Having been a student in, a preceptor of, & an observer of leadership
development programs, I have decided they generally are little more than
glorified problem-solving exercises.
At TAMU, the students were esentially unpaid consultants for community
service outlets, or an entity of either city, county, and state
governments. The student groups researched a current problem then
reported their recommendations to their "sponsor" group's liasion officer.
After having to deal with restricted access to the information and
resource people, the student group's present the sponsor with their
recommendations based on their research and ability to digest and solve
the problem.
In some feedback I culled from a number of the students involved, I
learned that there were little or no feedback on whether the
recommendations were even implemented. The students felt like it was a
waste of time because the sponsor group gave them high marks for their
efforts with comments along these lines, "I think you college students
have done a wonderful job, and yada yada yada, we will take your
recommendations into consideration, but yada, yada, yada." The students
indicated the patronizing attitude from the members of the sponsoring
group was more than a little irksome to them.
I do believe that students need problem-solving skills, but I also believe
that every class presents students with the challenges necessary to
develop problem-solving skills and learning to make good decisions.
HOWEVER, leadership is much more complex than making decisions and
solving-problems. Leadership is the exercise of influence in many
different forms to get to form a group who share the need to get things
done. Leadership is doling out rewards and punishment, praise and
neglect, and naming the values of the group and using those values to
achieve a desired effect. It is persuasion, begging, threatening, but
most of all it is selecting what needs to be done and beginning,
initiating, exciting others to go along with the idea. Here
leadership becomes visionary and strategic---
I almost hate to say it, but problem-solving is more in line with
management than leadership. And, I will go further--a person is either a
leader or not. I do not allow for a fudging of the lines with terms like
"leadership skills" and "management skills." If these are different sets,
then the people who use them effectively are are also different.
Whew! This idea of leadership development is one of my hot buttons.
______________________
Great Optimism,
Dutch Driver
Dept. of Communication
McMurry University
Abilene, TX
ddriver@cs1.mcm.edu