Teaching teamwork

A few months ago, a woman from the municipality's human resources department randomly approached me and asked if I'd be willing to do a workshop on teamwork for municipality employees. I said I'd be happy to, and went on my merry way. I wrote down a few notes of ideas for activities, but didn't think too much about it afterward. I tend to say yes to pretty much everything I get asked to do here, but then only about 50% of those things ever seem to happen - follow-through is not typically a Peruvian forte. 

So, imagine my surprise when, while I was down on the coast for Peace Corps training last week, I get a call from the HR lady: "Señorita Meghan, let's do the teamwork taller! When should it be - tomorrow?" I tried not to panic, and got her to hold her horses until three days after I got back from training. She informed me that all the employees of the municipality (90+ people) would be invited, but to expect between 50 and 70 to attend. We agreed that she'd get me a microphone and some markers and posterboards, and that was that. 

I was excited for the opportunity to do a session with the municipality workers, and pleased that I'm now known enough in the community for them to think to ask me to lead it, but I was a little nervous to do a training with so many people. Usually the groups I work with are of the 8-20 person variety, so even 50 people was going to be a big jump. To help with this anxiety, I planned a session that was heavy on the participatory dinámicas (activities), and light on the Meghan talking time. Despite this, in the couple days leading up to the workshop, I had vivid dreams every night about how it would turn out - it was definitely on my mind. A big reason for this was the uncertainty. Although the HR lady said there'd be 60ish people there, I knew it could easily be only 20, and the various scenarios kept running through my head. 

The workshop was scheduled for 6pm (right after the workday ends) on Thursday night. So at 5:30, I picked up my materials and headed to the auditorium room to start setting up. I set out enough posters and pens for about 25 people, then decided to wait and see how many actually came. At about five before 6:00, people started flooding in! I kept re-counting, and putting up more materials, and re-counting again. The final tally? 90 people. 

The room was full! People sat down as they came in, but those organized rows didn't last for long

Thankfully I had asked for that microphone, because once the dinámicas got started it was pure chaos. I was clambering over chairs, yelling out directions, and trying to keep tabs on all the different teams around the room. We played with balloons, made (and generally failed to disentangle) human knots, and crossed the "river of fire."

One of the teams laughing as they struggled to disentangle their human knot

After each activity I talked a bit, and explained how the dinámicas related to the main principles of teamwork. At the end, each team brainstormed and shared ideas about the benefits of working in a team. Judging by everyone's participation and the smiles I saw around the room as people had fun doing silly activities with their colleagues, I think the workshop was a success. I survived my first big-group situation, and actually had fun while doing so. And as an added bonus, now pretty much every single municipality employee, from the street-cleaners to the public safety guys to the secretaries, knows who I am - more saludos in the plaza for me!