Friday, May 4, 2012

Learning to lead

This year I’ve had the pleasure to help create the Spring semester’s learning module for a new Master level course on leadership, and have designed two assignments, as well as the reading and resource materials to support them.

It’s always exciting to explore new learning environments and especially to have the chance be with young adults. As the mother of two extraordinary young adults, I adore the way their minds surf a multitude of issues simultaneously and effortlessly in Technicolor yet slip quickly into black or white when processing under duress.

The first assignment has recently been completed with a paper and presentation that compares different forms of leadership and the teacher is pleased with the results exhibited in student motivation, expression and thought. Midway through the semester I got involved to facilitate 90 minute hands on experiential session with over 55 Masters students, from 21 countries. Engineering, Architecture and IT students all looking for concrete, logical answers to accomplish their tasks.

Before starting their exercise, each team received a sheet of instructions concerning the task at hand, and 10 minutes to define how they would accomplish it.
During that time, this is what happened within the majority of the 9 teams:

- Immediately all students got very involved in accomplishing the task,
- Instructions and indicators on what, when, why and how, were completely ignored
- Their primary focus was to finish first, and completing the task was their only focus
- External criteria that affected their output and focus: Stress, time and “winning”
- No Leader chosen

From a leadership perspective, the exercise was designed to be experiential and provide insight and learning around what happens to each of them individually and collectively when given; a task, a team, a clear set of instructions. What types of behaviors do they display? Are they able to speak their mind? Listen to others? Participate, innovate and collaborate?

Here’s what happened: Two of the nine groups took the allocated time to discuss and organize their team, choose people to take the lead, decide on a process. Only when these elements were agreed upon within the team, did they begin to brainstorm on how they would accomplish the actual task.

The majority of the other seven groups chose NOT to have a leader, because the term itself created disdain. When a leader was nominated it was done only because the group perceived a specific person possessed the relevant hard skill set, in relation to the task at hand.
The majority of students were relatively disconcerted by
- The fact that the exercise was not a competition
- There was not a “winner” or a “looser”
- The fact that the exercise was not about speed

They were literally surprised to hear they had spent their time to gain personal awareness and insight about themselves, as leaders.

Their understanding of leadership until that point related only to function and hierarchy- to someone in a specific hierarchical function, the function gives the person “the power” to assert leadership.

They left with new perspective and insight on leadership
- as an individual quality that they can develop by expressing themselves, listening, daring, caring and sharing,
- as an integral part of the process when working together on the completion of a task,
- is a personal experiential dynamic iterative process.

I hope they choose to build the confidence and self-awareness required to detach from the black and white vision and experiment with the Technicolor that exists within them, as a leader.