This competency enables a learner to:
It is essential that we first understand ourselves and our own needs and characteristics. Only then can we know and understand other people's. This understanding hopefully come naturally as we mature, creeping over us like ivy winding about a tree. By directly exploring and encouraging discovery of these personality traits, we can accelerate the maturing of a leader, adding fertilizer to the ivy and tree. About Understanding Group Needs and Characteristics
Knowledge of individual needs and characteristics is important for every member of a group. As any group forms, an informal assessment of members' characteristics and needs always takes place. This competency brings the process out of the closet and uses it to everyone's advantage. Members volunteer their own needs and characteristics in an open, trusting environment via specific learning activities and exercises. Everyone is accepted and their individual differences are valued, for the differences contribute to an environment calculated to encourage growth.
The competency Understanding Group Needs and Characteristics has five major parts:
We should differentiate between needs and wants. A need can be strictly interpreted as those elements essential for human survival: shelter, food, warmth, and love. A want is merely a desire, something that we believe will make us happier or our circumstances easier.
The psychologist Abraham Maslow conceived of our needs and wants as a pyramid, the top of the pyramid representing our ability to realize our own potential or our capacity to help others (or altruistic behavior), as illustrated in Figure 9-1. He called this self-actualization.
|
|
As a leader, we must be able to evaluate an individual's relative position within this hierarchy of needs. For example, if a learner's personal life is insecure, their motive for attending camp may be very different from another person who's personal life is relatively stable. The insecure person may simply be escaping a bad environment or seeking affirmation of their self-worth, while the other individual is seeking to exercise skill they already know they possess and greater skill as a leader. Furthermore, according to Maslow, fulfilled needs are no longer motivators.
We must not however arrogantly assume based on a few external facts or characteristics that we understand a person's true motives. We should use our intuition and discernment, but it is our obligation within the context of the program to build some trust and help the person reveal their needs and motives. They may not yet even understand what their own needs and motives are, so as a leader you must be sensitive to this.
Values are closely held beliefs developed over many years. They do not change readily or quickly. They are the standards by which attitudes are formed, but they are not attitudes. Values are not behavioral traits; they are not needs (the lack of something desirable). Values are affective in nature, they are the markers by which we choose between one behavior and another. How individuals values combine in a group creates the dynamics of group interaction.
Everyone's set of values are personal and unique. Though individual values are not necessarily talked about, they are nonetheless operative. Values cannot be ignored if we are to know ourselves and others.
In White Stag, we don't teach or identify for learners a particular set of values. We rarely engage in specific, overt values clarification exercises. Values are often brought to light in the course of other activities, as part of the group leadership development process, and examined in a limited context. Adolescent staff are usually not adequately prepared or trained to facilitate sensitive values clarification exercises. Nonetheless, individual values can and do change as a consequence of participation in the White Stag Leadership Development Program.
By example, we set certain values as our standards. We value the group as a whole, though not at the expense of an individual. We value the outdoors and express our wonder and reverence for it. We value our fellow learners, and tell them so in many ways. We value creativity, autonomy and maturity, and encourage and reward these qualities during the development process and program.
These are the common rules and customs followed by group members. They may or may not be overtly defined. Norms specify acceptable and appropriate behavior. In White Stag, rising at the crack of dawn to run half naked about camp shouting "Augi! Augi! Augi!" is an acceptable "norm." At IBM, wearing a white shirt used to be the norm.
Norms develop from the values, expectations and acquired habits that members bring with them to the group. Some White Stag members with an extensive Scouting background believe that the uniform ought to worn at all times; others believe uniforms are only necessary when the candidates are around, or aren't required at all.
Norms are for the most part unquestionably followed. They are rarely overtly examined by the group itself, especially for their vast influence on communication within and between groups.
The norms of White Stag are in some respects very different from what we experience every day. We have many ceremonies mimicking social rites of passage. We have numerous, complex and unique traditions.
These include the physical, everyday ones of eating, breathing and sleeping. These are our survival needs. We also have certain psychological needs not as easily recognizable, but critical to our physical and emotional well-being nonetheless. A newborn infant, left alone and never touched, although it may eat, breath and sleep well, will die. Needs might include, for instance, "doing something challenging or new," "coed activities," "receiving recognition," "fun," "respect from others," and "time alone."
Given knowledge of a member's needs, the group can have a powerful impact as it assists individuals in fulfilling their needs. A group leader who strives to respond to individual needs will subsequently earn considerable loyalty and commitment from group members. Members can continue to contribute under very stressful and trying circumstances, beyond their own estimation of their capacity, if they are given specific, positive feedback.
These are individual signs of who we are. Someone may value competition, need physical recreation and be characterized as an athlete. Characteristics are the obvious landmarks others judge us by (sometimes accurately, sometimes not). "He's shallow--he never talks about anything but girls and football." "She's an idealist--always working for one cause or another, never giving up."
Knowing individual characteristics, a group can tailor its efforts and activities to take advantage of member's given talents and interests. A volleyball match might be held after the work is done to satisfy several athletes. More but shorter breaks might be scheduled for the same kind of person who gets restless sitting for long periods.
|
|