iGEM Toronto is a synthetic biology design team hosted by the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry. Here, undergraduate students plan and execute their own bioengineering project and present their results at the annual iGEM competition in Boston, US. Our team's support infrastructure has undergone major changes to better empower the students, and key to this was the incorporation of Troost ILead's customized leadership and teamwork workshops for our student leaders. After a consultation period, Troost ILead designed two workshops to address specific issues we have historically dealt with for years. These workshops were highly informative and gave our student leaders tools and resources to tackle issues related to accountability and conflict management. This year, iGEM Toronto has earned a gold medal standard project, indicating high-quality work, and earned a nomination for the Best Manufacturing Project for teams in the metabolic engineering space. We attribute part of this success to the excellent teamwork our student leaders had, which was founded upon the concepts and conversations had during Troost ILead's workshops. Albert Huynh is an excellent workshop facilitator who actually listens and thinks creatively about how to address design team issues. We intend to continue to pass down the information we have learned to the following generation of team leaders and also pass this information down to our general members as well. We hope to continue to work with ILead in the future as they are a great service on campus!
Project Include has been getting advice and support indirectly from ILead for 3 years now. Recently, we wanted to make a directed effort to improve team dynamics and individual leadership among team members. For this reason, we reached out to ILead for some customized support in running leadership training workshops for our team members.
We met with them once to discuss where Project Include stood and what we hoped to see in one/series of workshops for our team. It was during the months leading up to our summer programs, and we had noticed that there had been a lack of cohesion between team members during this time of year. We found ourselves to be a critical bridge between team members in order to get things done. We wanted to motivate team members to take initiative, interact with each other directly and essentially build a smoother line of communication among themselves.
Jordan and Milan were able to sit with us understand our situation and customize a workshop that focused on boosting team connections, improving communication and establishing role clarity. This initial meeting was a form of “therapy” for our team – it helped us clarify and breakdown some of the issues we faced and were expecting to face. During the workshop, they led activities and discussions about personal and team values to prepare our team members for what may come ahead as they began summer program planning. The activities enabled team members to open up and to understand each other, later allowing this bond to form into a support system which we had not seen in previous years.
After the initial workshop, we were able to have a follow up meeting and a second workshop that built on some of the discussions from the first one. The second workshop included the same team members as well as our summer instructors. It focused on strategies to be self-motivated and engaged throughout the summer programs, as well as how to be emotionally intelligent to handle conflict within the team and within the classroom. This workshop served as a morale booster, and the perfect segue to go from planning to implementation of summer programs.
Throughout these months, a few of our team members also attended the crash courses that ILead regularly hosts, specifically on managing people and teams, which proved to be useful in managing our instructor cohort.
Overall, ILead has been an integral part of our team leadership and project management this summer. The usefulness of their support was most evident we were absent for a portion of the summer during peak program time, for personal reasons. Our team members were able to continue and finish off programs independently and as planned. We found themselves supporting each other and are now confident in our team’s ability to work together productively in the face of conflict. This would not have been possible otherwise. Over the next year, we hope to continue to build upon the relationship we’ve developed with ILead over the years through continued and customized support.
- Afifa & Ipsita, Executive Co-Directors, Project
iGEM