L.E.A.D.E.R

DAY 24/30/24/JUNE/2020 

L-E-A-D-E-R

I stepped into the classroom and saw it was almost full of participants. We were expecting about thirty of them. Close to twenty five were already in. It was a classroom training session in Leadership skills. These were employees of an automobile company with approximately four years of experience. It was time for them to slowly transition from a individual contributor role to a people manager role. Soon a majority of them were to get into roles of group leader or supervisor. Hence the training and hence me inside the classroom. I have been conducting softskills training for the corporate industry for the last eight years.

Within the next five minutes all those who were suppose to attend were in. We started with a greeting and an energizer just to shake up and wake up the participants. After setting the context, establishing expectations and having mutually agreeable ways of working, we did a small icebreaker activity.

The activity was to break up into groups of four-five and use the word 'LEADER' as an acronym. Meaning, they were expected to come up with as many words as possible for every letter in the context of leadership. So they got into groups. I handed them the sticky notes and chisel sketchpens. I love chisel sketchpens for enabling people to write with different thicknesses of the letters, giving a feel of calligraphy.

 

The instructions were given, the time was set and they started. As they were busy finding suitable words for leadership, I was busy creating a space holder for all the sticky notes. I created the station with six sections, one for each letter. Yes, thats right six. The 'E' is repeated silly. The idea was to stick those notes in respective sections which will give a good view of all the words starting with one letter in each section. 

I watched for the time. Fifteen minutes had been allocated to the teams to finish the activity. I could see them racking their brains to find out the words. Initial rounds were easier obviously. The real fun started when they collective vocabulary of the group started exhausting. 

The whistle blew. The time was up. Every team was asked to stop the work, just to be fair. Actually, this was no competition and we were not going to count the maximum words and award a particular team. However as the human nature demands, the need to see fairness is very high for us. Also doing this thing just makes them feel good. As a trainer you need to be sensitive to all the nitty-gritty of the human business. I requested the teams to step up to the space holder and stick their notes on the surface created, one by one. Everyone got up at once in excitement and started moving towards the station.

Within minutes the space started getting populated with colorful sticky notes. It was a treat to watch this site. It was looking beautiful. I always encourage people to use colors, music, drama in the room to enhance the learnability.

After a while when the teams were done with pasting the notes, they stepped back a little to take a good look at their creation. I stepped in the aerena and was surrounded by colorful notes and enthusiastic participants. I started going through the words and it was overwhelming. That station probably had the majority of the words that would be used to describe the leadership domain.

Let me share a few words that came up in the class.

L.

LOYAL

LISTENER

LIMITLESS

LENIENT

LEARNER

LIVELY

LAUGH

LOGICAL

E.

ETHICAL

ENERGETIC

ENTHUSIASTIC

EMPATHETIC

EVOLVING

EVALUATING

EXPRESSIVE

ELEGANT

EXPERT

EAGER

A.

ACTIVE

ASSERTIVE

AMBITIOUS

ACHIEVER

APPRECIATIVE

AWARDING

ADVISING

ADVENTUROUS

ACCOMMODATIVE

ALTERNATIVES

AGILE

ADAPTABLE

D.

DYNAMIC

DRIVING

DREAMER

DECISIVE

DARING

DETERMINED

DEDICATED

DIVERSE

DEVELOPMENTAL

DIRECTION

DEVOTION

DISCIPLINE

R.

RESPECTFUL

RELATIONSHIP

ROLE-MODEL

RESILIENT

REALISTIC

RESOURCEFUL

REWARDING

RIGOROUS

RISK TAKING

RATIONAL

I was in awe when I looked at the collection of words. The list that I gave you, is a partial one. There were many more words on the notes. I felt that even if the leaders of today focus on ten percent of words in each section, nothing will stop them from becoming the most efficient and effective leaders. In fact I also thought that if we take the top leaders and jot down their qualities,eighty percent of them could be mapped on the notes there. And mind you we are only talking about qualities related to the six letters. 

I was already enjoying myself. The participants also seemed to. For me the session was done as we had defined leadership there and there itself. It was like you have already won the three match series by winning the first two games. But you need to play the third game just to complete the series. Still you play it fair, you play it well,you play to win. 

  

Ah! What a timing. The tea had arrived by then.

© - Rahul Shinde 24/JUN/2020