Leadership

This week was a lot of detailed introduction time, a lot of 'what's coming up quickly' time and a lot of reminders that we are here for an intensive study time that is going to be an invaluable life altering experience - if we are prepared to put in all the work that is required.

One of the most interesting things that happened this week was in my first 'Leadership' seminar. Our instructor introduced the topic by telling us that "People believe in acquiring leadership in different ways; some people believe you are born with it; some people believe in quick cures (like elixirs); some people believe in 'leadership training'; and another approach might looks like..." and he sat down in front of us and stared at us.

This was at the beginning of a two and a half hour session. It quickly became apparent that he was no longer engaging with our class which lead to some interesting group dynamics... some people wanted to disengage from a teacher that they felt was disengaging from them; some people, namely the people working in action industries like emergency medicine, wanted to take action - but the type of action to take and for what purpose couldn't be agreed upon; some people wanted to just have the whole group sit quietly and reflect; some people wanted to understand the exercise by evaluating the reading from the night before; some people wanted to discuss the meaning of and their interpretation of leadership, and the whole while, we were encountering a whole spectrum of East, West and Pacific Islander cultural differences. It was really, really interesting.

I think the most interesting thing that came out of today's exercise was how uncomfortable people seem to be in general with silence. Apparently the average American feels an uncomfortable silence at around 9 seconds of no noise, while the average Japanese feels an uncomfortable silence at around 90 seconds of no noise.
This week was a lot of detailed introduction time, a lot of 'what's coming up quickly' time and a lot of reminders that we are here for an intensive study time that is going to be an invaluable life altering experience - if we are prepared to put in all the work that is required.

One of the most interesting things that happened this week was in my first 'Leadership' seminar. Our instructor introduced the topic by telling us that "People believe in acquiring leadership in different ways; some people believe you are born with it; some people believe in quick cures (like elixirs); some people believe in 'leadership training'; and another approach might looks like..." and he sat down in front of us and stared at us.

This was at the beginning of a two and a half hour session. It quickly became apparent that he was no longer engaging with our class which lead to some interesting group dynamics... some people wanted to disengage from a teacher that they felt was disengaging from them; some people, namely the people working in action industries like emergency medicine, wanted to take action - but the type of action to take and for what purpose couldn't be agreed upon; some people wanted to just have the whole group sit quietly and reflect; some people wanted to understand the exercise by evaluating the reading from the night before; some people wanted to discuss the meaning of and their interpretation of leadership, and the whole while, we were encountering a whole spectrum of East, West and Pacific Islander cultural differences. It was really, really interesting.

I think the most interesting thing that came out of today's exercise was how uncomfortable people seem to be in general with silence. Apparently the average American feels an uncomfortable silence at around 9 seconds of no noise, while the average Japanese feels an uncomfortable silence at around 90 seconds of no noise.

Anyway, it has been a long week of many new bites of information and I look forward to releasing it all tonight!

k