FRIENDS: The Starting Point

HELP Teams Building and Training

FRIENDS: The Starting Point

Premise

This initiative for the building and training of teams and their leaders is based on the premise that

“I can’t lead if I don’t know how to follow.”

There is a pamphlet on this topic. It also contains some basic teaching about it.

Foundation

The HELP MANUAL provides the foundational understanding of what we are aiming to achieve.

The starting point for participating and growing into any HELP Team and its leadership is:

1.    Start to assist new recruits in HELP wherever and however you can. Make special time in your daily and weekly routine to do so. The first step is to make sure new recruits have been through the Info TALK.

2.    Become a friend to one participant who you have noticed is struggling the most and whom you really want to help and then, intentionally, meet regularly to work out a way forward, together. Use the Recruit’s Friend MANUAL for this. Pursue this relationship until the person starts doing the same with another struggling participant or until it obviously fails and there is no sense in trying to pursue it any further.

In the regular meeting, using the Recruit’s Friend MANUAL, once you get familiar with the suggested framework for the discussion in the meeting, introduce the following material in the “Finding a useful principle” part:

·         The HELP MANUAL

·         The ‘Things to get right’ booklet

(Always focus and discus ONE TOPIC / LESSON AT A TIME. Too much information in a discussion only confuses.)

3.    Attend at least one “FRIENDS meeting” in a week for questions and answers about this strategy and for training in it. There will be such meetings at the City Depot on Mondays at 09:00, Wednesdays at 10:00 and Fridays at 09:00.

4.    Make sure that you yourself achieve each of the Objectives for all participants (as listed in the Assistant’s TALK) and practice it well, because you cannot coach and guide anybody in them if you do not do it yourself.

5.    Continuously coach yourself and all, but particularly also your Friend, through the objectives of the HELP MANUAL and the ‘Things to get right’ booklet in order to achieve these objectives and to celebrate their achievement. The suggested framework for the discussion in the your regular meeting with your friend provides for sharing what you achieved in spite of all the challenges you will always be facing through life.

Joining an HELP Team should follow

Join the HELP Team you would like to be involved in by volunteering with them in getting their mission accomplished.