This weekend, I was part of a volunteer military organization training exercise for the Civil Air Patrol. The point of this training is for the young cadets ages 11-20years old to learn how to be a follower or leader in our organization. There were two different schools running depending on what level of experience they were at. The weekend started Friday night for staff, and ended Sunday around 3pm. I was the deputy commander for the entire event.
For the weekend, there was a lot of leadership involved since that is part of the entire program designed for the cadets. The staff that I had selected for the event has a lot of experience and was up for the challenge of training brand new cadets. Eventually these cadets will become staff, and the generations will come and go. Leadership will be essential in their futures.
This staff needs appeal to the students values in order to motivate them during training so that they will want to learn what is trying to be taught to them. In the followership aspect of transformational leadership, the cadets need to learn to identify with the leaders and understand the vision that they have for them. The leaders show the student that they can truly accomplish whatever tasks they put in front of them.
In this particular scenario, the leaders did an excellent job of creating and carrying out the vision of the schools. The staff understood their mission and vision perfectly, and knew how to convey that to the cadets in an appropriate and understandable manner. The cadets were much better students than we have ever had in the past, and the weekend went with way less negative occurrences than in past years. I was extremely proud of being deputy commander this year.
prc5097 says
Your post is interesting, and it sounds like you certainly have an influential and important role to play in your community, as deputy commander of this particular military organization training exercise. Training cadets involves a level of transformational leadership, as you suggest, because effective leaders need to connect with their followers, in this case the cadets, in order to motivate them and move them to accomplish more than what would normally be expected of them. Air cadets, especially at the young age you are training them, are impressionable, and transformational leaders who inspire and have a future-oriented vision, can shape cadets who are empowered to achieve greatness. With its emphasis on intrinsic reward, the transformational leadership approach is well suited to your context of leadership training for the Civil Air Patrol; without an inherent need to do things for the greater good, there simply would not be air cadets.