps of what I call “creative caffeine,” each with accompanying hands-on exercises (not all of which I’ll include here – I don’t want to OD my readers!):

1. Paying attention to one’s environment (with listening and seeing exercises)
2. Knowing the difference between creative and creation (creation requiring action)
3. Learning about intuition and making use of the “pregnant pause”
4. Asking the right questions.

At this point, it was time to ask the participants to begin working in small groups

to better prepare them for their future work in the interfaith coalition they’d be forming. Instead of having them choose their own partners, most likely people they knew and with whom they were comfortable, I had them count off in 4’s and then find their “new” working partners for this exercise.

Because our time together was so short, I wanted them to have as many opportunities as possible to work with as many different partners as possible, and this was one way to make that happen.

Once regrouped, I gave them this scenario and challenge:

An architect in Kigali built a cluster of office buildings around a central green.

When construction was completed in the spring and the buildings were occupied, the landscape crew tried to find the architect to ask him where he wanted the sidewalks, but he’d already left Rwanda for his next assignment in Burundi.

Their challenge was to take over the architect’s job and come up with the best way to determine where to place the paved paths between and around the buildings.

They worked diligently in their groups for about 15 minutes.
I then asked them to share their solutions with all of us.

Interestingly, every single group included a central green and garden in their plans,

and a circular drive around the garden was also incorporated into most of them. (I didn’t realize why until I was driven into town that afternoon on an errand. There, in the middle, was a central green and garden with a circular drive around it!) Their solutions to this challenge were, as always, articulate and well-thought out.
But I pointed out after they were finished sharing that they hadn’t really answered the actual challenge – To find the best way to determine where to place the paved paths between and around the buildings. – and that maybe they were making the challenge more complicated than it needed to be. One of the lessons from this exercise is learning that what differentiates the solutions to a challenge are often the questions used to find them. If they aren’t finding the right answers, maybe they’re not asking the right questions.

They might, for example, want to do less searching passively for approval, and more asking, “What if…?” That’s a question of wonder, a question that, coupled with a proper pause, might be followed by something extraordinary, from that place where great ideas are born from sharing. What if, for example, they just planted the grass solidly between the buildings and waited a few months? After a time, the grass would have paths of trodden grass between the buildings, paths that would be sized according to traffic flow and which would have responded to the needs of the users.

I offered another example of looking at the direction of questioning with this parable:

There was a hero who, in the course of wandering about the countryside, came upon a crowd of disconcerted citizens gathered on the bank of a river.

When the hero inquired as to the nature of their distress, they pointed out a victim being swept downstream.

The hero jumped into the water and rescued the victim,

But no sooner were they safely ashore than a second victim was swept into view.

The hero also rescued this person.

However, when a third victim floated down the river, the hero began to journey upstream.

"What kind of hero are you," the crowd jeered, "if you fail to rescue the third victim?"

"Rescue the victim yourself," the hero replied. "I'm going upstream to find out why all these people end up in the water."

We ended the day’s seminar with a discussion of ways to focus their attention and energy on what could reasonably be accomplished within the context of any given challenge. I gave them this list of the five questions I always ask myself before starting any project or challenge:

1. What’s the problem?
2. Who controls the solution?
3. What needs to happen in order for change to occur within the context of this problem or challenge?
4. What part can I play in affecting that change?
5. What do I need in order to do this work?

After the participants left, two young people walked into the room. Alexis Ntagana, now 27,
and Chantal Ntare, 23.
They are what are commonly called survivor children in Rwanda – children whose parents were killed during the genocide. Many of them took on the responsibility of raising their siblings, as did Alexis and Chantal, becoming the heads of their households and taking on enormous levels of responsibility while still extremely young. Alexis was 14 when he took over the care of raising his younger sister and two brothers, and Chantal was only 9 when she took on responsibility for her sister and cousin, the only two surviving members of her family.

Eventually, many years after the genocide, they both ended up in a housing area called a peace village where many of these parentless families came together. In trying to find ways to help the village’s residents to survive, they started two enterprises: a crafts business that sells what the children make, and, remarkably, a successful company that filled a void in Kigali: renting (and decorating) tents and other traditional Rwandan ceremonial gear such as drums

for weddings! When there were only 10 families in the village, each family made 30,000 Rwandan francs ($54) per month through these 2 businesses. Now, however, the population has more than doubled, there are 24 families living in the peace village, and Alexis and Chantal are looking for help to expand the rental company. They’re not talking about money, however. They’re looking for used, but still usable tents that they can use to grow their rental company. So I’m going to go to the tent rental companies in Louisville to see what I can acquire for them, and if there are those of you outside of Louisville who want to do the same, let me know and I’ll put you in contact with these two extraordinary young Rwandans, people who have survived the genocide, raised their siblings, made it somehow through secondary school, and are working to rebuild their country.

Comments

[Diann L'Hirondelle]

Hi Jan....As I stated last year...still following your blog! I love reading of your adventures and I am learning so much from your experiences. I still plan to come to Rwanda and my first visit is scheduled for this coming December. Keep up the good work and Murakoze cyane, cyane, cyane for communicating lol...Diann

[Diann L'Hirondelle]

Still following your blog Jan. Amazing, uplifting and inspiring. Good work and I look forward to your posts every day. Diann