A Group Leaders Insight

A Group Leader's insight

By Greg Nash

Being a group leader or leader in charge has its many challenges and when dealing with the many personalities that are present in any group, you could end up having to deal with more than you bargained for and I’m not just talking about the normal day to day life of a group. I’m talking about the leaders you work with and depend upon to deliver great scouting programs.

Often the most devastating problem for groups arises due to the clash of personalities and suspicion of other motives between its adult leadership ranks. At the extreme, these interpersonal relationships end with group conflicts affecting the very scouting concepts we undertake to uphold.

Group leaders work with the people around them to carry out the very ideals that they themselves hold in their leadership position and therefore need to remember that the people who they work with, also what the same. After all, they did signup for the same objectives.

Consider this: My view of the World is my view, and your view of the World is your view. In reality, our views of the World are actually the same, well we could agree on 99% of it, and the rest we can negotiate on.

To avoid unsettling conflicts, leaders need to shift their mindset in the way they think about the people around them. Shift your mindset from terminal certainty, that your perspective is the right one and the only one, and start recognising that your job is to engage diverse thinkers in the group. The more you’re capable of engaging with diversity, the higher your probability of success. Good leaders have to know how to harness it, work with it, and smooth out the rough edges.

Leaders need to have good tools to deal with diversity, they have to be insightful about their own preferences, know the way they make decisions, in thinking about biases of what they see and what they think they see. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know because of a blind spot.

Before trying to understand others it’s better to turn some of the attention to yourself first. Find out if you have a blind spot that makes it difficult to see where others around you are coming from. Do your biases get in the way and stop you from finding out more about how those around you feel? When leaders have self-awareness of their blind spots, it's easier to open up and allow sharing of ideas, goals, and apprehensions.

When leaders don’t have significant insight about themselves, then you will see how significantly diminished is their ability to realise truly great and wonderful outcomes.