Project Description
Team Leadership and Personal Development are week-long leadership courses run once a year for teenage boys around Australia. Originally created by a man called Richard Yap in the 70's, the courses focus on equipping youth with skills useful for living a fulfilling and meaningful life. Although accepting boys from a variety or schools and organisations, the courses are managed by Boys Brigade Victoria and are recognised as a requirement to achieving the Queens Badge (an award recognised and presented by The Crown).
Team Leadership
The first of the two courses, Team Leadership (TL) focuses on teaching boys how to lead in teams. It re-contextualises leadership as more than an authoritarian dynamic and shows participants the power of leveraging the diversity of groups. I've been part of, or lead, over 15 different leadership programs, and TL is the best course I've seen at teaching strong leadership theory and then providing practical experiences and simulations to experience the impacts of theories at depth. This two pronged approach consistently leads to a transformative experience for most boys and we frequently receive surprised letters from parents to this effect.
Personal Development
The second of the two courses has a very different focus. Where TL focuses on leading in a team, Personal Development (PD) focuses on leading ones self. The teaching style of PD is therefore significantly different. Wherein TL participants are taught lessons and then asked to apply them. In PD, topics are curated and facilitated rather than 'taught'. This is because the goal of this course is to have participants learn to lead themselves. This is often a novel concept for teenagers who have spent years being told by their local communities and caregivers who they should or shouldn't be, and what they should or shouldn't do. The course creates space for them to safely explore and question some of these things, as well as challenges them to ask important self-conception questions. Whilst the course intentionally doesn't tell participants what to think or not think about anything, it does seek to give them personal skills to better lead themselves. This could be critical thinking skills, increased emotional intelligence, and various topic specific mental models.
Steps Taken So Far
I was asked by Boys Brigade Victoria to take over managing the two courses in 2016. I had attended the courses in 2003 and 2004 and been a volunteer leader for the courses since 2010 so was already familiar with the curriculum. Whilst I felt the courses were solid, I felt I could deliver on a number of improvements. So far I have:
- Overhauled the courses approach to risk management and safety
- Introduced a monitoring and evaluating system
- Introduced a CQI process where each year we remove 10% of the curriculum and replace it with something new
- Started re-writing the second year curriculum to give it better focus
- Set up a scholarship program to ensure that money is not a barrier to access
- Established an alumni program for those who completed both years
- Created a website and added a staff role to capture video and photography to create a stronger atmosphere within the course as well as help promote the course
- Changed the courses staffing structure to better facilitate the training of new leaders
- Set up stronger backend infrastructure around file and task management
Next Steps
My strategic areas of focus over the next few years are to:
- Improve the PD curriculum
- Establish a stronger system to make the CQI process more effortless
- Find a more sustainable recruitment process for finding quality PD staff
- Integrate course improvements with a larger leadership development think tank
- And expand the network of organisations feeding boys into the program
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