I very much enjoyed interacting with you all while on our sea kayak expedition. As I reflect upon our experience, I am reminded particularly of your observations and your comments relating to the leadership component of your trip.
In his book Outdoor Leadership, John Graham writes:
“Leadership is not a science to be picked up in one book or course, but an art to be learned over time.”
For this week's blog, please consider and answer the following questions:
1. What do you think John Graham means by this quote, and
2. How do you think this applies to your experiences of this past weekend?
Sea Kayak Expedition 2007
7 comments:
I believe what he means is there is more to leadership than just telling people what to do. Being able to delegate tasks and deal with difficult groups isn’t always easy and the only way to get better is through experience. I believe over the past weekend it was noticeable that some of the students do not have as much experience leading as others but things seemed to get better as the trip went on.
I Think that John Graham means that leadership must be learned and that it can not effectively be taut. I think that this plies only limitedly to are weekend trip because people were not in any sort of strained leardership positions as most everything went without any group trouble.
I think the quote is referring to how to learning to be a leader cannot be learned by sitting at home and reading about it, but how you have to get out there and start working on leadership styles and techniques, to be a successful leader.
This past weekend, we got to see some different types of leadership from our peers. We got the chance to see how it is working as a leader not only in a small group, but working as a guide also trying to satisfy everyone. So when we packed up and went kayaking for four days, we had to start using our leadership skills we have slowly been building this year and we got to see the second years trying to find the right style of leadership and see firsthand how it worked.
I think John Graham is trying to say that you can talk about leadership till you’re blue in the face but it won’t do much good until one goes out and puts theory into practice. I would definitely agree with him on this point, the classroom is good for picking up tips and tricks but you can’t possibly learn how to deal with real people that way.
As far as last weekend goes it was pretty obvious who had leadership experience and who wanted to actually take on that role for the trip.
I think he means Leadership is something you learn hands on. Like going on guided trips see how there lad. Watch how the guide inner acts with a group. That if you don’t step up and be willing to take lead of the group you won’t learned
I think the quote is saying that by reading how to be a leader will never make you a great leader. becomeing a great leader comes through outside experiences and hands-on leadership training. On the trip it became aparent that many of the second years students dident have much leadership experience. Over time though they seemed to interact better and gain a few leadership skills
I think that John Graham ment that the skills it takes to be a good leader are not gained by reading about it in a book, you need to take the skills and go out and apply them. Doing something is the best way to get better at it, and when the people you lead leave comment about what you could have done better, you take that into consideration and try to do a better job at it next time.
This past weakend was full of learning experiences for the second years, when it comes to leadership. I also think that if possible the second years should have each gotten a different trip to plan and lead, since it can some times be hard to try to lead a group if there is more than one person in charge.
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