Young Professional about virtual exchange

Since 2006, ICCOenKerkinActie and Togetthere enable Young Professionals (YPs) working on development to exchange experiences about their work. The YPs work for local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as capacity development advisor. Most of them work in isolation and have limited possibility to meet colleagues face-to-face to share experiences.

Each year two discussion rounds, taking five weeks each, are organised virtually where the YPs share experiences about how to strengthen the operations of their partner organisations. The group is using a peer-to-peer coachingsmodel. Most YPs participate two rounds. Just before starting a discussion round, the YPs are asked by an online survey to share the topics which keep them awake at night or have a high degree of urgency for them. Some of the selected topics deal with: "How to make my work sustainable?" "How to create local ownership for what I am contributing?", or "How to position myself as professional in a different cultural context?"

After this survey, key individuals, who are willing to take a leadership role in the exchange of topics related to their work, meet via Skype with the online facilitator to elaborate the objectives and facilitation process. The role of the online facilitator is to design the online process based on the wishes and needs of the group as expressed in the survey. So far, D-groups and Skype have been used as the most effective and popular social media for exchange.

A discussion round takes average around 5 weeks. Case studies or key questions, introduced by the YPs, are mostly used as a basis for discussion. At the end of each discussion, one of the participants writes a note which is published at this blogpost 'Everything you always wanted to know about capacity development'. Literature is collected by asking people for links to interesting websited or publications. These references and benchmarks are documented at a virtual platform at ICCO-Cad wiki. In this way, the group builds a share memory.

Recently one of the Young Professionals shared her experiences by a video interview. View the video:

Music on video:

Song: Una Mañana: Musicians: Omar Meza & Fernando Rey, for more information contact: e-mail. yoshihatsukatana@gmail.com

Some comments which were shared by other YPs in evaluations last year:

"The way you experience the discussions and what you get out of it is of course different for each.....When I think back of the discussion I am not able to reproduce all the contents directly, but the first thing I recall is that feeling that the (pre)discussions were good moments to take a step back, to reflect and to share experiences."

"Just being able to share is valuable in itself. It helped me to concretely formulate my questions and issues I encounter."

Energy levels at work

Recently our discussion group of Young Professional capacity development advisors discussed the topic: How do you deal with the situation if you and your collegues have a low energy level at work?

The case was brought up because I am working for an organisation that has been going through a few months of uncertainty and restructuring. A relatively long period for me, as I am only working for this organisation for six months in total. In this period of uncertainty and management change there was not much room for new initiatives. Furthermore, many of my colleagues had and still have difficulties to motivate themselves for their work. An exception is the new director who is doing his best to transform the organisation into a successful and profitable organisation. This situation had quite a big impact on my own energy level.

This case raised the question how to deal with a situation of uncertainty at work and an absence of collective energy to go for it and build a successful organisation? The main question was how to turn this around to increase your own energy and the energy of others. This article does not provide the answer, as that is probably nonexistent, but will give some suggestions and insights into the topic.

A local market in Africa.

The group came up with the following suggestions:

· A crisis could be an opportunity to change something, a time when you can start developing and implementing new things. Dare to take the initiative.

· Try to discuss the passive atmosphere with other people in the organisation to see what can be done to overcome it.

· Do creative things to get new energy, for example to make a video that benefits the organisation in some way.

· Show people where you are working on, instead of just talking about it. If you want people to start acting and implementing new policies or events, you have to start organising. If not, nothing will happen by itself.

· Accept the situation as it is if you are not in the position to change the culture of the organisation. Enjoy, try to do other things that give you energy and accept that your work activities might be different from your initial plans.

· Sometimes it is better to focus on the things you can do, in the time you are still working there.

Young Professionals work with local organisations in challenging circumstances

Since the Discussion Group meeting on the topic the energy level in the organisation as well as my own motivation started to improve slightly. There are two important reasons for this:

The beginning of a turnaround

The motto of the new director is very clear. Everyone gets a chance to learn and adapt to the new line of management. He is prepared to help everyone and listen to everyone's questions and suggestions. However, those who are not willing to change and work hard to reach a successful organisation risk losing their job. He achieves this by rewarding those who achieve good results and clearly communicating the way he would like to see things happening. The positive effect is that performance goes up. The side effect is that there is some feeling of fear against him.

