If you ask your participants in leadership training what leadership means to them, you probably often see pensive faces. Leadership? That means a lot. Putting it into words, however, is not easy. Clarifying one’s own understanding of leadership is indispensable for reflecting on one’s own leadership behavior and development – especially when wanting to learn Leading with Personality.
The “Leadership Corners” exercise therefore has three benefits for your training
- It helps your participants to better assess themselves and their own leadership behavior.
- The individual integrates more quickly into the group and the topic, so that your training gets going.
- As a trainer, you gain insight into what your participants think about. Employee leadership shapes the prior experiences, opinions, and attitudes they hold.
And this is how it works:
Leadership is …
Name the four corners of your seminar room with terms or short sentences, such as:
- “Leadership is a challenge,”
- “Leadership is a necessary evil,”
- “Leadership is exhausting,” or
- “Leadership is fun.”
There are no limits to your imagination and experience here.
Into the Corner
Now challenge your participants to stand in the corner that suits them best. There they now have one to two minutes to exchange ideas with the participants in their corner. If the time frame of your seminar allows, you as the trainer can also briefly exchange ideas with each of the corners or inquire about what the discussion has yielded.
Situation Report
After the short rounds of talk in the individual corners, you now summarize the most interesting results in the plenum. This makes the current opinion transparent and can be used as a basis for the seminar. If time and inclination allow for a second round, it can be started directly and the four corners renamed, for example with short sentences that refer more specifically to leadership in your own company. The insights gained help you as a trainer start your seminar based on participants’ experiences. Because the exercise also opens the participants’ minds to the content of your seminar.
