Leadership Tomorrow Workshop #1

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LEADERSHIP AND TEAM BUILDING

Thursday, September 17, 1998

Location: Balboa Bay Club and The American Legion Post #291

Workshop Coordinator: Susan Smith, Program Chair

"The trouble with being a leader today is that you can't be sure if people

are following you or chasing you."

 
7:30 Continental Breakfast: Balboa Bay Club, Newport Beach
8:00 Welcome and Class Introductions
8:30 Myers Briggs Test Interpretation: Learning about yourself: Monica H. Schneider, Graduate School of Management, UCI
9:45 Break
10:00 Panel Discussion: "What Does It Take To Dredge A Bay?"  Thomas Wilson, Orange County Board of Supervisors, 5th District,   Larry Paul, Manager of Coastal & Historical Facilities for PF&R,   Peggy Ducey, Assistant City Manager, City of Newport Beach
12:00 Club Spa guest passes to change clothes for afternoon agenda.
12:15 Depart for The American Legion, Post 291, Newport Beach
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Creative Encounters, La Jolla: Eva Montville and Kathy Jennings, Facilitators
4:30 Evaluation and Closing Comments
5:00 Reception with Members of the Board of Directors
The morning began with an interpretation of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Each participant had been administered the test the week prior. The discussion was lead my Monica Schneider from the UCI School of Management. The MBTI provides a useful measure of personality by looking at eight personality preferences that all people use at different times. These eight preferences are are organized into four bi-polar scales. When you take the Indicator, the four preferences that you identify as most like you (one from each scale) are combined into what is called a type. Those bi-polar pairings are as follows: Extravert (E)/Introvert (I), Sensing (S)/Intuition (N), Thinking (T)/Feeling (F), Judging (J)/Perceiving (P). My type according to the Myers-Briggs occurs in approximately 1% in the population. It was I-N-F-J. In short it can be interpreted as follows: I prefer to focus on the inner world of ideas and impressions (I), I tend to focus on the future, with a view towards patterns and possibilities (N), I tend to base my decisions primarily on values and on subjective evaluation of person-centered concerns, I like a flexible and spontaneous approach to life and prefer to keep my options open (P). I was interested to see that in all preferences, I tended score low which means that it is difficult to determine a clear preference. This suggests to me that I can vary/integrate preferences depending on a given situation.

Following the interpretation of the Myers-Briggs scores was a panel discussion of what lead up to dredging the Back Newport Bay which became an increasingly political endeavor as the State was asked to finance the project. The panel members were Orange County Supervisor Tom Wilson, Larry Paul, Manager of Coastal and Historical Facilities for PF&R and Peggy Ducey, Assistant City Manager of the City of Newport Beach. The Supervisor chose to read his comments to the group rather than just talk with us and I found that very disappointing and somewhat disrespectful. His comments were broad and ambiguous and not very informative. Larry Paul on the other hand, was very informative as was Peggy Ducey. The crux of the Supervisors comments was that there is a plan to establish an annuity to fund future dredging projects in the Newport Bay. The target amount for the annuity is 12 million dollars. Ms. Ducey pointed out in her comments that many in the State Legislature saw this issue as a Newport Beach problem that posed no greater threat than  inconveniencing boaters. Democratic support was difficult to garner on the issue. The strategy was to appeal to the various environmental groups closely affiliated with the Democratic representation in Sacramento. Some of these were SPAWN, the Audubon Society, and the Sierra Club. The problem of sentiment buildup in the back bay needed to be viewed as an environmental threat rather than a navigational nuisance. Mr. Paul's comments were directed at Legislators and their tendency not to look toward the future, but rather the length of their terms of office. Consequently the there was a two millions required to augment the original 5.4 million dollar estimate directly attributable to the delays in the approval of the funds. It was agreed that effective civic leaders and a good public policy would be to look carefully into the future being proactive as opposed to reactive.

Following the lunch break, Creative Encounters lead by Eva Montville and Kathy Jennings put the group through some leadership building activities. There were three separate activities all were conducted outside. The first involved leading a blindfolded partner through a series of obstacles. The point here was to simulate leadership as well as followership. Followers must trust their leaders, leaders must not act responsibly with that trust. The second activity was a group activity. The activity was to move a small marble over a distance of 30 feet with sections of PVC pipe cut in different configurations. The effort required co-operation amongst all of us and served to illustrate to me the importance of recognizing situational leadership theory as opposed to a more autocratic approach. Different members of the group, based upon their own experiences, were able to offer insights as to how best to accomplish the task. The task was completed within the allotted time largely due to those insights. Had one leader been appointed or elected, he/she may not have possessed sufficient background to offer the insights necessary for the group to succeed at the task. The third activity required three levels of co-operation; a leader, a few mangers and several workers. Participants were asked to assume roles that they would be least likely to assume in real life. I elected to be a worker. The workers were blindfolded and relied on the mangers for their directives to complete the task. The leader was responsible for providing directives to the managers. The task was to move a pedestal with an object resting on it using ropes and surgical tubing. The purpose was to simulate top-down leadership found in many organizations. Our group was unable to complete the task. There were noticeable flaws in decisionmaking and communication in this top-down leadership configuration.

The day ended with a reception with the Leadership Tomorrow Board and was a good opportunity for all of the participants to get to know each other on a more informal basis. I found the other participants to have very diverse backgrounds as well as professions and interests. I found them all to be highly energetic and enthusiastic about the coming months. I am quite certain that I can learn a great deal about myself as I   interact with my classmates and am looking forward to October's session and beyond.