A mental change

Personally, I started to realise I should focus on the things I can do and accept, although it is very unfortunate, that there were two months in which I could not move forward as quickly as I had hoped for. Since we have overcome the ‘crisis’ now the moment seems to be there to implement new things and this seems to work quite well and gives energy! The new director is very open to any initiative to improve current processes and activities.

Maintaining your own energy levels

Before starting my job here in Africa I thought I was mentally prepared for a different working atmosphere. I had never imagined that it would hit me as hard as it did. I do believe the organisational struggles made that it hit me harder than it would have done otherwise, but still, apparently I was not prepared well enough for it.

Besides the points already mentioned, I think the following is important to keep in mind to keep yourself motivated and obtain energy from your work:

· Start by working with some people who seem to be interested. From here others might also realise your added value and start to open up.

· Show people in what way you can make a difference and make people’s work easier by not waiting too long to start implementing your ideas and projects. Often it takes too long to wait for a decision, if a start has already been made the decision is likely to follow automatically.

· Be patient and do not worry too much you will not be successful, eventually things will start happening in most cases.

A story from a Young Professional working in Africa

Lasting change or passing fancy?

On how to make your work more sustainable

Working as a temporary advisor at a local organization can turn you into a manic depressive in a way. You will have your high highs and very low lows. Sometimes you feel elated because you see people have changed their way of working after you gave a training. But expect to also be disappointed when two months later they seem to have slipped back into old patterns.

Most local organizations are overloaded with work. At the Indonesian human rights organization I work for, more than seventy percent of the work (that's my guess) happens ad hoc. The Minister of Law and Justice says something about a law he would like to have revised, my colleagues immideatly respond. A video comes out of military officers torturing a group of Papuan prisoners, the office phones will not stop ringing for hours. Journalists, other organizations and international NGO's will all want to know what KontraS' opinion is.

My colleagues feel that they don't have time for monitoring and evaluation. Even though I know that it's an investment in the future, I can often relate to them. American management guru Stephen Covey speaks of the difference between urgent and important work. Important being the bigger projects, the in-depth analysis, and self-reflection, while the urgent comprises emails and telephone calls. In my case the challenge is to ensure the important is not always swallowed up by the urgent. How do make the lessons you taught stick? How do you make sure that the change will last?

A group of capacity builders working all over the world, came up with the following eleven tips for making your work sustainable. Very importantly: be realistic and don't let it get you down if big change doesn't happen right away. Instead, celebrate the small successes. They are more important than you may realize!

1. Give positive feedback to your colleagues, so that they gain confidence - in themselves but also in you. This is also a way of building trust. You let them know that you are not here to change everything, you are here to help improve things based on what's are already going smoothly.

2. Break the lessons you want to teach up into small bite-size bits. Do exercises during trainings which people will easily remember or refer to. For example, I use the happy horse analogy for discussing the chain of results in planning, monitoring and evaluation. Now in meetings, my colleagues will refer to “the horse is happy” when we discuss our overall goals.

3. Work with motivated people and those who are open to learn. Help the people that come to you for advise and involve them in your trainings or work. Let them for instance pick methods and share ownership of the work you're trying to do.

4. Don't forget that making your work sustainable takes time. Try to see it as an investment and give yourself time to build trust. Also, plan ample time to go from knowledge sharing to other's actually doing their work differently than before.

5. Convince people of the benefit of your intervention. Make it clear why you are there. First you have to show things and then make people part of the experience.

6. Build in a monitoring system together with your colleagues, to monitor the change process and have a learning process together.

7. Focus on the people, not the systems. Even when your goal is to strengthen the organizational capacity of an organization, start by working with some people you see are interested. By helping them develop the skills, on the long term organisational changes will occur.

