Swasdee kaa, everyone.
The past Thursday and Friday, our little team and I had an opportunity to conduct our designed sessions and workshops in an event organized by Prince of Songkla University, hosted for the annual conference of Council of University Presidents of Thailand (CUPT) and Council of Rector of Indonesian State University (CRISU).
For the context na ka: the theme was on, 'Charting the Path to Sustainable Universities: A Holistic Approach to ESG Integration', which sounded challenging. In fact, what was more challenging during our planning was how to make sure most (Presidents/VPs and deans.....students may have the tendency to be present) would stay on after the opening and how to engage the two sides (Thai and Indonesian Presidents, Deans and Students) to have productive and fun time with actionable results from joint learning and sharing. Each group went to their own breakout rooms and the exercises were similar. Our team had to play by ear once we met with the participants ka. We also had an ambitious plan to capture gists from the three groups, synthesize and crystallize key points into one big picture on a huge 8 wide x3 high m canvas, which we called, 'synergy tank'.
We were lucky in a few ways ka:
- Fullest-est-est support from PSU, both high level and working teams (esp. key coordinators)
- Highly capable young co-facilitators from a national project of MHESI called, 'WiNS', who were prompt to fill in the gaps seen even when there was no definite division of labor
- The majority of presidents, deans, and their reps were present and most stayed on till the end. Yayyyyyyyy!
Lessons learned from this event:
- Alignment, communication, mindsetting games bring better results!
Nothing could stand on its own from keynote speeches to workshop and conclusion. The design was crafted to make sure that all sessions were aligned. A slide to communicate the whole picture of the two days including what to expect from both the participants and this conference.
Communication also included voices from all participants. In addition, we started from having two games for them to play and heard that the two set their minds free with fun, ready for subsequent discussions ka.
- 'Play by ear' and 'expect the unexpected' helped practice our mindfulness and boost our flexibility
As we couldn't really know how many participants in each group would show up plus what key topics voted for before lunch, we were really alert to come up with numbers of subgroups and managed workshop materials as fast as possible. In my president group, we also cut short our planned process since we felt their attention span was already used up ka! Happy to say, though, that their wonderful participation surprised us ka.
- 'Authority is really something!'
Reflection of our team enhances lots of learning for me ka. I'm reminded that being in different contexts shapes people's thoughts and behaviors.
-- For me, being at the ministerial level made me feel quite comfortable to work with university senior leaders as I consider them 'partners' not 'bosses'. I wasn't really aware before that those in the university would have more hesitance when conducting a workshop for their 'bosses'.
-- From the 'dean' group, to make sure that those who represented their deans could feel comfortable, our team asked them to 'wear invisible dean jackets' for them to participate fully without feeling awkward ka.
-- Our three groups of presidents, deans, and students clearly showed their focuses according to their roles, namely, presidents leaning more on policies with much fewer activities, deans playing a tough role of accommodating and coordinating with both the senior leaders and students, and students for more activity-led thoughts and actions.
- Stories to share
-- We had a jigsaw puzzle game which worked effectively. Each small group would be given different numbers of jigsaw pieces and only one question was asked, 'what kind of animal is it?' For my president group, we got a penguin box ka. Just one group got the complete pieces of the penguin head which would be much easier to guess than others. We saw a group intentionally choose the fewest and another chose the opposite. Most of them worked within their own group to guess what could be the answer. We in fact, put the jigsaw box and paper showing the jigsaw picture on the stage where they could see clearly if wished. We were surprised not to see much mobility across any group so our conclusion was a series of questions to them: why no collaboration?, why silo?, why no further info searching like looking around or from the phone? One answer hit me and I think hit them too.....'we were busy and working hard!'.......we didn't have time to discuss this response much but it sure reflected the real situations for many ka. We hope the group learned some key lessons ka.
-- The students were amazed to know that all the three main groups went through the same games and discussed the same issues as voted. It was a surprise to me to hear it ka. Kids may have thought of being given different things most of the time. This event, it seemed they could feel included with the same assigned tasks. Knowing this makes it easier to think of more effective communication strategies and decide inclusive activities in the future to offer similar activities that could draw various perspectives.
-- Another story was about students' responses when asking about their learning from the conference. I asked 6-7 Thai kids and most took long to think of an answer....only one classic answer was given, which was 'having new friends'. We do need to have reflection sessions so they can think further and respond faster mai ka.
Anyway, one CMU student's response made me proud ka. She said it helped her understand the roles in the university more clearly when thinking of university leaders and faculty. For example, When the topic of curriculum development was chosen, she saw no need to discuss it. Yet, after the workshop she asked herself, 'if the faculty and administrators didn't think about it, who would!'
Our team together with several PSU key senior leaders helped capture key points, summarize them according to the three groups' outputs and synthesize all into one big picture to put into our synergy tank....this part did take longer than expected but it turned out to stun the participants for they would have the results about ESG to work on within their own and across universities plus through the CUPT-CRISU platform. PSU announced its initiative to get started.... proactive and timely mak ka.
Hope it sets the new chapter for this partnership to be even more solid with key substance for many actionable projects to come. Can't help but add one more thing ka: we included on the canvas the loop of M-E-L-I for them to make sure that monitoring and evaluation that draw learning must be integrated in the big picture for missions to align and vision to be reached ka.
Relieved and relaxed I am laew kaaa!
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