4 Responses

1. Interesting question

   Mmm, a great question.  My answer would be a big yes – if you are to bring your sessions alive with examples, illustrative anecdotes, real experiences (both good and bad) so that people feel you have credibility and have actually put into practice the theories, tools, techniques etc that you are telling them about.

   Leadership takes many forms though – and you may not have had leader or manager in your job title to have loads of leadership experience. Voluntary work for example offers loads of opportunity to learn, hone and demonstrate leadership skills.

   I look forward to hearing others' views.

   Jenny

    

2. Thanks Jenny

   Jenny,

   I appreciate your response and feedback one the question. Thank you. I share the same views of looking through your experiences and focusing on the leadership related examples that one can draw on.

   Thanks again.

    

   Ivy

3. Yes – if you want to be effective

   I agree with the above.  I run a leadership programme and it’s full of anecdotes and observations from my 20 years in management roles.  And, I hasten to add, not all of them positive as, like many people, I was thrown in the deep end with no training or support – so I often leant what ‘not’ to do.   I am now able to reflect on my previous experiences and match them to the theory.  At the time, I though the guy who was shouting at me at work because he’d had some bad news was just being inappropriate.  I now know where he was on the Kubler-Ross curve and I can understand his emotion better.  I wish I’d known at the time!  You could of course simply present the academic stuff (Belbin, Tannenbaum & Schmidt etc), but unless you can relate that to real world examples and applications, you’d struggle to get buy-in.

4. Oh yes!!

   Hi.

    

   I agree. With such an important role, experience is key. Would you want a heart surgeon working on you without the years of training and hands-on experience they get in their training?

   Looking at the potential damage leaders can do to people if they are not trained effectively by someone with experience, as well as academic knowledge, it's potentially dangerous to use anyone other than someone with relevant experience.

    

   Regards,

    

   Adrian.