Team Leaders Academy 3.0 – Volcano Team

2016 marked the 3^rd edition of our Team Leaders Academy and a new generation of TLA graduates. This programme enables participants to: gain further insight and depth into the company’s challenges and orientations; understand the business within Yonder and how to bridge the client’s business model with our own; professionalize management practice; develop individual leadership skills so as to leverage performance capabilities. 

Team Leaders Academy forms the internal pool when it comes to talents for future managerial roles: TLA graduates are now in the positions of People Growth Manager, Career Managers, Delivery Managers, Team Leaders. Much more, TLA catalyzes the personal and professional growth of everybody involved.

Here are some thoughts of Team Volcano – proud graduates of Team Leaders Academy 3.0, generation of 2016.

Mihai, Software Engineer Progress/Uniface

My best moment in Yonder in 2016 was the news that I had been accepted to the Team Leader Academy program. And indeed, this program didn’t disappoint me at all. Looking back to all the trainings that we participated in and all the meetings that we had, it was a great experience that you are not able to find in your day by day work. In this program we had the context to experience everything that we wanted. If you wanted to increase your skills as an organizer, you could do it and no one would ask you why you did it. Also, it was the perfect place to get outside of my comfort zone, because there I had the right people who would help me.

I want to use this opportunity to thank all my TLA colleagues, all the trainers who guided us and also Yonder that offered us the context to develop ourselves in an area that we don’t have the opportunity to develop in our day by day work. In the end I want to challenge you to go to your Career Manager and ask him: “What are the steps that I need to take in order to be the next TLA participant?”

Meda, Software Engineer Web

“Hi, there! My name is Meda and I’m a proud graduate of the Team Leaders Academy. First of all, I would like to thank all of the trainers and colleagues involved in this skills shaping experience through which we went together during the past 7 months.

Besides getting to know each other and collaborating, our biggest challenge was by far to build our end course project around a memorable idea that would engage our colleagues. We did quite some research on how some ideas are made to stick and how we could deliver that idea in a way that it resonated with the audience. And probably the most valuable lesson I’ve learned is that we, as human beings, often set limitations to ourselves, we feel uncomfortable outside our comfort zone and we underestimate our capabilities. But we can do so much more, as long as we have the right people around us, to guide our first steps and encourage us towards growing. So, keep learning and help others as well along the way!”  

Paul, Software Engineer iOS

“TLA definitely exceeded my expectations. First of all, I got the chance to work hard: as a technical guy, I’m very comfortable with interacting with machines, where everything is predictable and logical, but in order to understand how humans’ work, I had to get out of my comfort zone and expand my perspective.

One thing that persisted across the entire program was fun. Whether we were in a training session, a team meeting or in team building, I had great time alongside awesome people. Last but not least, I believe we got the chance to make a difference. By learning practical and hands-on techniques, we were able to immediately put them to practice and see rewarding results in a matter of weeks.”

Cosmin, Software Engineer Java

“Hello there, my name is Cosmin and I am a fresh graduate of Team Leaders Academy program. I truly believe that this is the best learning program that I attended so far. First of all you have the chance to meet a lot of people that have the same career goal as you do and we can learn a lot from each other. Also the program is made to get you out of the confort zone and try things that you never thought that you can do them. Trust me, it worths every second, because always you are facing with something new !”

Team Leaders Academy has been developed in collaboration with The Centre for Development in Management (CDM) and is a comprehensive development programme whose elements build up to an extensive and hopefully unique learning experience.