Leadership Labs

Both my leadership experiences in Science Bus and Stanford Outdoors made me realize that leadership is not always innate, but can be learned.  As a result, since then, I sought out opportunities to improve these skills.  The Vice Provost of Graduate Education offers workshops and classes.   Through the Leadership Labs, I took a week-long intense course meant to give you a flavor of topics taught in an MBA.  You are recorded while going through different team exercises and given feedback from your other teammates.  It’s an odd experience to see your own nervous ticks, but it was incredibly useful to see and receive direct feedback on how you interact in a group during problem solving situations.  Later I followed this up by participating in weekend long course on negotiation and influence, as well as another workshop on difficult conversations. 

One challenge for me is to be conscientious about putting into action the different things that I’ve learned.  Since at the time I assisted teaching a wilderness skills course, I’ve would bring back the things I learned in the workshops and teach them.   I created a lesson in conflict management with another Outdoor Education Program instructor, which can be viewed at the bottom of this page.

Later, when I worked in Sacramento, I found myself drawing on many of the skills I learned through those initial labs. It was also interesting to participate in the New Leaders Council Fellowship, which focused on a different set of leadership skills and had a different philosophy. More on New Leaders Council can be found here.