Before lockdown restrictions, myself (Iesha) and two other members of the G-Expressions team, Nateaya and Nyla recently took part in the Sports Leaders Tutor/Assessor training in order to broaden our knowledge and learn all that we need in order to excel to the next step within our roles. For Nateaya and myself, this was a first time experience on the course but we had had experience on Dance Leaders Level 1 quite a few years back. Although, for Nyla, this was just a refresher to recap on all the knowledge she had previously learned as she had completed the course quite some time ago.
During the one day course in Cardiff, we learned a vast amount of information on subjects such as how to access young leaders within their journey but also practiced skills that we were already experienced in such as practical team-building skills and icebreakers to use in sessions. What I personally found interesting was the difference in opinions when thinking about the importance of certain traits within members of a team of leaders. Whilst myself and fellow teammates agreed that traits such as ‘confidence’ were among the most valuable traits within a leader, one of the course leaders believed that ‘sense of humor’ should be among the most important. Our reasoning for not agreeing was that although we are privileged enough to have members within our organisation who have a similar sense of humor to us, we would not deem someone a bad leader for not sharing this trait with us.
Something we discussed after the course is taking part in the Dance Leaders course that is held in the infamous Pineapple Studios in London. This is something that I and fellow members of G-Expressions will be looking into in the near future once restrictions of Covid-19 are eased.
What we have taken from this course to put into practice among many skills is a deeper sense of how to engage with young people is not only a personal level but a professional level also.
