ACCA 2008:Team-Building 28 April 2008

A year ago, we saw the need to introduce "soft skills" training in the training of our future accountants. In so doing, we were heeding the advice of the Accounting Education Change Commission in USA: "Days of rote learning and number crunching are gone," they once wrote. "In our changing world we need today strategists, thinkers, team players motivated by continuous learning. Accounting students should be active participants in the learning process and not passive recipients of information." As a result, CTI Plus was born, a programme that focused on the provision of soft skills such communication, conflict handling, team building, etc. The CTI Plus programme is run over six weeks and forms a backdrop to the ACCA course proper, which starts early June.

On Monday 28 April, two fully crowded CNT buses carrying students and lecturers left CTI at 9 am heading for Le Wolmar public beach. The various games in which the students and lecturers participated and the well-deserved humble chicken Briani shared were memorable moments for the students embarking on the course. A good break after lunch was not a luxury we could afford as 130 pairs of hands joined together to give the beach a clean and tidy look. It was an opportunity for CTI students to show that fun does not preclude respect for the environment and the sense of responsibility the students have to develop in order to become good citizens of the world.

We closed the day with a prize giving ceremony and thanked everyone involved. Before leaving we distributed a debriefing questionnaire to be discussed in groups and presented in a debriefing session the next morning at CTI. The debriefing session presentations were lively on the following day and revealed that every group, every member thought that this outing had given them a golden opportunity to form strong bonding ties with their friends and had taught them the basics of teamwork. They felt they all emerged as winners and had developed a sense of belonging in their respective group.

 

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