“Hola Mexico” – Day 2 of the YGL Annual Summit

Day 2 at YGL Summit, started with a host of physical activities – Yoga, swimming, running – I however traded that with an extra hour of much needed sleep and rushed to the “breakfast coaching group” – a concept taken from the YGL Harvard Kennedy School module – where over the course of 3 morning meetings, groups of 5 YGLs explore a different topic each morning ( topics such as “Your Leadership Journey”, “Bore-out, Burn-out” and “Building your Support Team”). The idea behind this is to nurture a stronger rapport with a few fellow YGLs and improve the foundation from which they can make a difference. Read this article.

The official welcome note was delivered by Borge Brende (former Norwegian Minister of Trade and Industry), who had an interesting anecdote about not becoming a YGL himself, but ending up leading it! His final remark was what a father had told a successful son “It feels nice to be important, but it is more important to be nice”.

“Solving a YGL pain point” had an interesting way of resolving a real issue faced by a YGL by discussing it within the groups(I participated in the one where the topic was “how can more people from the private industry join politics/public service”).

Many of the YGL’s presented their initiatives and people could chose to contribute to any of them. One of the most popular and talked about initiatives is “table for two”, which is now spun out as an NPO(non profit organization) and driven by Japanese YGL Kohey Takashima. Read more about “table for two” here. The simplicity of the idea and the impact(it has provided food to 13.4million people in africa) is what makes this initiative special. We plan to launch this in India now!

We also had an interesting YGL competency workshop in which I participated on “how to become a better public speaker”. In these workshops, the topics are put forth by some of the YGL’s and then the others can decide to discuss and participate(based on their interest). Watch this interesting video.

We had a lovely dinner in the beautiful open restaurant called Haceienda Dona Engracia.

I am intrigued by the high level of security that is being provided – roads are blocked where ever the YGL bus goes and there is a heavy cavalcade of security vehicles moving in front. I am yet to figure out why this is needed(probably because Mexico has the highest kidnapping rate in the world!) – it serves a purpose of massaging some of our egos though 😉

The day ended with the traditional YGL night camp – I retired to bed (the legend has it that the YGL’s do know how to party hard!)