Leadership workshops and how students can get involved
Maria Ly
Staff Writer
Leadership workshops, in all honesty, don’t sound very fun. On Tuesday at 5 p.m., Leadership U, a program at MNSU aimed to help students with leadership skills, held their weekly workshop in which I attended. This week’s topic was “Leadership and Receiving Feedback”. My feedback: it was fun.
Upon arrival, students were given an option of a variety of chips to satisfy their hungry bellies. After munching on their chips, they began the workshop—starting off with an icebreaker. Two groups lined up in a single file as we played “Telephone Charades” fitting with the theme of receiving feedback.
After lots of laughs and a bad impersonation of running after an ice cream truck, students headed back to their seats as the session began.
Guest speaker, Tamarah Frank, a graduate student at MNSU studying counseling and student personnel as well as college student affairs, took the front as she gave an interactive presentation on receiving feedback.
Students discussed their failures in the past and the feedback they’ve received from it. We learned about constructive criticism vs. destructive criticism. We talked about when feedback isn’t good, and our past experiences with that.
We took a survey to see how we are at receiving feedback and using it. We drew our favorite animals and gave each other feedback on the drawings, some looking like rotisserie chickens with human heads and others as misshapen pandas dipped in acid.
The workshop ended with a drawing for two $5 Cold Stone gift cards. Although I did not win, I left with a possible friend, a bag of Cheetos, and valuable information in furthering my life as a leader.
Leadership workshops are a great way for students to gain leadership skills.
When asked the benefits of these workshops, Assistant Director of Leadership U, Ashley Strom says, “It gives you practice talking with your peers about things that you’re probably not having conversations about in your day to day life. It’s a nice avenue for you to start talking about what some these things mean to you because then when someone asks you in an interview, ‘So tell me about your leadership style?’ You have a better idea of how to answer a question like that because you’ve had practice talking about competencies.”
These workshops aren’t always about learning, but also having fun.
When asked what he enjoys most about Leadership U workshops, Adetuji Adelan, Student Engagement Coordinator, says, “While having the potential to learn, we’re having fun, like each workshop we have a topic that we all talk about with each other. We are learning while we are having fun”.
Want to gain leadership skills, and have fun? Join Leadership U in their next workshop next week Sept. 25th where they will talk about personal contributions and what that means in a role of leadership.
Feature photo courtesy of Leadership U.