Personal Reflection
When visiting the nature reserve, we had the time to go off independently and reflect on what we would like to learn and gain on this trip. I am not sure if it was the beautiful mountains, the time alone, or the stress of the trip so far, but I got a bit philosophical. At that moment, I found it incredibly difficult to pinpoint and put into words exactly what I wanted to gain personally. But this is exactly what made me realize that I have become accustomed to pushing down the heavy feelings and replacing them with either silence, or something much more lighthearted. By the end of the hour, my journal was blank. I want to be able to recognize the emotions I am feeling and connect them to specific moments of my life. I find that when I go through something difficult, I don’t think it hits me until a few hours or even days later and I find myself confused as to why I am feeling so overwhelmed. I want to be able to understand my emotions better and learn how to associate them with what is going on in my life at that exact moment. I want to be able to embrace my emotions and learn how to verbalize them in a way so that not only I understand them, but so that I can elaborate them for my team. Emotional intelligence can improve my communication skills and regulate my stress. I think to do so, I will need to take much more time to reflect each day to ensure I am not unintentionally replacing emotions with silence or jokes.
Leadership Games
Over the past few days we have done several leadership games to improve our team collaboration and communication skills, and to get a bit of fun and movement into our schedule! We played several games that included agility, problem solving, teamwork, and trust. Some of the games seemed a bit silly at first, as some were games I remembered from my childhood. However, each had a purpose and was designed to promote creativity and adaptability within the members of our team. The game that I received most insight from was the triangle/rectangle rope game. The goal of this game was to work together, trust your senses, and collaborate to come up with a method to create the desired rope shape. First, we broke off into teams of 6, blindfolded ourselves, held on to a circular rope, and were required to make a perfect right angle triangle. We had to rely completely on our ability to listen to the other members of the group. We were extremely successful in this first attempt, and made (nearly) a perfect right triangle. The blindfolds required us to actively listen to the other members of the group to ensure proper coordination, and rely on our sense of touch to be able to coordinate what we were feeling in the rope to the rest of the group.
The strategy that worked best for us was to form into pairs and have each pair act as a corner of the triangle. One duo was designated as the right angle and they were tasked to tell the other two pairs whether to shift left or right in order to modify the shape of the angle. Once we were able to take off our blindfolds, I was stunned at how perfect our triangle was. G, one of our teachers, had told our team that we created a perfect right angle triangle at least three times before our team decided that we were complete.
After we completed our right angle triangle, we had to put our blindfolds back on and join the other group of 6 to use both of our ropes to create a rectangle. Instantly, some of the group members decided that it would be easiest to join both of our completed triangles to form the final rectangle. However, as we ran into complications, our group became flooded with several different conflicting voices. I found myself sitting there, along for the ride, regardless of the ideas flooding through my brain. I think that I find myself complying to the masses as I believe that is what the group feels is best. A part of me was thinking, “Well, when this fails then I will speak up,” but before that happened we ran out of time. It may have been that I didn’t feel as if my voice was strong enough to overpower those that were louder and more confident than me.
When we went inside to debrief, Shantanu (another one of our teachers) had said that when he was younger, he was much better at leading in a smaller group of people than larger ones. It was then that I realized that this is the box I fit into. In the small group of 6, I was one of the first people to introduce an idea. In the smaller group, each person was much more attentive at listening to every member and it was much easier to manage the group dynamics. In the larger group, people were talked over and ignored. I heard one of my teammates beside me say “Is anyone listening to me?” and I believe I figured that I would get overpowered too. The attention to detail in the smaller group didn’t seem applicable when joining our groups together.
I learned not only my personal capabilities in larger and smaller groups, but also that to lead these differing types of groups requires two different methodologies. I think we need a bit more time to build personal relationships with each member to create a more positive team culture where everybody is heard. Personally, I would like to build more confidence and skill in my ability to communicate with the larger masses. I am not afraid of my idea being shut down, but I think I have found it easier to simply comply with what most people are thinking. Leadership is not the easy way out, and I need to step up to allow my ideas to be heard.