8. Work with a counterpart in your work, so that that person is able to adapt new ways of working in the organisation.

9. Try to check if the right conditions are there (such as funds for printing the handbook you wrote), and include these conditions into your plans.

10. Plan for a return visit, several months or years after you have completed your placement. It gives you the opportunity to review the work you have done and give suggestions for improving it.

11. Plan a meeting (at least 6 months before your placement ends) where you remind your colleagues and supervisors that you are leaving. Ask them what they want to have in place or accomplished as a sustainable result before you leave.

How to deal with an absence of time management among your local colleagues?

You have been preparing your class or workshop thoroughly and even yesterday your colleagues said they were looking forward to come. But at the agreed time and place, no one turns up. The director and his secretary are in another meeting, one of your colleagues went to his wife and kids who live in his home village, two others stayed at home without further notice and the only colleague you can find is very surprised to hear that you actually planned a session: “Oh, I thought you would give it tomorrow…”

This situation, largely drawn from my own experience of working as a Young Professional in Indonesia, will likely be similar to many Young Professionals’ experiences. Probably, differences in time management will be one of the most apparent and irritating parts of working in a different cultural context. And it seems almost impossible to overcome, as the difference of time management and time awareness emerges from a equally different worldview, that may be understood by the Young Professional, but can not be changed. In other words, getting mad or frustrated about it, will bring you nowhere.

Cultural differences about time
The biggest difference between time awareness in the Netherlands and Indonesia, is the ‘worth’ of time. Dutch often see time as something precious, because we often have many activities (job, hobbies, family and friends) that have to be fit into a limited time frame, so that it is essential to plan our daily lives as much as possible. Basic time management, whether learned at school and work or by having a busy social life, is a necessary precondition to be able to function in the Netherlands and people who can ‘make the most out of their time’ are envied and respected.
This basic sense of time management is completely absent in Indonesia. Time is viewed as something fluid, something abundantly at one’s disposal. Wasting time is not a crime. There is often no clear distinction between office time and private time, resulting in all kinds of flexible working arrangements. So, colleagues don’t show up for work, leave at any given moment without prior notice, meetings are filled with informal chit-chat and much time in the office is spent by just resting, smoking and drinking coffee. Is adjustment to this time frame the only possible solution not to become insane? How to deal with a different time management perspective?
Adjustment to the fact that your colleagues will pursue a very flexible time management, will be necessary. However, by trying to be very communicative yourself about where you are and what you are doing (for instance by text message or email), you might be able to convince some of your colleagues to do the same. But make sure you don’t expect too much from your colleagues, especially when you don’t know them well enough what to expect from them. To avoid frustration by the absence or lack of productivity by your colleagues, you can make sure that at least your own (work) plans are clear and adjusted to sudden changes and flexibility by others.

• As an example, you can stick to certain office hours yourself, thereby structuring your own activities.
• You could bring a book to an appointment, so that you can at least entertain yourself just in case you’ll have to wait longer than expected.
• Bring your laptop to a meeting, so you can try to work a bit while the meeting drags on for hours without making sense to you.
• Try to think of small tasks you could perform every time you’ll have to wait for someone else.
• Try to invest in yourself and your personal skills, even while others around you lazy around.
• Make sure you can at least feel good about yourself and your own achievements, it will help you to feel useful and accept someone else’s flaws.
  

The best thing to do is to accept and adapt. Be aware that your local colleagues will have another view towards time and therefore don’t expect them to behave as you would expect from a Dutch colleague. Also, don’t blame yourself or feel guilty for not being able to reach your own goals as a result of local conditions. When you are in the right state of mind and aware of your own tasks and your local possibilities to perform them realistically, you can avoid frustration, maybe even enjoy the flexibility of more relaxed working arrangements and make the most of ‘your time’ in the field.

Anton Quist

How to involve colleagues more in my work and my capacity development intervention?"

Young Professionals discuss experiences and challenges in an online Discussion Group.

