We often don’t see twenty UMN team leaders putting together cardboard boxes, paper, and empty pringle cases. But that’s exactly what was happening at UMN’s offices yesterday.

Twenty men and women were working together to build scrap material towers. Not as part of an earthquake rebuilding project (fortunately not), but as a training exercise.

This week, UMN’s technical, corporate and cluster team leaders joined in for a three day course on leadership and management, facilitated with support from Tearfund.

Besides a lot of fun and creativity, we were equipped and challenged in fields like leadership styles, trust, motivation and performance management. We shared some experiences, good and bad, successes and failures. We simultated the story of Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea, and role played various familiar situations we face in our very diverse teams.

For now, the paper towers are finished and will soon end up in the waste basket. But with what we learned and experienced, we aim to continue to build ourselves and our teams in the coming time. With the hope and purpose that this will eventually benefit the people we work with and we work for. Work in progress!