Being a Leader and Meeting the Team!

Blog post by Net

After the team were selected at INTOPS, I had a super exciting phone call from Anna - she asked me to be the leader for Team Latvia 2015! Having not long come back from Latvia on my first GOLD project, I was really keen to go back out and carry on the hard work that we did last year (you can read more about that here: goldlatvia2014.blogspot.com) so I of course accepted!

Net (top right) and the other GOLD team leaders for 2015

January saw me and all the other leaders come together at Pax Lodge in London for our leaders briefing. Busy doesn't even come close to describing that weekend. We were constantly on the go with trainings, learning exactly what we'd let ourselves in for! Being a leader, I'm lucky enough to not only have Team Latvia around me, but also all of the other leaders, the GOLD co-ordinators and staff members from CHQ. We bonded really quickly, and despite all the brain power being used, had a really fun weekend, including a nice meal out, budgets, energisers, risk assessments, party bags, emergency planning, and more sweets than you can imagine!

Planning as a team

After that weekend, I was ready to meet the team, although I will admit to being a little apprehensive! We'd been chatting a little bit on Facebook, but the rest of the team had all met at INTOPS and, on the whole, remembered each other from that weekend. I had met Katie briefly at a different camp, but we didn't really know each other, and I had no idea about the rest of the team - What if there was a massive personality clash? What if they hated me? What if they hated each other? But as usual, Anna and the INTOPS team had done a fantastic job of putting the teams together, and my worrying was unnecessary - my team were fantastic!

Part of our GOLD journey in Post-it notes

During the weekend, we looked at the GOLD journey as a whole, we chatted about culture shock,

health and well being on project, we looked at some PR, and had some group time to organise ourselves into our different roles (we'll write more about those on the next blog!). We also had some time apart - I spent a fun hour in a very small cupboard with the other leaders, whilst the team were discussing their expectations of me. The posters they created are still stuck on my bedroom wall, reminding me to not be "a moo", to be a "bit of crazy" and to be "Switzerland" (neutral!) amongst other things.

Both Sarahs defend against beach balls in the energiser

Mix that in with some ice breakers, some energisers, and an "I'm a celebrity..." style evening

entertainment, it was an action packed but super productive weekend! I think the team enjoyed it just as much as I did - what a way to kick off GOLD 2015!

GOLD Love,

Net xx

Our newspaper jungle tree in the I'm a celebrity.... evening game

Fishing for GOLD stars