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British Isles Leadership Academy

On 31st August 2007, I went to the British Isles Leadership Academy; I made new friend with members of JCI Scotland, JCI Ireland, JCI UK and JCI Denmark. It was a great weekend, we had JCI spirit, a lot of energy and positive attitude especially during the module “flirting4success”, and we had also a lot of fun during late parties. This academy was another unique experience to achieve my expectation by learning about leadership and communication. This training doesn’t give you solutions to be a good leader but gives you tools and explains you how to use them to be a better leader. It is up to us to use all these tools.

Kevin Guerin - JCI Dublin

On 31st August 2007, three members (including myself) of JCI Ireland went to Scotland for the Leadership Academy. Many JCI members from across the British Isles and Denmark attended this academy as the highlight of their membership of JCI.

The academy challenged us, our perceptions and our personal leadership style, through a variety of individual and group training exercises in a supportive and safe environment. To ensure to get the best learning experience, this academy was organised by members for members with some highly qualified trainers.

An intensive program had been scheduled for us:

Module 1 : Leadership Profiling & Competencies
Module 2 : Situational Leadership
Module 3 : Vision, Mission, Goals
Module 4 : Strategy and Planning
Module 5 : Team Building and Communication
Module 6 : Motivation and Development
Module 7 : Efficiency
Module 8 : Coaching
Module 9 : Public Speaking
Module 10 : Communication and Listening
Module 11 : Have Fun

As I attended the European Academy one month before, I first thought that I would quickly get bored with this Academy. The weekend is over now and I am still waiting to get bored. How could it happen?

The first thing we did was to generate a list of our expectations. It was important to know what each of us (as individual and group) wanted to achieve by participating in this academy. My personal expectations were the following:

To develop my leadership skills
To develop my communication skills
To meet new people
To have fun

Leadership

During the first module, We listed the major components of leadership, identified the characteristics of a successful leader by comparing a “good” leader with a “poor” leader on each of the major components, evaluated our leadership strengths and weaknesses by comparing ourselves with both a “good” leader and a “poor” leader; and developed an action plan for improving our ability to be a successful leader.

The major components of leadership are divided in two categories:

1. Tasks

          a.    Vision – Establish the general tone and direction of the organisation
          b.    Management – Set specific goals and focus company resources on achieving them
          c.    Empowerment – Select and develop subordinates who are committed to the organisation’s goals.
          d.    Diplomacy – Forge coalitions with important internal and external constituencies: peers, superiors, subordinates, potential organizational allies, and other important outside decision markers.
          e.    Feedback – Observe and listen carefully to clients, customers, voters, employees students, team members (that is, all concerned parties) and then share the resulting information in a manner that those affected can accept as beneficial.
          f.    Entrepreneurialism – find future opportunities, including increased revenues, expanded markets, or a higher probability of desirable outcomes, such as international peace, a healthier environment or the creation of beauty, through mechanisms such as new projects, program, or policies

2. Personal

          a.    Personal style – By personal example, set an overall organisational tone of competence, optimism, integrity, and inspiration
          b.    Personal Energy – Live a disciplined, wholesome lifestyle that provides the necessary energy and durability to handle the physical demands of leadership: long hours, stressful decisions, conflict and its resolution, and wearying travel.
          c.    Multicultural Awareness – Be experienced and comfortable working with individuals and managing organisations across different geographic, demographic, and cultural borders.

Some outdoors had been organised for working on the team building. Based on Belbin team roles results, three teams had been created. The objective of these activities was to compare tthe evolution of group of people whit different qualities.

These are the roles that Dr. R. Meredith Belbin defined:

•    Plant – Creative, Imaginative, unorthodox, solves difficult problems
•    Ressource Inverstigator – Extrovert, enthusiastic, communicative, explores opportunities, develops contacts.
•    Coordinator – Mature, confident and trusting. A good chairman. Clarifies goals, promotes decision making
•    Sharper – Dynamic, outgoing, highly stung, challenges, pressurises, find ways round obstacles
•    Monitor Evaluator – Sober, strategic and discerning, see all options, judges accurately
•    Teamworker – Social, mild, perceptive and accommodating. Listens, builds, avert friction.
•    Implementer – Disciplined, reliable, conservative and efficient. Turns an idea into pratical actions.
•    Completer Finisher – Painstaking, anxious, conscientious. Searches out errors and omissions. Delivers on time

Communication

My second expectation was to develop my communication skill. A few modules had been set up to develop this skill during this academy.

The goal of coaching is to guide vision, urge excellence, and empower the one being coached – the player – through establishing a firmer connection with his or her inner authority. This would suggest that a high level of emotional intelligence would be a useful prerequisite.

GROW is a system of coaching, instigated by Sir John Whitmore. Sir John estimates from a number of surveys that most people will use 40% of their potential. This makes the possibility of improving individual’s commitment and focus a real reality.

G oal Agree the topic for discussion
R eality Invite self assessment
O ptions Cover the full range of options
W ill Get a commitment to act

Andy McKetchie, JCI World Champion of Public Speaking 2006, gave us a course about Public Speaking. During this course, Andy gave us the speech with witch he won the world competition and gave us some tips on how to prepare for public speaking. We finally did some practice, where each of us got a topic, one minute for preparing and one minute for speaking about this topic. As a shy person and afraid of public speaking, it was not easy to stand up and talk in front of all these “strangers” but it went very well and I could easily talk about the importance of public speaking in JCI to go outside our comfortable zone and fight against our fears.

One of the last modules done by Mel Harris was about “Flirting4Success” – As a French person, it would make no sense to attend this course, French people don’t need to learn how to flirt because they are French – I am joking ;)

Flirting is often associated with love relationship but flirting is about building rapport and great relationships. The definition of flirting is:

F un & Feeling good
L aughter & Listening
I nterest in others & Inspiration to others
R elaxing & Rapport
T easing & Talking their language
I nitiating conversation
N o means move on to the next
G iving great voice and great movement

This module development was based on The Flirt Wheel. After drawing our own wheel, we practiced each area of the wheel:

•    Self Belief
•    Smile
•    Sex it up
•    Senses
•    Signals
•    Language
•    Rapport
•    Chat up

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