Sometime last year, February 2017 to be precise, I was in Sapele, Delta State for a Leadership and Entrepreneurship programme – the programme lasted for three weeks.
As part of the programme we had a series of classes, after which we were grouped in teams. I had two wonderful teammates: Folake and Faith. Folake was of Yoruba tribe – she was beautiful, brainy and outspoken. On the other hand was the more reserved Faith. Faith was unassuming, she was from Sapele. She had that typical Warri accent with lots of enthusiasm; she was equally beautiful.
Our team task was to develop a sellable business idea – an idea that could be sold to potential Investors/Sponsors. We came up with an idea. Our idea was a social venture – a youth advocacy and development organization. The organization was one that would focus on leveraging social and interactive forums to give young people the platform to make known their challenges as well as proffer solutions to some of the challenges within their environment.
As we progressed through the task, together we developed the idea which was originally mine. We added few innovations such as a follow up system for the micro loans part of the venture. After the brainstorming sessions, we built a prototype for our presentation and was settled to face the two other teams in the pitching competition.
As we rehearsed ahead of our pitch, there was an argument on who should lead the team. Being the originator of the idea, i was naturally favoured to lead our team – but then, I thought that would be too obvious, because I believed the other teams would expect me to lead our team which wouldn’t help our winning strategy. So I suggested that Folake should lead us into the competition. She took up the challenge, she led in the rehearse sessions as we rehearsed.
As we entered the pitch arena, Folake whom I believed had the most difficult role amongst the three of us – a role of introducing our business to the sitting investors and listeners, started pretty well. Before the session, we had an eye contact strategy that one may look at the other if he/she is short of words – and that worked pretty well.
In the end, we won the most coordinated team of the competition. While the other teams came out feeling unimpressed with eachother. Team FFK (Folake, Faith and Kingsley) was well pleased with the outing, we were pleased with our knited team performance.
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