PIPS2: Teamwork & Leadership

Today, I completed the second day of Personal & Interpersonal Skills 2: Leadership & Working with Teams. There was a varied delegataion, ranging from psychiatrists to paediatricians. It was useful to interact with other SpRs of other desciplines, some of whom I would rarely come across professionally.

As with all of these sessions, those with confident leadership styles emerged early, and tried to take charge! The great thing here was that the facilitator was keen to develop the skills in those not so keen on leadership. I learnt that a charismatic leader is based on the perception of others, and that there is no such thing as a "born leader".

 

I guess the most important aspect of the session was "situational leadership". Here, the leadership styles are geared towards the person being led. In a group, your options are to either take the lowest common denominator (if there are any D1's use a DIRECTIVE approach), or lead according to the majority of the group. They then pick up those who are less developed on an individual basis.

We also had some good sessions on giving and recieving both positive and negative feedback. As a person with some (limited) authority, leading should have a sense of direction, and it is impossible to please all of the people all of the time. This stuff should prove useful for the "Focus on Participant as a Teacher" seminars to follow later...

AMH