Leadership

The objectives of the Leadership workshop include: analysing the role of leader and expectations of leaders, analysing the link between the group and the leader, analysing the division of responsibility into collective and personal in systems with a leader, and analysing the impact of a system.

Workshop Example

Game

 

Choosing the King/Queen of the Group

Type of exercise: Interactive, experiential exercise

Duration: 25–40 minutes

Potreban materijal: Samolepljivi papiri (post-it), olovke, stolica

Materials: Post-its, pencils, chair

Exercise description

Instructions:

You have unlimited time to pick one of you to be the king/queen of the group, but without talking.

 

Evaluation

Suggested questions to evaluate the exercise:

Did you choose a king or queen? Who did you choose? Who decided?

What was your process?

Is the leader the one who made the proposal or the one who was chosen?

 

What Is It Like Being King/Queen?

Type of exercise: Interactive exercise

Duration: 40–60 minutes

Materials: Post-its, pencils, chair

 

Exercise description

Find a volunteer to be the king/queen of the group. They sit in a chair in the middle of the room while the rest write on post-its what they are supposed to be like (expectations of a leader) and attach the post-its to the king/queen. Each post-it should contain just one expectation.

When the process is done, the trainer reads out all the expectations on the king/queen. Then the king/queen is asked: “What is it like for a king/queen with these expectations?”

Then the group is asked to think about which expectations are too much, and which are the responsibility of the group, and they are supposed to divide the post-its into three categories:

–     excessive expectations,

–     responsibility of the group, and

–     realistic expectations of the king/queen.

 

Evaluation

What are your impressions after this exercise?

What did this exercise remind you of?

 

Twenty Minutes of Blindness

Type of exercise: Interactive, experiential exercise

Duration: 60–75 minutes

Materials: Blindfolds for all participants (scarves, kerchiefs)

 

Exercise description

Slowly and clearly read the instructions: “The whole group will spend 20 minutes doing as they please. You can go wherever you want (on your own or together), you can talk, etc., but everyone apart from one person will be blindfolded during those 20 minutes. You must first select the person who will not be blindfolded and you can take as much time as you After that, you put on blindfolds and the 20 minutes starts running.”

 

Evaluation

Suggested questions to evaluate the exercise:

What was it like? What happened? How satisfied are you with the decision-making process?

Note

Deciding who will not be blindfolded can be a long and frustrating process, and this should be a focus of evaluation. On the other hand, where a decision is made quickly but without instructions or discussion of what will happen over the twenty minutes, people may end up dissatisfied with how the exercise progressed.