40 Indiahikes Trek Leaders Undergo a Workshop to Build a Stronger Team

A few days ago we finished a workshop with our trek leaders which was conducted at our Raithal Campus in two batches. It was a 6 days workshop led by the Learning & Development team.

Lakshmi Selvakumaran (@zerowaste_vegan_desi), who’s the head of the L&D team shares, “The goal of the workshop was to get the entire trek leaders team together.

We started out by discussing what are the different ways in which a team can dysfunction. This discussion brought us to speak about 5 main team dysfunctions.

In the following days, we addressed each of these dysfunctions. We focused on building trust with the team. We also focused on how to address difficult conversations. Because a lot of times trek leaders find it difficult to bring up a conflict thinking it may affect an interpersonal relationship or the organization may not accept their point of view.

But it is very important to create a safe space where they grow rather than keep bottling up things or pointing fingers at each other.

For this, we learnt an important tool called non-violent communication where we learnt how to address conflicts meaningfully without taking any personal offence.

Outside of the workshop, we had two unique learning sessions. One of them was on bird watching where Sharwari Brahme (@sharwarrior), the head of green trails and a senior trek leader took sessions with them every morning on how to identify birds through sight, through sound and she also made them understand their physiology, habitat and their behaviour.

The other session was on Storytelling. Which was conducted by Swarada Ghangurde (@gswarada), who’s a trainer and senior trek leader at Indiahikes. Storytelling is as much a science as its an art so we taught them the science behind it so that they can practice and become better at it.”

“I think this workshop is a good start for the trek leaders, it was something new for them. I feel we were able to create a good forum for the trek leaders to share about their concerns and become more open to the idea of trusting each other.

I’m curious to see what behavioural changes it brings about in the trek leaders now.” adds Lakshmi.