Heike Schubert
Patrick Schoch

Career Starter Week

Arriving from cold and grey Switzerland in the warm and colorful Namibia after 17 hours of flight was at the same time fascinating as well as a little shock. But the friendly driver from NUST who picked me up from the airport did his best to make me feel welcome and make the tiredness go away. It was Thursday, January 26, later in the afternoon. Two weeks of excitement laid in front of us. Heike my colleague and co-trainer would arrive the following day. There was not much time to tune in. As soon as Heike arrived, we had a first get-to-know meeting with the contacts at NUST and the Cooperative Education Unit. We also had the chance to have a look at the locations and the training room where we were going to spend the most of our time for the next two weeks. It looked all fine and definitively a good starting point. Heike and I also knew that it was going to be an intensive weekend of preparation and setting things up. We had a lot of the material Priska and Hans Rudolf had put together in the pilot. It was now about bringing in own experiences from the training field (myself) and recruitment (Heike). But of course, we also took some time to get to know Windhoek. We found some great restaurants and market places. Thank you, Nico, for the tips.

On Monday morning, when the students of the first career starter week entered the room, we were wondering and cautious as to what to expect. But the ice broke soon and we started the first day well. As trainer in the field of leadership development in Switzerland, I am used that participants are quite outspoken and ask many questions. Here I did have to get used that the students are more reluctant to speak up and ask questions. But over time and with some “tricks” to get them to open up, the initial nervousness became less. The chocolate we gave away after a good presentation or role play obviously also helped. The many group works, project team work, role plays and presentations we were asking the participants to engage in did help there, too.

Throughout the week, we covered many different topics from management essentials, strategy, business planning, understanding self and others, reflecting on their own career drivers, HR lifecycle, governance, ethics, business practices to project work. Sometimes we did give them a stretch and they were challenged. And it was great to see how the students really opened from day to day and exercise to exercise and how they also were able to immediately incorporate feedback; from their colleagues and peers as well from us. By the end the week we sometimes had great laughs and discussions. So, the week went faster than initially expected. Still, we had a lot of preparation work to do for the upcoming day. And as we were to give individual feedback to every student, this also had to be done and written down. But by Friday afternoon, you could feel that the students and us became a little sad.

For the second week we felt well prepared and it made is surely easier that we had an idea what we could expect. And this was very much the case, we were able to leverage a lot of our learnings from the first week. Even though the students were different, we already knew that it would take some time to get familiar with each other and that some of the exercises will help to open up. And again, by the end of the week, it was a somewhat sad moment.

During the two weeks we had great support from Nico Smit, Martha Namutuwa and Enzy Kaura on site. Many things would not have been possible without their help. A big ‘thank you’ to all of you for that.

Heike, unfortunately, then had to leave soon again for Switzerland. I was able to add another week of holiday to get a further impression of this wonderful country. But that is another story and should be told another time… Finally, many thanks to the B360 team in Switzerland who prepared and briefed us well on what to expect.