Leadership Summer School is a project which poses many challenges. It requires from every actor designing it to deliver their part at the best of their abilities while providing plenty of opportunities for learning and insight. One of the corner stone roles for this project is being Trainer at LSS.

Role of a LSS Trainer

The role of a LSS trainer is therefore to design and deliver the best learning experience possible for participants and to set an engaging and safe environment that empower everyone to exchange , collaborate and co-create the uniqueness of the event.

To do so, trainers are expected to collect and analyse the needs of the partnering organisation and future participants. Then they should combine these pieces of information with their personal vision on Leadership, their experiences and observations in order to shape the entire event. Eventually, they will create and deliver sessions where knowledge and best practices, served with an opportunity to try them out, will help to develop participants’ skills.

Moreover, LSS Trainers also facilitate various other activities which, beyond the training room, contribute in setting a safe environment for participants to share their deeds, dreams, experiences, best practices and ideas. We are talking about TED-like speeches, Open Space Technology and other facilitation techniques, Team building, projects’ initiation, NGO and business consultancy, etc.

To sum up, LSS Trainers tasks implies:
– to deliver sessions related to leadership and management skills, personal and organisational development,
– to propose, design and facilitate innovative activities,
– to run self and event evaluations,
– to share their background and experiences,
– to coach and mentor participants,
– to spend quality time and have fun with all,
… among other things like sleeping.

LSS Trainers’ Team

LSS Trainers’ team is an interdisciplinary group of trainers with various fields of expertise, personal and professional backgrounds, experiences and interests. Together, the LSS trainers design the event, creating its main orientation, learning pillars and devising the topics. They also take into account past records of the event and the needs and expectations of the participants.

Most training topics are delivered in parallel by a squad of trainers who chose to develop a given topic into a session. They set the main objectives of the session, reflect about the best learning activities which will allow participants to experience, reflect, conceptualise and perform the related set of skills. Eventually, in pairs, they finalise the session that will be delivered to participants they’ll be in charge of during the allocated time.

Trainers are working together as motivation drivers, listening to all the request and choosing the best course of action, ready to adapt the schedule or content to ensure maximal efficiency. They are also the spirit builders, challenging and supporting the participants to make the best out of their time in LSS.

LSS Trainers’ Team is furthermore a space for trainers to share their ideas, collect feedback, learn from each other practices and develop their personal networks.

LSS Training Coordinators

The LSS Trainers’ Team is led by 2 Training Coordinators, trainers who accepted the charge of coordinating the Trainers Team and shaping the content of the event. This role includes the design of the whole event, the crafting of training schedule, the repartition of sessions and tasks among the trainers. In addition to these elements, it is very important to keep a constant contact with the Supervisory Board and the Organizing Committee to share the needs and constraints regarding the learning centred approach and the logistics of the event.

During the event, they are responsible for the coordination of the trainers team including daily meeting, the quality control of the training program and the well-being of the participants and trainers.

Once the event is over, the LSS Training Coordinators ensure that a proper follow-up process is established for participants to implement individual insights and findings which they have just experienced.

From the start, LSS initiators saw the development of NGO leaders going along with the development of the trainers who train them hence the possibility for trainers to share their best practices acquired along their careers and experiment during the event. All that experience is later on brought back into the NGO world through various means of dissemination.

LSS is possible because of the huge amount of creativity needed to shape the content, the motivation to create fresh and excellent learning experience, and the dedication of its innovative successive generations of trainers.