My journey in IFP begun a mere 6 months ago. Although it’s only been 6 months, I personally believe IFP has changed me as a person and has also become an important part of my life.
1) Where is your learning going? How will you apply skills, qualities you’ve developed outside of IFP?
I personally believe my learning is going very far. I’m able to apply almost everything I learn in IFP in other aspects of my life. An example is the mentor group planning session. I applied my new active listening skills and knowledge with the effective planning to ensure we had a fruitful session. I learned about planning activities and facilitating them in the best possible ways. I was easily able to justify the importance of IFP as well as the appliance of IFP learnt skills to real life skills. IFP has made me understand the complexity behind small conflicts and has overall made me a much more open minded individual. I try to apply any useful skills from IFP to my everyday scenarios.
2) What have you learned about collaboration? Have you learned to be more effective when working with others? What’s your biggest obstacle when asked to contribute to a team?
Collaboration is one of the skills I’ve learn and improved the most on. I am a very strong headed person who tends to speak most of the time. IFP has helped me, especially through the Personality activity and the active listening activities. Through the Personality activity I realised how important it is to have a range of personalities in the group to be effective. My biggest obstacle is letting other people talk and not talking the most. I tend to have a lot of ideas that I have to share and sometimes can intimidate others or make others refrain from sharing their thoughts as well. Through the active listening session I was able to understand that even though I may think I’m listening, it may not be actively which can affect the person I am listening to.
3) In what ways have you been a mentor to others this year? Where and when have you shown initiative?
I’ve tried to take on leadership positions to ensure that people can be actively participating. An example of this was in the simulation. There was a moment when nobody was talking and I tried to be a role model by talking to break the awkward silence and fuel a conversation. I have shown initiative and tried to talk to people I have never talked to before. I used to be afraid of going up to people and just start talking but recently I’ve tried to do it more often, especially after IFP. I tried to make people welcomed and in both small groups + larger groups, tried to make sure everyone was actively involved. An example of this is during the lead facilitation, my partner was too scared to talk but I tried to comfort her and taught her some techniques to gain more confidence.
4) Which session has done the most to address your areas for improvement as a peace builder? How did that session encourage growth?
I believe the session that has changed me the most and has had the greatest impact on me has to be the Jah and Kay simulation. This opened my mind to difficulties I may face as a peace builder at a conference or just in life generally. The fact that we were unaware of what the other group was told, the way we were selected to be in a certain group, the way we had a variety of instructions and just working in that simulation. I really feel like it’s made me more conscious of my life choices. It really changed me.
5) What have you learned about leadership & what qualities and skills have you developed in IFP to help do this?
Personally, I’ve always been a leader so IFP has only helped me enhance my leadership skills. I’ve been active parts of many leadership activities such as MUN and Round Square but none of them are quite like IFP. I’ve developed better active listening skills which was one of my weakest traits. I’ve turned this weakness into a strength. I’ve learnt that being a leader doesn’t just mean I have to be confident and open to ideas in big groups, I have to be a leader in small groups too. I have also begun to understand the importance of checking in to ensure that everyone is involved. I believe I have many facilitation skills but most of them were with large groups. IFP has helped me enhance my smaller group and pair facilitation skills.
6) What has your engagement in IFP looked like your peers? What makes you say so?
I think I effectively convey my passion for IFP. I try my best to contribute as much as I can to big group discussions as well as small group ones. I look forward to IFP sessions and try to stay engaged in every session. I talk about IFP to friends outside of just the IFP sessions. I try to link some learning from IFP to that in other areas of my life.
Some Posts of Other IFP Sessions that have had a huge impact on me:
This is a really thoughtful post and it was great to read! I really like how much you have reflected on yourself and your strengths as well as recognising that one of your dominant personality traits, which is being extroverted and contributing a lot of ideas is a great quality but that active listening is just as important! Active listening is something which I feel I was better at than leading but I too have been given the chance to improve on both of these things through IFP.
It sounds like you have really learnt a lot about both peace building as well as yourself through this activity, which is great to see. The active listening session clearly resonated with you and seems to have tied together some of the other themes as well: learning to find the balance between taking the lead, and listening while others speak up is a difficult thing to master!