Leadership building exercises 11-4 and 12-4

Posted: October 17th, 2013

Leadership building exercises 11-4 and 12-4

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Leadership building exercises 11-4 and 12-4

Leadership-building exercise 11-4

My school has always had a significant problem when it comes to filing systems. They were not in the manual filing era, but the system they had developed was not efficient. It took several minutes for students to get responses to their letters, and there was always a long queue outside the secretary’s office. On one such day, I was also in line to get a response a request for my transcript for the internship to which I had applied. I had stood in line for about twenty minutes, but there was no progress whatsoever. During the last week, the computer lessons had been about databases, their creation and usage. I then thought why not create a database for the school with the help of the computer teacher? This would help them improve their efficiency. I told some of my friends who shared a similar interest in computer, and they thought it was a terrific idea. The next day we presented our proposal to the teacher, and she accepted to help us create the database.

Every day after our lessons we worked on our project in the computer laboratory. After two weeks of grueling hard work, it was completed. The database has differentiated sections to enable the students specify what service they required. This was significant because it would make the work of the secretary easier. In addition to this, we also included an automatic alert system that would notify the students when their responses were received. This will put an end to the long queue that was always present at the secretary’s office. We presented the idea to the principal and demonstrated how it worked. He was pleased by our effort, and he accepted to install it in our school. It would take a while for it to be functional because of the large number of students in the school, but it will be worth the wait (DuBrin, 2004).

Leadership skill building exercise 12-4

I am the president of the MUN (Model United Nations) organization in our school. Recently, the school withdrew their support to the society due to the budget cuts. In order to keep participating in the summits and conferences, we had to raise the money by ourselves. It was concluded that every member was to contribute a certain amount of money each month in preparation for the end of year summit that was the most prestigious event in our year. After the announcement was made, Gloria quit the club without warning, and she did not give a viable reason for her rash decision. Gloria was the best public speaker we had, and we were depending on her to represent us at the summit. I found her decision surprising because I knew how much the club meant to her. One day after school, I walked over to her house and asked if I could talk to her. She acted cold, and she said there was nothing wrong even though she was sad. I told her that she could trust me, and I could help her in any way if only she revealed what was troubling her and caused her to quit the club.

It took a while, but she finally told me her problem. Her parents were deep in credit card debt, and they could not spare the amount of money required from the club for every member. She decided to quit sparing them the burden of having to pay that, as well. I listened silently until she was done talking. I then told her that we would find another way to solve the problem and that she should go back to the society since she was a valuable asset to us. She laughed heartily at the remark and the sadness she previously had vanished. She requested me to keep the conversation confidential, and I obliged. As I left her house, she promised to attend the next meeting to inform the rest of the members of the club of her decision. She also thanked me for taking my time to talk to her. I was happy to have been of help when she required it (DuBrin, 2002).

References

DuBrin, A. J. (2004). Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

DuBrin, A. J. (2002). Fundamentals of organizational behavior. Australia: Southwestern Thomson Learning.