It is a couple of years since I last posted a blog about my time working for Midland Bank/HSBC, and if I am to write any more of them, I probably need to do so quite soon, before my memory fails me, so here is one on what I can remember of an unsurprisingly mundane management course that spawned a couple of memorable and rewarding voluntary exercises. As you’ll see, some of the details are a bit sketchy.
I have written before that over the years the courses that
the bank ran changed from focusing on the technical aspects of particular roles
- whether that was cashiering, or foreign work, or anything else - to dealing
with soft skills like leadership and managing people. The course I’m featuring
here was called Leadership Challenge, and to go with the day’s activities,
there was something extra that followed and required working as part of a small
team in planning and delivering a project.
It is quite scary to think that the Leadership Challenge was
now nearly a decade ago, which is why some of my memories of it may be somewhat vague and lacking in detail! For starters I cannot remember whether this was a bank-wide course, UK
bank specific, or simply just for Payments Department, where I was working in
2011. My suspicion is that it was the last of these.
What I do remember is that there was a day of activities at
the bank’s sports ground in Beckenham that featured the normal round of events
that are a cross between role playing exercises and parlour games. Frankly I
always had a hard time with these sorts of events, I really struggled to take
them seriously, and – and this may be because I take things too literally at
times – found them difficult to relate to the real world. The main memories I
have of the day were learning from the office of an outage on the system for
which I was, in part, responsible. Gary Cook, my colleague with whom I worked
on that system was with me on the course, meaning that a hefty percentage of
the team were out of the office. One of my few memories of the activities was
some exercise in which we had to spot objects that were scattered in trees and
bushes; quite what the purpose of that was I cannot recall.
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HSBC's sports ground at Beckenham |
As part of the course we were placed in groups of six
people, and after the day’s events each group was asked to put together a
proposal to work with a local or national charity to raise funds for them, or
contribute in some other way. At the time – and I really hope that this is
still the case – the bank allowed staff time off to contribute to charitable
events, not something many people were aware of, hence the fact that I cannot
recall anyone ever doing so other than in connection with the Leadership
Challenge.
Our group’s initial meetings after the day of the course
concluded that we did not want to just do some fund raising, especially since another
group had become involved with the highly popular armed forces charity, Help
for Heroes. Founded in 2007, Help for Heroes raised over £40 million in its
first three years of work. We decided instead to volunteer our time to a
charity local to where we worked in Southwark.
After a false start or two, we identified Bankside Open
Spaces Trust (BOST), an environmental and volunteering charity to work with.
Set up in 2000, BOST aims to improve people’s health and wellbeing by
making where they live and work greener and more beautiful, protecting,
preserving and enhancing parks, gardens and other amenities in London SE1 and
surrounding areas. [1]
The idea was that in partnership with BOST, we would decide
on some tasks that we could undertake, and that the bank would give us a day
off to do the work. But first we were supposed to prepare a presentation for
management of what we would do. In part, and in terms of the course we had been
on, this was probably supposed to be as important as the end result, providing
an example of how we could work together (and we were by no means a group who
worked together on a day-to-day basis) to devise and create a project and
presentation. Although we worked on doing this, we never did get to deliver our
presentation. We did however, follow through with our proposal and work with
BOST, on not one, but two projects, which was more worthwhile than any
presentation.
Our first project, which took place in June 2011, was on
Waterloo Millennium Green, and involved clearing debris, weeds and other
detritus from the pond and water feature there. My colleagues Paul Land, Anna
Martyr, Gary Cook, Solidea Cocciatelli, and I [2]
spent a whole day removing rubbish and weeds, and clearing away the overgrown
vegetation from the pond, which had been drained in advance. It was hard work,
and at one point, when I removed the two pairs of gloves I was wearing (one
pair latex, one pair fabric), I had to pour away about half a pint of sweat
from each, but it was very rewarding and at the end of it, the pond looked a
lot better. A few weeks later I took a stroll over there to see what it looked
like after it had been refilled, and very pleasant it was too. Sadly, I don’t
have any photos of it before or immediately after.
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Waterloo, Millenium Green |
The following year, in 2012 (I think it was February as it
was during the school half-term holiday), the same group of us contacted BOST
again and found a voluntary job, working for a day at a school in Southwark
(again, I cannot remember which one, although I’m pretty sure it was in
Redcross Way, so it was either St Joseph's R C Primary School, or The Cathedral
School of St Saviour & St Mary Overy - I really ought to have written this
sooner after the event!). This time our task involved installing raised flower
beds for the children’s vegetable garden. Hard work again, but no less
rewarding.
What other groups did – apart from those who raised money
for Help for Heroes – I cannot say, and how many ever delivered their presentations
I don’t know either, although my recollection is that the presentations were an
idea that petered out somewhat.
Of all the courses I ever went on, the Leadership Challenge event
was right up there with the most tedious, average and predictable (frankly it
was a waste of a day out of the office), but I would not have passed up the
opportunity to crawl around in a pond on Waterloo Green, pulling up weeds and
putting empty beer cans in black plastic sacks, nor the chance to build some
raised flower beds on a cold winter’s day, so there were compensations. I just
wish I could remember it all better.
[1] https://www.bost.org.uk/about-1
[2] I
am sure there was a sixth person, but for the life of me I cannot remember who
it was! If it was you dear reader, all I can do is apologise!
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