Saturday, May 19, 2007

1000 Leaders Initiative - Day Three

It's over, and I'm exhausted. The third day of leadership training was more intense than the first two days, and I discovered I'm not used to having my mind completely engaged for that length of time. No time for naps, day-dreaming, music...but I did periodically seize a few moments for prayer. A good portion of our morning was spent on an exercise that started out comparatively easy...we had to individually choose our top ten community leadership qualities from the list of thirty-five qualities provided with definitions. We were divided into six groups of four people at that point, and we had to come to a consensus as to the group's top ten qualities. Once we agreed on our group list, we were paired with another group to go through the same process. We began with five common qualities, so we only had to hash through five others...more discussion, more persuasion, more concession until we had consensus. Finally, all groups combined into one large group, and that's where things really got interesting. Each of the three groups posted their top ten list, and we had to develop a process by which everyone would be in consensus. Arriving at the top ten qualities was secondary to how we developed and followed ground rules, communicated, listened, influenced, and arrived at consensus while maintaining proper relationships within the group. We learned some valuable lessons as well as a way to vote without the peer pressure factor. In case you're interested, here is our final list of community leadership qualities (in no particular order): caring, diversity, integrity, listening skills, mission, teamwork, staying power, influence, planning and organizing, and risk taking. The assignment is not complete though until we have a couple of our co-workers rate us accordingly...that will be interesting!

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