2 Responses

1. here’s my three ha’pence worth
   Hi Izzy
   Give each delegate a piece of note paper, a set of 10 post it notes and a marker pen.

   Reveal a slide with the Industrial Society definition of leadership;

   “Leadership is the relationship between those who choose to lead and those who choose to follow”

   (So far you have used up about 2 minutes)

   Give the group five minutes, in silence, to consider 10 one-word answers to the question….

   “so, what are the most important characteristics of a leader in this organisation?”
   on the same slide.

   Give them a minute to write them, one per post it.

   (You have now used up about 10 minutes.)

   Get them to stand up and affinity group their post its on the walls, be clear that they have only 2 minutes to do this. Whilst they do this watch for examples of leadership and followership behaviour, note them down.
   At the end of the two minutes get them to sit down and look to see the “voting” (more post its in a group = more support for that as a priority)
   You will now have used about 15 minutes
   You now have 5 minutes to pose some questions….(possibly rhetorical)
   “That’s the vote, is it right?”
   “How do you, personally, stack up against these priorities?”
   “Are these the priorities you use when selecting a potential manager?”
   and
   as these are middle managers…
   “Do you think the senior management of this organisation would agree?”

   Shouldn’t last too long, should get some thinking going IF a taster aims to do that,
   should be easy for you to prepare…two slides and a trip to WHSmiths!

   Hope this helps
   Rus

2. Leadership Name Game
   One icebreaker we use at Sweet TLC Ltd is the ‘Leadership Name game.
   First, pre-prepare a list of diverse celebrity names ~ making sure there are a mix of gender, race, age, background, professions/skills, topical/established, living/dead, serious/fun,etc.
   Without disclosing the names to those present, fold the names individually and put them into a hat.
   Each person present picks three names out of the hat.
   Each person then has to choose which celebrity they would like to have as their line manager/employer and discuss the leadership attributes of their chosen individual and also why they would not want either of the other two celebrities as their leader. (If someone gets ‘stuck’ we let them chose one other name out of the hat.
   It can be good fun and, if you get the mix of names right, always gets people talking and laughing. It usually brings out some serious points as well and frequently show that individuals look at other people in many different ways ~ it can throw up some surprises and bring out points, in a relaxed way, which may be referred to in the course of the training session.