It was indeed great to come back and visit an extraordinary organization AIESEC and to chair their biggest European conference of the year, EuroExpro 2010.
I did not go there to check up on the organization or to challenge or trying to shape its direction! I just came there to be myself, to reflect on my current situation and to understand if I am living within my integrity zone. Above all of that, I came there to facilitate an environment to enable the delivery of an amazing experience for everyone involved. Looking back, I feel that we did have an amazing time there and the kind of things I have heard after the conference really make warm inside and also feel comfortable that we had a magical, truly transformative week in Istanbul.
What I loved with the experience was that it wasn’t a pushed or a forced environment where everyone had to go beyond what’s reasonable to deliver. Instead, it was a systematically designed environment that was set up around a very clear vision for what we, i.e. every single person involved wanted to experience, combined with a great team environment, and some practices.
To use words that I have used before – our guiding idea was to experience our best AIESEC conference ever, our practices were regular faci meetings, morning breathing exercises, etc and our artefacts where clear principles for how we wanted to behave and a strong team built up by excellent individuals. Every single person involved did give that little extra in every situation, and that really made the experience extraordinary, but I believe that was possible because of our very solid and strong foundation.
Outside the flow of the conference, i.e. the nitty gritty content of the conference the words that comes to my mind about what this conference was about are the following:
Authenticity
Integrity
Clarity
Compassion
Choice
Transformative experiences
AIESEC
Guiding ideas
Practices
Artefacts
Stories
Conversations
and…
Inspiration
Thanks everyone who made this possible – it was an honour to Chair this environment that I hope was transformative for everyone involved!
Until next exchange
Emanuel
