Moving!

I finished my year as Local President, so this blog's purpose is over.
I am still blogging, on www.jciuk.org.uk/blog Come see me there!

Yours,
Solveig

Leadership Academy

In JCI we develop leaders, we give the opportunity to people to develop and use leadership skills through learning by doing. I feel we don't do enough to train people in leadership skills. We have some events on leadership during the year, but I really missed a full weekend intensive leadership academy similar to what is available for local presidents (European Academy) and national presidents (JCI Academy/Japan Academy).

Luckily, as a local President, you have some leverage as to what should be happening in your chamber the year you are a president and I used this leverage to create a JCI London leadership academy. I proposed the project formally to my council, but I think they have learned that if Solveig wants something, better not go against her...so they approved it. Good council.

The Academy took place in October in central London locations, and a bit in London itself. We had 20 participants, mostly from London but also from Reading and Glasgow, all of them amazing upcoming leaders who all participated actively throughout the weekend.

Friday evening we discussed what leadership is and the importance of personal branding. Throughout the academy each participant had an envelop with their name on stuck on the wall and the other participants were encouraged to leave feedback whenever a participant made an impact.

On Saturday we had sessions on communicating leadership and personal branding, trainers were Simon Bucknall from JCI London for the morning session and Tony Friende from Enos consulting for the afternoon session. We then let the participants out on the streets of London with apprentice style challenges that involved getting other people involved. One team had to find sponsors for our National Convention, another were asked to get publicity for the Nothing but Nets campaign and two teams were tasked with creating flash mobs and PR stunts for JCI. In the middle of the challenge the participants were told to also get featured in the media.

In addition, each participant were set a personal leadership challenge and had to lead an activity during the weekend, such as an ice breaker, time out or thank you speech.

Saturday evening we celebrated, the teams presented what they had done in the afternoon, we had speeches from National President Lesley Young and Past EVP Joe Dilger. We also had the honour to witness National President Lesley Young receive a senatorship, a lifelong honourary membership of JCI. The participants got to hear about leadership on different levels of the organisation, and also see how we reward leadership.

Sunday was the last day of a long weekend, Tony came back with his colleague Joe Howard and trained us in creativity and leadership. At the very last JCI member Oxana Andreeva led a personal coaching session for all participants.

Afterwards we had drinks, certificates (where each participant had to choose what kind of leader they wanted to be), and some participants went for dinner.

I loved the weekend, I loved the participants, I loved that the participants want to organise another one next year, it spurred me to sign up to an improvisation course, JCI London is planning to organise improvisation evenings next year, and I think we have an amazing team for next year's council.

Quotes from the participants:


"The Academy was a great weekend that not only made me think greatly about my own Leadership style, but the fantastic speakers and Sessions equipped me with new skills to take my Leadership to the next level in all aspects of my life. "
Callum Waddell

"We can learn by reading a book or watching how others do it, but nothing stands even close to personal experience. This training allowed me to learn and experience different concepts of interpersonal skills and to learn not only from my experience but from the experience of other Academy members.

By exploring ourselves we not only understand ourselves better, but also other people around us which allows us to act and communicate more successfully.Sometimes we need to be reminded of what we can do and sometimes we need a push to get out of our comfort zone. The satisfaction of pushing boundaries creates momentum - I can still feel the immense energy boost I received at the Academy."

Imants Krezins

"With the Leadership Academy being the first JCI course I have been on, I didn't really know what to expect. Having completed it, I now want to do every course there is!

It was a fantastic combination of highly-skilled trainers imparting knowledge on a diverse range of leadership skills, with a huge amount of hands on learning from the attendees. This allowed for you to work with a large number of different people and to learn from them, as well as from yourself.

Through the weekend I came to realise that leadership needs to start from self awareness, and we had so many opportunities to try out ways of being, of communicating, of interacting and to see the impact that has.

A fantastic course that I would highly recommend to anyone and everyone."

Robyn Peel

"JCI leadership academy - a supercharged course, by outstanding trainers, that pushes you out of your comfort zone and provides you with tools to make you a better leader."
Faisal Mooraby

catching up on things - awards and national convention

Life as a local president is busy and its been nagging me for a while that I should have been writing more on my blog....so much has happened since I last wrote, and I'll be updating on what's been going on from now on until the end of the year. And then I'm going to take a break. A JCI break. With no JCI between the 14th of December and new years. Yuhu!

Awards and National Convention
Last weekend (ish), JCI London had the great pleasure of hosting the first ever JCI United Kingdom National Convention.
The first, because in earlier years JCI UK has had two events - National Conference and National Awards, both about a day and a half. This year, to save members some money and offer a truly outstanding event, it was combined into almost three days with training sessions, parties, speakers and competitions.

