Teaching Leaders to Lead Themselves

Abstract

This article describes an exercise that allows students to experience and understand the importance of perception in leader emergence. Based on implicit leadership theories, this exercise asks students to provide one another with anonymous feedback about what extent they exhibit various trait-based leader behaviors. This exercise, which can be implemented either over the course of a semester or in two sessions, facilitates students’ understanding of perceptions and from where they stem. It allows students to become aware of how they are perceived by their peers and the implications of these perceptions on leader emergence. Thus, the exercise invites students to move beyond their comfort zones through developing self-awareness, it challenges various perception biases that influence their own views of leadership, and it creates awareness regarding their ability to change behaviors in order to obtain desired responses from others. The exercise is appropriate for use in leadership and organizational behavior courses for students near graduation or graduate-level courses.