Young Professionals are sent all over the world to work with ICCO partners. Although our job descriptions may be different, we all have in common that we are supposed to work on ‘capacity building’. We are supposed to bring knowledge and skills to the organisations we work with, and make sure that the people in the organisation take over your knowledge and are able to use it on their own as soon as we leave. The golden rule is: “When you leave they should be able to do it themselves”. But how to involve your colleagues in what you are doing, and to make sure that you are not working alone, is a challenge for many. Therefore, this theme was chosen in the latest D-group discussion round for Young Professionals. Seven Young Professionals, who are working and living in different parts of the world, exchanged their experiences and discussed the challenges they are facing. Many Young Professionals find it a challenge to directly involve their colleagues in their work. Some feel they are working on their own little ‘island’, others have the feeling that their capacity is just seen as a “cheap pair of extra hands” by the organisation they are working for. Often this goes hand in hand with an unclear demand for capacity building from the partner organisation. As a Young Professional you have to dig and dig further to find out what the actual need for capacity development is. As a result, young professionals experience that they have to define their own roles and tasks, instead of being able to answer directly to a task formulated by the partner organisation. Often, a partner organisation is not clearly communicating to a young professional what they expect from him/her. Therefore, young professional have to take the initiative to get things done, with little involvement from colleagues.

Different expectations from a capacity development intervention
From my own experience as a starter in Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation in Zimbabwe, I can truly relate to these challenges. Before I left, I found my job description very clear, and I thought it was obvious what the partner organisation was expecting from my capacity building intervention. But short after my arrival I found out that my job description might be very clear on paper, but that in practise the demand from the partner organisation, and from the colleagues is am working with in particular, was not very well defined. On the question “what do you want me to do in the coming six months and what are your expectations?” I did not get a clear answer. In the day to day work, I often felt that I was creating my own job, based on what I think was important, instead of working with involved colleagues on fulfilling their needs for capacity building.
During the D-Group discussion wit fellow Young Professionals, we found that prior to this situation/challenge is often the process in which the initial proposal for capacity building by a young professional is written. You find that often a proposal is written by a director or manager, without direct participation of all staff within the organisation. This may lead to little support base for the posting. A conclusion of the D-Group discussion is that most of the time, the parties involved (partner organisation, Togetthere, staff inside the PO, other stakeholders) have different expectations of the capacity development intervention. It takes a lot of effort and time for a young professional to find out what the exact expectations are and to find a balance between all these different expectations. It takes an average of 4 to 6 months to get to know the partner organisation, and your role and tasks in the organisation. It takes time to build trust with your colleagues. In the beginning they might be very much focussed on their own work, and it takes time for them to make time for you as a young professional.

Ways to involve your colleagues
During the discussion round, many ideas where shared on how to involve your colleagues. Most importantly, it is to build a good trust relationship with them. Approach your colleagues in an informal way (during tea breaks, in an informal setting), get to know them, find out about their needs and expectation and start building from there. Moreover, you have to build a good relationship with your supervisor, and get clear about his/her expectations and your expectations from the start. Plan moments of reflections and evaluation with him/her, so that you will keep on the right track and prevent losing sight of what is expected of you. In some cases you have to be very assertive to ensure that your supervisor, as well as other staff, make time for you and take you seriously. From my own experience I think it is very important to be this assertive, and take initiative from the beginning. If you don’t, you get lost, and it is too late to get back on track with the people you are working with.

Adjust ambitions to the situation
Personally, I think the most important conclusion and advice coming out the four week discussion round, is a very obvious and common shared one. Most of the time young professionals have very high ambitions and goals they would like to accomplish with the partner organisation. In all cases it is relevant to lower you ambitions and work with the situation that is there. Even when you think you have already lowered your ambitions and expectations, take it one step further. Especially is you are working for a short period of time (6 months), you can only succeed if your ambitions are in line with the situation on the ground. And usually, you can accomplish a lot less than what you intended in the first place, before you get on a plane to a tropic destination. But nevertheless, your work is always appreciated, and you have to keep in mind that a significant part of your intervention is your own learning experience, which brings a further in future jobs and/or capacity building interventions.

Lara van Kouterik

Young Professional Capacity development - Zimbabwe