Student | Teen Program Outline

The central counties 4-H council offers an annual weeklong leadership conference for teenagers. The teens are housed together by county but meet for classes as a large group. The curriculum director, Mr. Hockley designs the coursework to focus on leadership skills. The most difficult challenge of leadership is knowing how you come across to others.

Half way through the conference, Mr. Hockley introduces the INSIGHT Inventory. At this point the teens have come to know one another and built friendships as well as experienced some personality conflicts. Mr. Hockley gives them an interpretation of the results and breaks them into small groups to work on the skill-building exercises that relate to leadership.

A favorite skill-building exercise is asking the teens to identify a leadership challenge that recently occurred during the conference. They create their own script on what happened and how to handle it differently.

Another fun learning experience involves giving feedback to each other regarding how they see each other’s strengths. It’s called the Feedback Lineup. Teens are asked to line up across the front of the meeting space according to their scores. They go trait by trait.

Example: Starting with Scale A, the students are guided in lining up from most Direct on the far right to most Indirect on the far left. This helps them visually see where they fall; there is something magic about physically standing up and moving to one’s location on the line up and seeing where others stand.

Then for the feedback, various students are asked to step out, face the line and move others around according to how that person sees the lineup. This is actually a style feedback process and the person doing the moving gets to tell why he/she would rearrange the others and why. The activity creates a lot of energy, laughter, and direct learning about how everyone sees behavior a bit differently.

Mr. Hockley believes that the Feedback Lineup is one of the most helpful activities. The teens learn that regardless of how they see themselves, others usually see them somewhat differently. At this time they uncover perhaps the most difficult challenge of leadership—knowing how you come across to others. A lot of discussion takes place here, so Mr. Hockley allows plenty of time for processing this information and linking it to the different aspects of youth leadership training done earlier in the week.

Finally, the goal of the conference – teens learn to use their strengths to be effective leaders and to beware of how others might see them and to relate to those they wish to lead. A leader needs to:

• know themselves
• know how others see them
• learn to make their strengths bridge the gap

The INSIGHT Inventory^® not only provides a positive assessment of teens’ personality strengths but use it to also provide peer feedback in a positive, non-judgmental atmosphere.