Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure‐ Oprah Winfrey.
It’s not the end of the world if you show poor performance in your studies and of course not the end of your life if people neglected you and stay a distance since they think you are not good enough for them. Life is actually beyond that, failure is a step closer to success. It’s a great exposure for the young participants of Midnight Football (MF) as last Saturday 21st of September as they were brought to Port Dickson for a one day workshop to build their self confidence and to get to know more about their behaviouristic and in a way putting positive inputs on developing their potentials.
Martin Cartwright, an expertise who is good in the areas of people interaction, conducted this session. He helps people in both their professional and personal lives. Martin’s main area of skill is to have personal impact to increase effectiveness. He is accredited in the ‘DISC’ Behavioral Profiling and Bar-‐On EQi Emotional Intelligence Profiling systems.
The session was quite interactive where both participants and Martin was sharing ideas and examples on how different traits tend to act. They were four kinds of traits namely dominant and active, interested and lively, steady and cooperative and lastly concerned and correct. It wasn’t a serious session, as participants did really enjoy answering Martin’s questions and follows given orders.
Later that afternoon, participants were challenged with some teambuilding activities to test their ability on working in groups. They were four groups consists of 8 participants each and they need to participate in four different games which are the angry bird challenge whereby using a stretchable rope to transfer wet sponge into a pail, followed by the toxic challenge whereby participants need to carry a bucket filled with water to another station only equipped with rope, upon finishing, participants then need to proceed to next station to complete the blind square challenge, where in the group everyone will be blindfolded, using only their ears and ropes given by the facilitator they need to form a square and finally they need to complete the number crunch challenge which there will be 36 numbers on a paper plate, team members need to step the number accordingly in order to finish the game, team with the fastest time wins the challenge.
The outcome on the games is not to categorize participants on champions, runners up and last place. Winning is a good thing but losing is a learning lesson, to perform better in future. Main reason behind the activities is to see how good they are to work in a group. At first participants failed in performing their best, because the game introduced is challenging. It requires a lot of teamwork to solve it. As the time clicks, they don’t seem to give up, with a bit of encouragement and guidance from facilitators, they did perform well and they tend to interact well among each other to find solution, hear other’s opinion and try to solve it as a team. Everyone did voice out their opinion, during this whole process participants tend to bring out their real behavior, those dominant leads the game, followed by other traits, everyone share their strength to overcome the challenges given to them.
“Before joining this workshop I have less self-‐ confidence to face challenges, and while doing Disc Profiling I found out I’m more to influential whereby easy to influenced others. Through this whole session I get to know more about my personality and other types of personality on how they work. At the end of the workshop, what I really learned is everyone is special in their own ways; we just need to give in so that we can work together as a team.”- Cecilia Yap, Midnight Football participant.
