JCI London member Anna shares her experience facilitating a workshop for her chamber last month: 

I remember that when I joined JCI London earlier this year I had a conversation with Hanan (who’s organising all those amazing events) about what makes a JCI member. People here are young, ambitious, have a great sense of self-awareness, and the willingness to grow. 

As someone who does coaching for a living, it is my job to support people to become able to see past what’s possible and go for their biggest and boldest dreams. And since I especially love an audience that is both curious and ambitious, I couldn’t say no when Hanan asked me to run a Zoom workshop for other  JCI members. 

Now that we knew we wanted to run a workshop, we selected a date and we had to find a topic. While this is certainly the most interesting part of the planning, it might also be the most difficult one. What’s a topic that is relevant? What is a real problem that people are trying to solve? What will get people engaged? 

With all those questions on my mind, I went to the drawing board and came up with some first ideas. And there was one topic, that is as exciting as it is challenging - perfectionism. 

Perfectionism is not just that “bad” quality that we keep on talking about in interviews (and expecting others to interpret it as a strength), it actually goes a lot deeper. And since I would call myself a recovering perfectionist I wanted to help people understand where it actually comes from, why it’s so hard to overcome and how to work on it. 

The date of the workshop came closer and the excitement grew bigger as well. It was clear from the beginning that this is not going to be a lecture but a session where people interact, share their experiences, and get the chance to grow. 

When we started the workshop and the first people were joining you could already tell that we were going to have a great crowd. We did a round of introductions to kick the workshop off and what struck me from the beginning was how open everyone who joined was. Open to exploring new ways of thinking, open to being vulnerable and sharing stories, and open to get out of their comfort zone. And that’s what it is all about, right? Getting out of your comfort zone and talking to like-minded people is such a great way of building a network that is there to challenge and support you. 

During the workshop, we made sure to touch on the scientific background as well as on experiences. We did that by creating breakout groups a few times throughout the session so everyone could get to know each other and get a chance to talk. We all spoke about our goals and how we’re going to achieve them and what support we need to get there (hello accountability!).

I can’t even put into words how much fun it was to work with such an amazing group of people who are not afraid of going the extra mile and tapping into the unknown. At the end of the day, we’re all humans, we’re not immune to perfectionism, procrastination, or fear. But we can learn to understand it and move past it. And that is where the magic happens!