Teaching Leaders to Lead Themselves

Learning Goals

The overall purpose of this exercise is to initiate students in the development self-leadership behaviors by increasing self-awareness through learning: The importance of perception in leader emergence, how others perceive them, how they perceive others, where own perceptions come from, and how modifying our own behaviors can lead to creating the desire perceptual response from others.

Audience

We have used this exercise in leadership classes of 25 to 35 students in two formats: A semester-long exercise and a two, 30-minute session experience. Since the exercise requires dealing with positive and negative feedback, maturity appears to be a factor for its acceptance and success. The exercise is well received in undergraduate leadership courses, where students are within a year from graduating, and in graduate-level leadership courses.

Semester-Long Version

The semester-long version of this exercise places students in charge of their own leadership development. At the beginning of the semester, we announce that students will vie to become the emerging leader(s) of the class based solely on the votes of their classmates related to positive and negative leadership traits. We explain that each week, students will cast their votes on specific traits indicated by the instructor, for the students they believe exhibit those traits the most. We inform students of the purpose and the expected learning outcomes of the exercise, and the fact that they may receive disconcerting feedback and may have to operate outside their comfort zones. We then present the theoretical foundation of the exercise to students and discuss the potential benefits of actively engaging in the exercise. To engage students further, we announce that the top three students, who earned the most votes by the end of the semester, will earn bonus points. We typically assign 15, 10, and 5 bonus points to the first, second, and third place, respectively.

Each week throughout the semester, we select two traits from Offermann et al.’s (1994) ILTs model (Appendix A) which are announced aloud and written on the board. We do not provide a definition of the traits. If students asks for it, we invite the class to aid in the definition. We avoid providing definitions to prevent from influencing students’ votes. We then ask students to look around the room and silently decide which two people, relative to all class members, most exhibit each of the announced traits. If necessary, we ask each student to loudly state their name and we read aloud the names of any absent students. Students cannot vote for themselves. We ask students to write down on a piece of paper their votes and to briefly explain the reason for each vote, and we collect the votes. We state very clearly the importance of a brief explanation of each vote: It is important for students who provide feedback to explore where their perceptions arise from and for students who receive feedback to understand which of their behaviors generated certain perceptions in others. For example, to say Student A is “Hardworking” because he or she “works hard” provides no useful information to the person nor does it demonstrate a deep analysis of where our perceptions come from. We have, on few occasions, repeated a vote, usually at the beginning of the semester, when we find that most of the votes are not explained clearly enough. We invite students to point out the specific behaviors or characteristics they observed that lead them to vote for an individual. We then compile the information on a feedback report for each student with the number of votes received for each trait and the reasons for the votes. While doing so, we examine the feedback for any harsh language. If necessary, we reword some phrases in a manner that retains the intended message without being offensive. We maintain the voters’ confidentiality, as the reports do not include any identifying information. Anonymity allows students to freely express their views without fear of conflict or retaliation. During the following session, we provide each student with his or her feedback report. We discuss the votes in class in a general sense for learning purposes. As part of the discussion, we remind students that perceptions of leader behaviors differ across followers and situations and that student who want to emerge as leaders must learn to adapt as necessary. Thus, a critical component of this exercise is for students to learn how to seek and interpret feedback. In case of any specific concerns, we encourage the student to speak with us on an individual basis and to write about them in their weekly reflective journals. Each student, regardless of whether he or she received any votes, receives a feedback report (Appendix B).

Students receive weekly feedback on an ongoing basis throughout the semester so that they can see the emergence of perceptual patterns. Since the votes are based on both prototypes and antiprototypes, students can see whether an intended positive behavior is perceived as negative or vice versa. For example, a student who feels “self-confident” and participates frequently in class may discover that others perceive such behavior as “Conceited.” Students may also learn how peers may perceive behaviors undertaken without any specific purpose in mind, as being positive. For example, a student may discover how greeting peers on entering the room is perceived as “Sincerity.” Through the feedback, students learn about how others perceive their behaviors and they use this awareness to adjust behaviors that are eliciting different responses than intended. To allow for the reflection of the votes received and cast, students use weekly journals to self-reflect and set forth plans about how they can change the behaviors that their peers are misperceiving in order to create the desired impressions in the future. The journals also serve as a space for students to reflect on their perceptions of others and to examine from where they stem. This allows students to become aware of their behaviors, as well as how ILTs affect actions and perceptions.

As the exercise progresses, we add the votes and comments to the feedback report so that students receive a cumulative summary of their votes and comments each week. In terms of scoring, each vote for prototype counts as one point and each vote for an antiprototype counts as a minus point (Appendix B). At the end of the semester, we determine the emerging leader by adding all the votes each student received (Appendix C). Finally, at the end of the semester, we announce the top three emerging leaders and award them with bonus points. These students share their experiences with the class discussing the behaviors they changed, how they went about undertaking the change, and the resulting reactions.

Short Two-Session Version

As an alternative to the semester-long version, we use a modified version of this exercise to discuss the importance of perceptions, and their influence on leader emergence and effectiveness. While the modified version raises students’ awareness of perceptions and encourages them to engage in self-development, unlike the semester-long version, it does not offer them the opportunity to put the latter into practice. Even though this exercise does not offer the development of self-leadership behaviors, it is very successful in making students conscious of the importance of self-awareness and its implications for leader emergence. We developed this version for instructors that are concerned with dealing with the demands that the full-semester version requires in terms of the amount of time required to type votes on the feedback reports every week, and the possibility of dealing with emotions that students may face due to the feedback received.

We introduce the exercise to the class after discussing theories of perception, leadership traits, and ILTs, typically within the first 3 weeks of the semester. We explain to students that the purpose of the exercise is to understand the importance of perceptions in leadership and foster their desire to develop self-awareness skills. We then use the same process as in the semester-long version to collect votes and distribute feedback reports to each student. We conduct the first vote using two prototypes “Hardworking” and “Dynamic” as both these traits are easily understood and observable by students. Once the students receive their feedback report, we discuss how initial perceptions influence our attitudes toward others, where our perceptions come from, and what behaviors may elicit certain perceptions.

Toward the end of the semester, we conduct a second vote using the prototype “Dedicated” and the antiprototype “Conceited” as observable behaviors in the classroom. We clarify to students that this vote is independent from the first one and we remind them that they should vote for the individuals who demonstrate these traits the most, relative to the rest of the class. In this instance, we discuss how perceptions can change over time. For example, some individuals identified as “Hardworking” in the first vote because they frequently participate in class may receive “Conceited” votes the second time. The discussion here focuses on the importance of learning how to become self-aware including how to seek and interpret feedback.