By Scanews Staff
The 27th Leadershp St. Louis class started with an opening retreat at Cedar Creek Farm and Conference Center just outside of New Haven, MO. on
September 13-14, 2002. Fifty-nine civic and business leaders from various
segments of the communities around the bi-state region gathered together
to kick-off the 9-month long intensive training program.
The participants are the result of a competitive selection process. Over 200 applicants submitted their credentials and only half of them had been
short-listed for an interview, and 60 were finally admitted into the
program. They include business professionals, public officials, lawyers,
law enforcement officers, bankers, union personnel, educators,
entrepreneurs, community volunteers, members of the media, and leaders in
health care, cultural institutions, and social service agencies. A
commitment to improving the quality of life in the region is an essential
qualification for selection into the program. Dr. Ching-ling Tai, a
commissioner of the Missouri Community Service Commission, is the 3rd
Chinese American enrolled in the program since 1976 when the program was
founded by the Danforth Foundation.
The 1st session of a 2-day overnight retreat was designed for participants
to get to know each other and oneself for the purpose of team building.
Do you know who you are? Do you know why people behave differently? To
be a great leader, one must know how to work with others, know the
differences between people and not only respect each other's difference,
but use differences constructively. When these 60 members were admitted
into the program, everyone completed a questionnaire to be evaluated by
the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
What is MBTI? MBTI is designed to understand and identify valuable differences between normal, healthy people, differences that can be the
source of much misunderstanding and miscommunication. MBTI will help you
to identify your unique gifts, to understand your motivations, natural
strengths, and potential areas for growth. It will also help you
appreciate people who differ from you. Understanding your MBTI type is
self-affirming and encourages cooperation with others.
The MBTI reports your preferences on four dichotomies which resulted in sixteen psychological types. There is a clear indication of more
extroverts who prefer intuition among the 27th Leadership St. Louis group
than the general population. These are the peope who prefer to direct
their energy and attention outward and to receive energy from interacting
with people and from taking action. They prefer to take information by
seeing the big picture, focusing on the relationships and connections
between facts, and are especially attuned to seeing new possibilities. In
general, more leaders emerge from this type of psychological profile.
It was amusing to see how these personality traits demonstrated at the retreat when participants engaged in various activities, from camp
caravan, creative ways of introducing "who are we" to simply planning a
trip. This 2-day retreat provided participants an opportunity to build a
team, to learn from each other, to share, to compare and to reflect from
one individual, group or community experience. It was a great way to
enhance self-awareness of leadership approaches and to enable members
working together as a team throughout the year highly interactive series
of seminars.
In the next months, they will examine issues related to economic development, social services and health care, education, criminal justice,
racism, politics and power, etc. They will not only experience strategic
planning, policy analysis and problem solving in various aspects, but will
work together to form an informed network of dedicated leaders who will
actively work to challenge the future of our region.
|