It was fun. people came from all across the UK, British Isles and Europe. We've not had that many international attendees at a UK national event since many years. Among the attendees were JCI Director for Europe Michele Hermans, JCI VP Serge Goussaert, President Elect JCI Belgium 2011 Steven Vandenabeele, JCI Scotland President Karen Manson, JCI Ireland President Mark Kelly, representatives for WC 2011 in Brussels and EC 2011 in Tarragona, members from JCI Tallinn, Belgium and more.

I had the great honour to receive the award of Most Outstanding President JCI UK 2010, while JCI London won a number of awards (well done everyone!), among them Most Outstanding Chamber 2010 (you can see them all here: http://www.jcilondon.org.uk/news.php?id=251).

COC Director Sarah Beckwith and her team did an outstanding job. I know how much stress they've lived through with this convention and what they delivered was amazing.

Marco van den Heuvel took pictures, you can find them here.

See you next year!

visiting JCI Norway

One of the greatest things with JCI is to travel to visit other chambers and other national organisations.
I'm very lucky, I have two national organisations - JCI United Kingdom which is "my" national organisation, where I am currently Local President and Impact Officer, and will be National Marketing Director 2011, and JCI Norway, where I'm nothing at all but get to enjoy a status as adopted member, not really part of anything but access to it all.

I love seeing how different the two organisations are, JCI UK and JCI Norway, and how similar.We struggle with the same things, we argue about the same things, but we are good at very different things, and that is what we need to learn from each other.

While I was in Norway I got to
...practice my JCI World Public Speaking Championship speech and get feedback
...learn how to motivate others
...learn a lot about how JCI need to focus more on our current members than all the ones that haven't joined (yet)
...be inspired by JCI Norway's fantastic National President 2010 Heidi Murdoch-Larsen and learn about strategic networking in action
...meet lots of great people, many of whom I'll see again in Osaka
...debate why sex is better than alcohol

...feel loved and cared for and completely spoiled

Having lived almost 10 years abroad, I have friends in Norway but not the professional network I would have had had I lived there my professional life. Or at least that is what you would think. But with JCI Norway, the love and commitment I feel from its members, I have the best network I could possibly have in Norway. Thank you! You are all spoiling me!

JCI Belgium National Convention - Staines Memorial Award

This weekend I had the honor to travel to Mechelen for the JCI Belgium National Convention to presents the Staines Memorial Award.

Every year the President of JCI London presents the Staines Memorial Award to an outstanding member of JCI Belgium.

It was very hard to present the award. No matter how many times I practiced my speech, it never got easier, and when giving it on the stage it was hard to stay calm, something I think everyone noticed.

The award went to the wonderful An Deventer, very well deserved!

Otherwise the convention and the gala dinner was really nice. Good to meet old friends and make new ones. I look forward to seeing you all at our National Convention in November!

And finally a big thank you to the always graceful IVP Serge, International EVP Pierre, Dieter who took us around everywhere, and Diederik who hosted us at the beautiful From Dusk til Dawn. 

Here is my speech:

38 years ago, the 18^th of June 1972, the JCI Belgium National Board was on their way home from the European conference in Edinburgh. In London they boarded flight BE 548 for the short flight from London to Brussels.

A few kilometres outside London, about 3 minutes into the flight, two young brothers saw the plane fall from the sky  in what was to become known as the Staines disaster, after Lockerbie the worst air disaster in Britain.

JCI Belgium lost 7 members of the national board and 2 spouses and 12 children were orphaned.

My name is Solveig Malvik, I am standing here today as the President of JCI London. It is an honour for me to introduce the Staines Memorial Award which will go to an outstanding member of your organisation.

This award is presented every year by the President of JCI London as a mark of the bond between our organisations that came to be because of the Staines disaster.

You can never prepare for something like the Staines disaster, but that doesn’t mean you should stop living.

It is a great credit to JCI Belgium that you took what was the worst accident in your history and turned it into a way of recognizing someone who makes your organisation stay truly alive.

We cannot prepare, but we can build resilience. We can build an organisation that is connected because our relationships give us strength, our friends help us through hard times and remind us to keep on living, and that is what the Staines Memorial award recognizes.

As JCI Belgium you are facing new challenges this year and the next. We as your friends stand with you, and now – like then – as your friends we will not allow you to fail.

I am convinced that you will not only success but come out stronger and your relationships are witness to this.

I would like to paraphrase the actress Mary Pickford, for we can give ourselves a new start any moment we choose, because this thing we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.

It is my honour to give the word to Serge Goussaert who will recognise a member of your organisation who through their work has made your organisation stronger, more resilient and more alive.

Night at the Zoo with JCI Bellevue-Zurich

Last night I had a great night with members from JCI Bellevue-Zurich. 

