Learning without reflection is a waste. Reflection without learning is dangerous.
– Confucius (Reflections)
One of the greatest gifts that we have been given is the power of reflection. There’s nothing quite like the opportunity to consider what you’ve learned, witnessed, and experienced and peel back the layers of what that experience means to you, how it’s impacted you, and what you are going to do with that newfound knowledge. It’s often surprising to realize just how much you have grown and changed as a result!
As I reflect back on my semester in KNR 171, Recreation Leadership, I realize I am not the same person I was when I started this class. Through our coursework, discussions, and activities, I’ve learned what it means to be a leader, to collaborate with others as part of a team, and to be an effective and memorable facilitator.
One of the most impactful activities for me was a class exercise where we identified our style as a director, socializer, relater, or thinker, and then broke into four-person groups made up of someone of each style, where we were tasked with completing a puzzle activity. It was an eye-opening experience that really demonstrated for me how different each of our leadership styles are, but also how important the unique strengths of each style are to effectively collaborating as a team. I’m a socializer, which means I’m fast-paced and people-oriented. I’m good at reading people and suggesting different ways for the team to work or think together to keep us moving forward. That’s a unique strength that I brought to the group. However, I’m not as good at the overall planning and organizing, carefully considering an approach to make sure it’s feasible and meets our needs, or making sure we stay on task and complete required activities on time. The directors and thinkers, for example, were much better at those activities than I was, and their involvement was critical to making sure our team functioned well. Every team member had a different role, and no single role was more important than another. Rather, all were essential to collaboratively achieving our team’s success. We didn’t always agree on the best course of action, but by respectfully talking through our different ideas and perspectives as a united group, we were able to achieve a better result than any one of us could have achieved on our own. Through this activity, I learned the importance of, as an effective leader, understanding and recognizing each team member’s styles, and the unique strengths and weaknesses of each style. With that knowledge, I can build a diverse, well-rounded team whose styles complement each other and who have the skills and perspective to successfully and effectively collaborate.
Another class activity that really helped me “connect the dots” about what we learned during this semester was our individual one-hour facilitation plan. This was a great exercise. It was very easy for me to think of a theme, an audience, and activities, but I’m not a detail-person, so the methodical formatting required of the facilitation plan was a good process that forced me to slow down and really think about the details of what needed to happen. It seems strange at first to script out, for example, the need to ask if people have questions and then pause to give them time to respond or to demonstrate and/or explain in specific detail what a participant is expected to do. It seems so obvious to do that, but it’s because it’s so obvious that it often gets overlooked. That’s why it’s important to think through and list out those little details because it’s those very details that make the difference between a memorable and effective facilitation and one that’s lackluster and unimpressive.
One example of this in action was the videos that our professor, Tracy, prepared for us once COVID-19 forced us to move online. Although not a standard facilitation, I see correlations between the planning that went into the video demonstrations/discussions that Tracy provided for our classes and what is needed for a successful facilitation. Many professors moved to online by providing nothing more than a series of PowerPoint slides or other handouts for students to read, with no corresponding demonstration or discussion. Tracy took a different approach and clearly spent time carefully planning what she was going to share with us and the best methods for doing so. I appreciated the thoughtfulness of those details, such as the visual picture of the big pile of dirt and its relationship to risk management that her words painted in my mind. That mental picture and the details she shared made that lesson an effective and memorable experience for me, one that I will use in the future as a template for what I want my own facilitations to accomplish.
In our first blog post for this class, we wrote about what we thought leadership was and who we were as a leader. At the time, I viewed an effective leader as one who knows his own strengths, as well as those of the members of his group, and uses them to the best advantage. By doing so, he helps each team member learn and grow into the best versions of themselves as successful and integral team members. As I reflect back on those answers, given what I’ve learned over the semester, I stand by them. In fact, what I’ve learned through our class exercises about leadership and learning styles really solidified those answers for me and the importance of understanding yourself and your team.
As I look toward the future, I am excited about my upcoming opportunities to apply the leadership lessons I’ve learned this semester. Next year, I will be serving as the president for our club hockey team. Although I’ve been an informal leader on many teams and groups in the past, this will be my first formal leadership opportunity to test my skills and apply what I’ve learned. I’m already starting to think through and plan how I want to approach my new team, what things I will do to learn about their styles, and how best to help my team capitalize on our strengths so that we can effectively and successfully work together. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity, but I’m a little nervous too because I realize I didn’t take full advantage of my classroom experience to engage and practice as much as I could and should have. If I had the chance for a do-over, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, I would definitely engage in class more to make the most of the experience and better prepare me for the leadership opportunities in my future. Everything is a learning opportunity, and the fact that I didn’t make the most of the one available to me is a good lesson for me about what I won’t let happen again.
The knowledge and skills I’ve learned this semester will last with me long after my college days are over. Through our classroom activities, I’ve become even more convinced that Recreation Management is the right field for me. I’m passionate about sports, recreation, and the opportunity to share it with others. I love teaching and coaching my young goalie students and seeing them learn and flourish, and what I’ve learned in this class will help me be an even better mentor to them. I walk away from this class with the confidence that I can successfully contribute to leading and facilitating positive, life-changing recreational experiences for those around me.
Works Cited
Reflection Sayings and Quotes. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.wiseoldsayings.com/reflection-quotes/#ixzz6LQY5MITb
Adam Lindeman's blog 