As 2021 draws to a close, we’re looking back on our year and celebrating some of our key highlights and achievements. Ongoing training and coaching is a big part of our culture and we’ve loved the year we’ve had learning and growing. Two of Sharesource’s core values are being proactive - and creating value (for all our stakeholders) - so we’re happy to have built-in continuous personal and professional development and enabled various learning opportunities for our members.

Collective Values and Collective Input

We kicked off 2021 with Jess Jasch presenting on "COLLECTIVE VALUES. COLLECTIVE INPUT". This took a deeper dive into Sharesource’s values, how our personal and work values intertwine and how these bring about positive impact. Our Managers and Team Leaders had a follow-up session that furthered their ability to make strategic decisions, inspire their team to become better and develop a sense of oneness within Sharesource and with our partners. The overall aim, of course, was achieving both personal and professional success.

Would I Work for Me?

Mid-year, Sharesource partnered with Arvy Villamarzo to create a customized, interactive, and intensified leadership training program called "WOULD I WORK FOR ME?" This was a three-tier programme, run over three months, which involved workshops, role-playing, and group discussions. The first tier covered ‘Self-Leadership’, the second ‘Leading Others’ and the third ‘Sustaining Our Growth’.

Business English Communication

Rez Gaid also ran a series of "BUSINESS ENGLISH COMMUNICATION" workshops over the course of the year. These were broken down into four weekly webinars, covering topics like how to agree/disagree and get opinions from other people; body language; intercultural communication; giving effective feedback; business meeting and email etiquette and common grammatical mistakes. This was particularly helpful as a global business with hubs in four different countries. Our partners were happy to see significant improvements in some of their team’s communication skills after this training. Rob King from Integration Kings had this to say about Magnolia:

Intensified Agile Training

The third quarter saw Quang Nguyen (a Vietnamese Agile Coach, Trainer, Culture Influencer and experienced Software Development Industry expert) leading a fun and collaborative workshop on "INTENSIFIED AGILE TRAINING". Agile is an iterative approach to project management and software development that helps teams deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer headaches. Members learned how to get customer feedback when the product is not yet there, and quality control/quality assurance testing of a system when it is not yet built! The agenda included ‘Shift Left with the User Story’; ‘Acceptance Criteria’ and ‘ATDD’ (Acceptance Test-Driven Development.) This training was open not just to our programmers and developers but to all who wished to further their knowledge in terms of making ‘work’ work for them and not against them. It was particularly useful in helping many of our members efficiently manage the transition to full-time WFH. 

Global Engagement Day

We ended the year on a high by hosting a "GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT DAY" which was a fun and collaborative event breaking down the sometimes overwhelming topic of Big Data analysis and reporting. The objective was to enable people from the Philippines, Vietnam and Botswana to learn, interact with and grow their networks in this field. We explored how to design an effective data warehouse and the benefits this brings to business - including examples and best practices. Some of our senior Filipino tech members were given the opportunity to ‘pay it forward’ to people thinking about entering the tech and Big Data fields. They were part of a ‘Human Library’ storytelling activity and we had keynote speakers from Vietnam.

These were just a few of the highlights worth celebrating on our learning journey and we’re excited to welcome many more as we head into a new year!