PRINCIPLES OF LEADERSHIP-pt1

This section describes why leaders exist and what knowledge, skills, and abilities are important to manage learning. We know, to begin, that leaders exist because man is a social creature. The leader in our society is responsible for the essential tasks in the collections of groups that make up civilization.

In most traditional or conventional training events, because of a lack of systematic programming, most of the emphasis is focused on attempts to change people's perception. Little time is usually allocated for practice and even less to measure changes in performance during the training situation. The White Stag method puts a strong emphasis on individual and group participation and practice long to ensure sufficient habit-formation during the training situation. We also systematically evaluate the participants, staff, and the overall program. We take a direct approach 

Leadership and Leaders: the Direct Approach

The leader is the central person who guides the group toward its goal. No single trait has been found which separates leaders from non-leaders; nonetheless, leaders usually have more drive and determination and probably a greater concentration of positive qualities than non-leaders.

Research over many years, some of which formed the basis for the original conceptualization of the White Stag program, has revealed that leaders commonly share a definite set of skills, or competencies. We do not believe in "born leaders;" we believe the leadership is a skill, ability, or competency that can be acquired. In White Stag, our functional definition of competence is: knowledge, understanding, way of thinking, skills and disposition. Our program is designed to affect all of these qualities.

The idea of born-leaders has become outdated. The founder of White Stag, Béla Bánáthy, in his research for his Master's thesis on leadership, compiled a list of over 80 behaviors that authorities in the field described as "leadership." The key notion here is that these behaviors are skills that can be learned.

For many years, leadership in traditional Boy Scout of America junior leader training programs was referred to only indirectly, by example and inference.

White Stag does not depend on happenstance or luck for leadership training to take place. This "indirect" way of training for leadership is what the White Stag method challenges and transforms into a "direct approach." The skills of leadership are specifically described.

Defining Leadership Objectively

The direct approach is oriented toward a specific leadership behavior which is clearly and objectively defined. The elements of leadership behavior are isolated as specific learnings which are systematically programmed into a long-term developmental process.

The direct approach ensures that appropriate and sufficient time is given the development of leadership skills, to bring about the desired change in behavior and to achieve leadership competence.

The SECOND concept is that, rather than being some nebulous characteristic which one has to be born with, leadership can be defined as a set of competencies which can be learned. Some eighty aspects of knowledge, skills, and attitudes have been taken into account in our research which have been clustered into competencies. To sum it up. an understanding of the concepts described here has helped us to bring into focus that the acquisition of leadership competencies should occur by plan and design, rather than by accident. Although leaders may emerge - as they do today - as by-products of group processes, this is neither an economical nor an effective way of developing leadership.

Leadership Can be Learned

Leadership competencies cannot be acquired in a few training sessions or in a single training course, but only as the result of a long-range development process over a number of years. Leadership development must begin during the formative years of youth, and is a life-long process that never ends.

The acquisition of leadership competencies occurs by plan and design.

[It is a] process with a purpose. It is a process of the learner moving from a state wherein he cannot yet perform as the described purpose of the training to a state where he can demonstrate such performance. This move is what training is about. Training is the making of specific arrangements in the environment of the learner which provide him with experiences by which he can confront and master the learning task, by which he can be transformed to the state where he can perform as desired.

Leadership development cannot be perceived as a single training course or as a one-shot event, but must be a continuous seqence of closely chained and systematically organized learning and experience-building opportunities.

Developmental psychologists postulate that each child passes through a series of specific stages; White Stag addresses each youth in terms appropriate to his particular stage of development and levels of need. The program is structured in three tiers, or "phases," each designed to meet the needs of developing adolescents. (Refer to Chapter 4 - "Organizational Structure" for more information.)

We understand that organized learning opportunities like the White Stag program are not for every youth, and that many youth grow into fine, mature adults and leaders in their communities without participating in organized youth groups.

However, participants in the White Stag program strongly feel that the program helps young people realize their full potential, assists them in developing positive concepts of self esteem, self evaluation, and the ability to get along with others in the widest variety of situations. The White Stag program plants a seed in some who then grow it themselves; others return to partake again and again of the distinctive spirit which nurtures growth, that is marrow to the bone of White Stag.

Growth in leadership capacity does not happen in isolation as a member or learner in the program. The support and understanding of peers and adults in the youths' home environment is critically important. The opportunity to apply what he has learned, to experiment, is essential if the leadership competencies are to be transferred out of the White Stag program. It is at home, in the school, in their church or temple, in the community, and at work while helping others grow, that the youth applies the leadership competencies and captures the White Stag Spirit.

The Focus is on the Learner

We have shifted our attention from instruction to learning. This does not mean that we minimize the importance of instruction or the role of the instructor.

The significance of instruction is not questioned here at all. The point that is made here is that the learning task is the nucleus around which to design instruction. The role and function of instruction should be viewed in its proper relationship to learning. It should be planned for and provided for accordingly. Instruction is a means to an end and not an end in itself. Its function is to facilitate learning.

The effectiveness of the program is not measured by the effort made by the instructor but by the amount of learning achieved by the learner.