Leadership Conference

Greetings all,

I had a conference at school on Friday on Leadership. They invited people earlier in the summer to give feedback on how to format the conference and I decided to attend it because they were offering treats and I am easily seduced by treats.

I made some suggestions on what I wanted to see at the conference and they actually did my suggestions so I was pleased about that. One suggestion was based on Susan Cain's book Quiet. I wanted them to discuss how Leaders can be introverted as our culture seems to only think a Leader is someone who is extroverted. I didn't go to this workshop but I heard people enjoyed it. I think it was something others needed to know about because our culture is biased towards people with quiet confidence.

I also made a suggestion on a workshop that utilizes some concepts from improv, like Yes and. That was what they called the workshop. Yes and is basically an exercise that underlies all of improv. It's the idea that you take what someone says and Yes and it. Improv is not about blocking. It's about accepting and I think to be a good leader, you need to learn how to accept things instead of blocking things. Like for example, in improv if the offer is someone says "Hey I like your hat", you can say "Yes and my hat makes me want to go to the movies", then the other person can say "Yes and going to movies makes me want to buy popcorn" and is followed by "Yes and popcorn reminds me of how much my mother loves me".

Obviously if we spent that seen arguing and blocking, it would go nowhere. "No don't like my hat..."
And that goes no where.

Same idea for leadership. People don't need to say no and can work with what's given them.

The workshops I did was on Resilience and Leadership is...The Leadership is... workshop was more about having smaller discussions with people on various social topics. It was interesting.

I liked the Resilience one more. It actually raised more questions for me like how do I know if I'm resilient? I don't think I'm resilient and I was told to try online quizzes. One of them said I was average and another above average. I don't really feel I am resilient. I feel I don't have much of a choice anyways. You have to move on in life. You still keep on living so why not just do what has to be done. I have been through a lot of financial difficulties but I don't feel that makes me resilient.

One trait of resilient people is that they have a social network. I feel for me, when I am stressed I don't look to others, I turn within and so I wasn't really sure if having a social network is what leads to resilience. I am an introvert and so as an introvert I seek validation and comfort internally and then I decide if I need external help, to seek it out.

I guess I don't classify myself as resilient and I'm not sure if I ever will be. I don't like dealing with difficult things and rather have a comfortable, easy life.