Once a year the museums of Zurich stay open the whole night. All the museums, and the zoo. Most stay open until 2am, some until 4am. Lots of things going on - dance performances, lectures, parties and DJs. 

First we had dinner at a nice steak house next to the zoo, we had a great time, lots of laughs, some wine, great steak.

After the dinner we went to the night zoo, which looked quite a lot like what you see to the right here. But fun. A bit like "find 5 differences". Is the slightly lighter gray thing on the rock actually a rock or is it a tiger? Is the slightly darker gray rock next to the rock another rock or is it a giant turtle? Hummmm... I might have seen a tiger, two wolves, a lion (pretty sure I saw a lion), two elephants, a giant turtle and a very scary bat (see below).

JCI Bellevue-Zurich is running a project not very different from JCI London's Go for It! project in two weeks, and I'll be very interested in learning about their experiences and sharing best practices.

I had a great night with a great bunch of people, thank you JCI Bellevue-Zurich for taking very good care of me.

What's your tail?

I have a tail. Depending on the day, on the time and the need its either a cat's tail, a fox's tail or a squirrel's tail.

My tail keeps me in balance, reminds me its got my back, reminds me to walk proud.

Have you ever looked at people and wondered what their tails are? Its fun, I promise. Men are often dogs, wolves on a good day. Something about the shoulders, how they walk. Would you tell your friend if he's a pig or an elephant? A monkey?

Local Leader Summit 2, JCI Norway

This weekend I got the honor to speak to around 20 of the local JCI leaders in Norway. It was a lot of fun!

It is very interesting to learn about what is going on in other local and national JCI organisations, and great to see how much we have in common and how we can learn from each other.

I like the concept of the local leader summits, it allows the local leaders to network, learn from each other and share success stories. We don't have anything similar in the UK, but it is a concept I'd love to introduce to JCI UK. Many other national organisations have something similar and I would have loved to have it as a local president.

In my workshop I started by presenting JCI London, how we have developed, what we are doing that is working, and what we are struggling with. We then worked on the JCI mission and vision, practiced our elevator pitches, then we brainstormed solutions for some of the issues the local presidents feel the organisation is facing. We had so much to discuss with lots of great input, so we didn't get as far into the last exercise as I would have liked, but you live and learn and this was the first time I had 3 hours to give a workshop, and 3 hours turned out to be both quite long and too short.

As a thank you gift I got a book on the history of JCI Norway from the beginning to 1979. It is interesting to see how we are not only similar across borders, but across generations, and how we have been facing and working on the same issues since the beginning. Interesting - and quite a bit frustrating.

Thank you JCI Norway for inviting me and for making me feel welcome!

Leadership Academy

I love creating things, I love organising things. Love, love, love how the ideas, inspirations and inputs come together and take shape.

My latest project is the JCI London Leadership Academy, its my Presidential Project for JCI London.

Why a leadership academy? In JCI London (and in JCI in general) we talk a lot about leadership development, but we don't do much about it. We give people opportunities to develop leadership skills in action, we throw teams and projects at them, but we don't do much to support them or develop them, and that's where this new Academy comes in. And its not something new, most JCI organisations - local as well as national, has some sort of leadership training or academy, its honestly us here in London that are slow....

And the pieces for this academy are coming together beautifully. I have secured 4 brilliant speakers - 2 from within JCI London and 2 from the outside. Location has been booked, dinner has been booked, tickets have gone on sale, logo has been designed, work book is being designed...yay!

So what will happen? 
The academy is process based, not speaker based, so the speakers and program is designed to work together to create a process of learning and development in the participants (but that doesn't mean we won't have brilliant speakers...)
The first evening, Friday, we'll start with looking at the concepts of leadership - before we start learning about leadership we need to know what we mean, break down the big words. We'll look at power, values and behaviours, explore and challenge what we think leadership is and what we think about it.
Saturday will be a practical day. We'll explore our personal leadership brand and style, learn about how to use our networks and resources strategically, how to build support for ideas and who our "customers" are as leaders. Then in the afternoon the participants will be split into teams that will go out on the streets of London to take on leadership in action to succeed in a challenge that will get gradually harder...then we'll have a nice dinner where National President Lesley Young will share with us her thoughts on leadership.
Sunday we'll learn about communication skills as leader, how to communicate our brand, and finally look at career development how to define our brand and how to get there.

Speakers:
Simon Bucknall
Oxana Andreeva
Tony Friede
Joe Howard
 

Preparing for LS2

I've been invited to speak at JCI Norway's second leadership meeting of the year, LS2. Yay! I love getting invitations to speak!

I'm going to give a 3 hour workshop to the local presidents and deputies in Norway about membership growth, engagement and impact. I am really looking forward to meeting them all and working with them. We're talking a lot about these things in London and the UK, and its always great getting other perspectives on things.