In Brief
Vol. 6, No. 4 May 2013
A publication for members of the Alliance for Student Activities
Do It Yourself Leadership Training w By Lyn Fiscus
neighboring schools to participate.
Sending student leaders to summer leadership workshops is a great way to train and inspire them. They gain new ideas, get to know each other better, and come back ready to hit the ground running in the new school year. But with the grim economic times and budget cut-backs, many advisers find their organizations can no longer afford to send a team of students to leadership camp. The solution might be to plan your own leadership training experience.
Some options for format of the training include:
Conducting your own leadership training allows you to tailor the experience to suit your own needs and budget limitations. You can draw upon local talent or bring in outside experts. You can work with a select group of leaders or open it up to anyone interested in leadership development. You can focus on teambuilding or spend the time planning and training. Best of all, more than a few students benefit from the experience.
Conducting your own training allows you to tailor the experience to suit your own needs.
A do-it-yourself leadership camp can take many forms. You can go it alone and provide training just for the members of your organization, or pool your resources with like-minded groups on campus. Many student leaders are active in more than one organization, so leadership training for multiple groups often involves the same students. Instead of duplicating efforts, work with the advisers from other organizations to offer a training for all student leaders. If you’re feeling really ambitious, invite
• A one-day training session • One or more half-day sessions • Overnight lock-in • A multi-day local training, with students going home at night • A weekend retreat (because it is before the school year, some groups call it an “advance”) at a youth camp or resort.
The format you choose for your camp will depend on the goals you hope to achieve and the resources available to you. If you’ve never done something like this before, it might be best to start out with something that is easily managed.
Questions to Consider If you’re ready to try your hand at organizing your own leadership training experience, use the following questions to guide your planning.
n What is the purpose? Determining what you want to accomplish with the leadership camp is a critical step, for it will influence the rest of the planning. Will the camp be for all members of a group? Will it
be for officers of all organizations on campus? Are there specific skills you want to teach or will you focus on an overview of leadership? Some general purposes to consider in planning your own camp include: • Develop unity • Train in leadership skills • Motivate and inspire • Set goals for the group • Develop calendar/projects • Work in committees • Bring leaders of different school groups together • Provide groups with new ideas • Develop better communications between school leaders and groups • Teach different groups how to cooperate with each other.
n Who will conduct the training? Much of the success of the leadership camp depends on the quality of the instruction, so give careful thought to who will do the training. Conducting the training yourself is certainly an option, but you also should consider whether you have resources available locally to do the training. Are there members of the community (politicians, ministers, business leaders) who can serve as resources? Sometimes faculty members have expertise that they’d be willing to share in a workshop setting. Experienced student leaders can often
train younger members. Previous members who are currently in college might be willing to come back and facilitate leadership sessions and conduct other activities to help train new members. Another option is to pay a fee to bring in outside experts.
n What activities should be done? The activities you plan will be a direct reflection of the purposes of the camp. A combination of workshops and teambuilding activities is a common approach. Workshops can be presented on such topics as goal setting, how to run a meeting, communication techniques, effective publicity, project planning, and so forth. A common approach is to combine workshops with tasks that need to be done for the new school year. For example, as you teach students about project planning, have them brainstorm ideas and plans for an upcoming event such as Homecoming. Or, teach students about the elements of effective publicity, then have them create posters, announcements, or commercials for the first week of school or your first event. If you have members from more than one organization participating in your training, consider holding officer training sessions that get all presidents, vice presidents, secretaries, and treasurers together in groups to go over their job description and share tips to help them do their job. Types of activities to consider including in your camp session are: • Icebreakers • Experiential leadership lessons • Brainstorming sessions • Calendar planning • Workshops • Idea exchanges • Teambuilding activities • Low or high ropes courses
• Group/officer meeting times
the camp before fall sports practices begin. Some schools choose to hold their leadership camps over a long weekend during the spring or fall.
• Large group activities • Social activities.
n Where will camp be held? The decision of where to host the camp will be based on available facilities, community resources, and budget considerations. School facilities, community buildings, local colleges, church facilities, state or local parks, and other sites could all serve as training sites, depending on your needs. Take these factors into consideration: • Number of students to participate • Proximity to the involved school or schools • Cost • Transportation issues • Legal issues such as insurance liability and fire safety
n How will we pay for all of this? Some schools charge students a nominal fee for participation; others split the cost with students; still others pay the whole tab. Consider asking local businesses or civic organizations to help defray the expense with monetary or in-kind donations.
n Is it worth it? While planning and coordinating all the details for your own leadership training experience is a massive job, in the end you’ll have a better trained, more cohesive group of student leaders, and that will make all the work worthwhile.
• Size of available rooms and number needed for the group size
Lyn Fiscus is CEO of Leadership Logistics
• Accessibility of rooms for disabled or special needs students
gistics.us) and a
(www.leadershiplo-
former student activities adviser. She serves as Vice President of the Alliance.
• Ability of the host to furnish items needed such as blackboards and projectors • Available sites for the time you want • Large room or area for general assembly.
n When will camp be held? This decision is also affected by your purpose. If your main purpose is to get a jump on the school year then an early to mid-summer date would be best. If you want to focus on teambuilding and a good kickoff to the year, a late summer date might better serve your purposes. Also consider work and sports schedules of the participants; unless the camp will be held entirely on the weekend, it’s probably best to have
In Brief is published quarterly during the school year by the Alliance for Student Activities, a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to promote the value of cocurricular student activities and to provide professional development and support for advisers and future advisers. Board of Directors Mike Smith, Interim President Lyn Fiscus, Vice President Terry Hamm, Secretary John Glimco, Treasurer © 2013 Alliance for Student Activities
Alliance for Student Activities www.alliance4studentactivities.org info@alliance4studentactivities.org