Workshop Wizard Joppe
By: Hanna Smorodinzeff
Tags: Personal Growth, Startup, Personal Development, Agile Development, Workshop

Workshop Wizard Joppe

Or how to work(shop) your magic

Joppe Quaedvlieg

Do you know the feeling, that empowering moment, when you get totally sucked in by a good workshop and ideas start pouring out of you that you never thought you were cable of and you spark away with your team in a great discussion? That is what a workshop should be about, personnel development at it’s finest.

Unfortunately that is not the case for every workshop out there. Probably, you have also been to some that got you yawning and wriggling about your chair wishing for the time to already be over.

What are workshops and why can they be so very different? Why do some pull you into their magic while others are mediocre at best?

Workshops are a very efficient way of enhancing learning and development, both on an organisational and an individual level. If done properly they can help individuals, teams and organizations grow and increase everyone’s involvement and sense of ownership. In agile working environments they can play an important role, keeping the whole team on their toes.

Workshops are no lectures, they are all about getting your hands on and learning by doing. A good workshop takes into consideration four things.

First of all it contains the right amount of input for the given target group, a group of high school students has very different needs from a team of police officers or a management team. The input is delivered by the facilitator or trainer (depending on how active that role is) and can vary from almost no informational input at all up to using presentations, theories, literature etc. to support the workshop’s topic.

Secondly, a workshop takes into consideration the learning goal(s), as well as the learning context or environment and leaves plenty of space for experimenting and applying the gained knowledge.

Last but not least a workshop needs a good facilitator or trainer. While a facilitator takes more of a moderator’s role in the group, a trainer structures, leads and instructs. A good workshop facilitator brings in her or his own personality in the workshop and enriches the learning outcomes through that.

One of those workshop personalities in Helsinki’s startup ecosystem is Joppe Quaedvlieg.

As the Chief of Happiness at ArcticStartup he brings HR to a new level and spends most of his time supporting his team members in self development by listening to the people.

Trained as a socio-therapist and holding deep knowledge in the local startup community, Joppe is passionate about supporting individuals as well as teams.

‘I Manage (coach) and organize by guidance. I guide towards personal and collaborative growth by training (workshops) on a spiritual & professional level.’

Next to his work at ArcticStartup he has facilitated workshops on networking, communications, values and culture at several organisations such as Luckan Integration, Haaga-Helia, Aalto University and, of course, The Shortcut.

He really brings out the magic in his workshops. Be aware that you might get inspired and empowered. It is all about the individual, even when it’s a team related subject.

‘I make it my mission to bring out the ‘values’ of each individual, find the strong points, figure when employees should ‘activate’ them and when to let them ‘slumber’. When different values collide I support communication and teach understanding for the need of balance of both values and how to make them work together rather than versus.’

Joppe’s workshops are of that kind that you can’t expect to sit quietly during the 90 minutes, but you will get heavily involved. The Shortcut’s team experienced that first hand in the workshops by him on ‘How to listen’ and ‘How to express yourself’.

‘Express yourself’ workshop at The Shortcut

By mutually agreed upon rules the whole team was without phones or computers for one and a half hour, even our CEO, in the middle of a work day. This way listening and focusing got a new intensity. In the second workshop we worked on guidelines for expressing ourselves in an effective and respecting way which helps to handle difficult communication situations better.

Next to the more generic topic around communication Joppe also focuses with his workshops on the challenges faced by immigrants when looking for a job in Finland. With his subversive four day networking course he wants to support immigrants in the process of entering the Finnish job market. This is something he felt was lacking for himself when he came to Finland.

Stay tuned on new workshops coming up by Joppe and definitely take part in one of them.

For workshop inquiries contact joppequaedvlieg@gmail.com.