Building a Team – Ingressive for Good

Team Ambassadors

There can only be a maximum of 10 team ambassadors in a school at full discretion to the Lead and Co-Lead Ambassador. A powerful and successful community operates best when ambassadors work with a team mentality, with each team member filling a needed role.

Having a small team to help run day-to-day activities makes building the community manageable and more effective. Team ambassadors will be responsible for specific departments. Such departments include:

Technical Skills Leads

I4G focuses on 5 core technical skills including

Software Development
Design
Data
Product Management
Tech Marketing

The team ambassadors will be responsible for heading any activities that involve any of these skills.

This includes getting speakers, heading trainings and workshops and assisting your community members in these areas.

Other Department Leads

These are other important departments that your team members can help lead while the Lead and Co-Lead oversee the entire process. They include-

Volunteers
Partnerships and Fundraising
Marketing
Programs Support
Group Moderator

How to build your awesome team

Set goals: I4G HQ has a general mission for all communities. Our mission is to inspire, empower, and connect African youths in Tech. But, each school/city has to have a set of well-defined short and long-term goals that identify uniquely to your own community. Having goals will set a firm foundation for your team. Celebrate your successes and failures.

Focus on roles: Having a thorough selection can have a long-term effect on your goals. So, I will advise you to choose your team members well. Invest in people who have both the personality and qualifications to connect with other team members and deliver results. Value each role, but allow for flexibility. How you want to implement structure is up to you.

Embrace diversity: If you want to build a team that’s creative and innovative, the worst thing you can do is stack the team with people who are too similar. Diversify in terms, course, level, gender, etc. A more diverse team creates great ideas and innovation.

Communication: This cannot be over-stressed. Keep a level of transparency whenever possible with all team members. You can create a group for easy communication with apps like WhatsApp or slack. Encourage a culture in which team members keep everyone informed on progress or roadblocks, and provide support and assistance without explicitly being asked.

Preach H.A.C.K: Our values have been carefully chosen for a reason. Help others, add values, connect, and keep growing. These are values that you want to hold amongst your team members. Above all, R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

There are Team Building activities that you can practice to help smoothen the process:

A hangout: Having a physical fun day or a picnic is a great way to spend quality time together as a team. Any event or activity that your team can attend as a group will help bond them.
Inviting external guests: This can also be a great way to invite an experienced facilitator to help organize team team-building activities and sessions. Any members of the I4G HQ are great examples of guests you can invite.
Be creative with your activities: Activities such as Ice-breakers, games, group brainstorming, discussion topics, cooperative assignments etc.

Note that, successful teams can be more productive than individual contributors.

Institutions with Multiple Campuses

There’s a dynamic that comes with having an institution with multiple campuses;

Each Campus WILL have a Lead and Co-Lead and a Staff Adviser.
Each Campus MUST have its Technical team Ambassadors (5 of them as described in the resource)
All campuses MAY choose to share the other 5 team Ambassadors (Those from other departments) or HAVE for each campus. YOUR CHOICE!
All campuses MUST use the same email address created for your circle (Only the Leads and Co-Leads may choose to have access), MUST use the same circle Logo and Social Media Accounts and all other accounts related to your CIRCLE.

Next Steps

Create a form requesting for Members to join your core team. Use Google forms and request for important details like – Name, email address, Faculty + Department, Level, gender, Core Skills, What department do you wish to lead, Why do you want to join I4GX as an I4G Team ambassador.
Create a flier to spread the word and share on your groups and with your friends.
Put a time limit of 1 or 2 weeks and then close the form.
Use the guides we shared to choose your team ambassadors and onboard them by creating a separate Whatsapp group.
Have a call with them and explain the mission of I4G and what your community goals are. Use this template to help your onboarding process.

NB: Create a Google Doc with a list of your Team Ambassadors and their role and send it as an email to community@ingressive.org