Wednesday, April 6, 2016

My Leadership Workshop Series Experience

I recently completed a series of leadership workshops through the Lion's Den at Glendon College. It challenged my conceptions of justice that have until now been primarily moulded by my experience in air cadets. To be honest, I didn't change much in terms of my leadership style. Five workshops of a couple hours apiece simply do not have enough force to overcome seven years of training to act a certain way. In terms of the five practices we learned in the workshop series, I found that I often underutilize encouraging the heart. This is because in cadets the people that are successful have a high degree of intrinsic motivation and rarely require additional encouragement. As for the people that are not intrinsically motivated, they usually quit cadets because they don't get as much success as they would like. I do not think I would have changed my leadership style in cadets if I had taken this workshop series earlier. This is because the cadet organization has a unique culture, and people in charge are expected to act a certain way. For example, a flight commander is expected to know all their cadets quite well and inspire their flight to be the best it can be. The job of the squadron commander (the person in charge of everyone), on the other hand, is only supposed to have close contact with the flight commanders, and not the cadets. It is generally considered a good thing if the cadets are a little scared of the squadron commander. Because of these influences, my leadership style can tend to be slightly authoritative, and I do not appreciate group followers criticizing my methods in front of others. I believe that the leadership style taught in the workshop series may lead to more likable and friendly leaders, but I doubt that it would improve decisiveness or be the most efficient method of leading a group.