Once again its my pleasure to announce that the symposium has arrived in a new country, this time South Korea. This is our last morning in Seoul before heading home having been here an intense, enjoyable and ultimately hugely successful 6 days.
Day One saw the team assemble, Hide Enomoto arrived from Japan, Sand and I had flown in from the USA, and we were helped enormously by the very professional team at the venue, the Korea Leadership Resort in Anseoung. We ran a symposium for 15 people in a mixture of English and Korean – you can guess that HIde and I contributed the English bit and Helen, one of the participants translated for her compatriots. This pushed the 4 hours version out to 5 but the extra time made for a complete experience for all and the symposium worked its magic once again. How do we know? Because 4 people who hadn’t planned to decided there and then that they wanted to stay for the subsequent Facilitator Training.
That evening and over the next two days we ran a Basic Training for the same 15 people, and by the end of Day Three “Hosanyaksu” had completed the training and named themselves [there is no simple translation for this word, it means a combination of Healing Spring and Hospice Hands, I think].This wonderful new group includes Kayeon and her two sons Ben and Brian, 16 and 17 respectively and then a large group who work together in the Korea Leadership Center and its associated companies. This last grouping particularly gives the Korean facilitator community a powerful capacity to organise and deliver events, that is their day job with programs like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Indeed it was Ken Gimm, CEO of this company who had the vision to bring the Symposium to Korea after he attended it at the Montreal meeting of the International Coaching Federation last November. Now he envisages the Symposium reaching 15% of Korean’s 48 million population by 2015, so we can expect to hear more from this ambitious new community very soon.
The last couple of days have included press briefings, a company-wide Q & A event, other meetings and time for some sight-seeing, hosted by a number of the wonderful young people from Ken’s companies; thanks particularly to Jun, Eunice, Jay, Jessie and Karen. How we ended up in Korean national dress banging the big drum outside the palace at Deoksugung is another story . . . . .
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