When a transformational leadership mission trip transforms the coach himself
As you may already know, if you follow me a little bit, last month I had the privilege to serve the people of Costa Rica. The President of the country and the President of the Parliament had invited John Maxwell to help them initiate a movement of transformation in the Central America country. This is exactly the kind of projects the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation (“JMLF”) was created for. They did it last year in Guatemala and the year before in Paraguay.
With the invitation in hand, John turned to his organization of coaches, trainers, speakers and mentors, The John Maxwell Team (”JMT”). We are 18,000 around the world (and growing by 2,000-3,000 members every six months). From those, John selected a group of 250 and asked us to commit our time and financial resources to this mission (the Foundation funds the organization of the project, but the coaches do this as a pro-bono activity and pay for their travel and living). All of us responded positively to the calling and on March 10th I was flying from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to the San José airport.
After a day of “train the trainer” for the newbies on the process, we invested 3 days in training 15,000 people to run roundtables. The goal of those roundtables? To make people work on a 16-week curriculum around values and intentional living. The target of the global project is very ambitious: each person trained, committed to train on their own at least 20 other people, in groups of 5, over the course of the next 18 months. This is an expected impact on over 300,000 families in the country. That’s why the project is called “Transformación Costa Rica”.
I could tell you about the stories that touched me or other coaches during the training sessions; there were many, poignant in many cases. We were “ready to go” at 6.00AM and some of us were coming back to the hotel only by 10PM… after a long day of training several groups, from 5 to almost 100 people, depending on the locations: private sector companies of all sizes (from SMBs to large multinational corporations), hospitals, public sector entities, from local to central government, police, churches, etc. But to be honest, I am more inclined to share with you other stories, in which our skills as trainers had nothing to do with the end result. There were two moments that marked me during the week: a visit to an orphanage (“Obras del Espiritu Santo” project, created by Padre Sergio) and a day of service in a school.
The visit to the orphanage was very impacting to all of us. We learnt what the reality was for a high percentage of the population in this beautiful country that many of us knew purely as a vacation destination. 6% of the wildlife diversity in 0.5% of the surface of the planet. This is pretty amazing. But also the meeting point for the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Despite the efforts and the successes of the fight campaigns against drugs and corruption, those are part of the day to day life of a substantial part of the population. We add to this massive immigration from the neighbor countries, Honduras and Nicaragua, as well as others like Cuba. As a result, Obras del Espiritu Santo takes care of tens of thousands of children across the country, but also in other Central American countries and they even have a center in the US.
Padre Sergio opened our eyes to the reality of the country, but also opened an opportunity for us to bring some love and care to those children that afternoon. We spent a few hours comforting them, playing football (soccer) with them and taking care of the animals with them. And the younger ones loved to be raised up to our shoulders and have a new perspective on the world from there (a scary perspective for some of them, when I think about that young girl who started screaming as soon as I put her on my shoulders and wanted me to walk very, very slow, “so she wouldn’t fall off”… 😊). I also remember very vividly the conversations with the teenagers, their dreams about going to university, studying tourism, medicine, etc. so they could help the people in their country and develop it. The picture above is from that visit… those smiles, and bright eyes, were worth the long hours of trip to Costa Rica.
Our last day of the mission was a service day in different schools. I went to school Leon XIII. The goal was to participate in some activities with the kids, to help reinforce their values, and to do some maintenance work in the school; nothing very technical, the goal was not to allow us to break anything or get injured, so we helped by painting the long fences of the school in a very nice pastel green color. I still have some drops in my sneakers and t-shirt, which triggers nice memories every time I go for a fitness or running training.
During the first session with the kids in their classrooms, I noticed a boy that was much taller than the others in the class and seemed a little bit shy. When the time came to do the activity in groups, he tried to join two groups that rejected him, so he ended up joining a small group at the end of the classroom with a little girl and another boy who didn’t find a group either. There I go to try to engage with that group of “outsiders” 😉
They start the activity, I distribute paper, stripes, color crayons, etc. They put their names in their paper. His name is Joshua. So I just start a small talk with each one, calling them by their first names. Surprisingly to me, Joshua starts asking me questions and telling me about himself. Wanting to know the places I visited around the world, telling me about his family and the places he has and will visit. Father from Cuba, mother from Nicaragua. He’s going to visit his mother’s family for the first time in his life this Easter. He plans to visit France in the years to come, where his step father has a place. We end up the activity and I leave the classroom thinking to myself: “I am really bad at assessing when someone is shy, Joshua was really chatty and sounded balanced in his speech 😊”
20 minutes later, I am discussing with other JMT members and the lady from the NGO organizing our visit comes and tells me: “Ezequiel, the teacher of the class you just helped with the activity came to me in tears. She told me that the boy you worked with, called Joshua, has been talking more with you in 15 minutes than he has with his class mates or anyone else in this school in months.” I ask her for more details. It appears Joshua is 12 years old and he is in that 4th degree classroom with kids 2 years younger because he didn’t manage to get the level to go to 5th degree for 2 years in a row. Apparently, he never speaks with his classmates and little with his teacher, only when she insists, just to get very short answers.
I don’t know if since then, Joshua has opened more and improved his relationship with the other kids and teacher. I would like to think that yes. In any case I am happy that our presence there could trigger that change of attitude on his side. Hopefully it also triggered a lasting change.
That’s it. Those are the small things I wanted you to read about today. You never know the impact you will have around you when you open your heart and spread love, kindness and care. For the last month I have been much more intentional in offering those 3 things around me. Sometimes is not easy. But perhaps you too, can offer them to your environment today, and this weekend, at least for some minutes or hours.
I am incredibly grateful to John Maxwell, for organizing this transformation movement to get started in Costa Rica, together with Terence Chatmon (President of the JMLF) and Mark Cole (CEO of John’s companies). It was my first transformational trip to Central America with the team, certainly not the last one.
Have an intentional day. Grow. Reach your goals. Have an impact. Make a difference.
Let the best version of yourself unfold,
Ezequiel
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