A JAUNT ON THE MOOR

Schorhill stone circle, Dartmoor. By Herbythyme (Own work) GFDL: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html, via Wikimedia Commons

As part of the second year of my Environmental Science degree at Plymouth University I had the opportunity to take part in a course named Education through Expeditions (ETE) Leadership Award. A course designed to develop self-confidence, project management skills and leadership styles that can be applied in all aspects of life.  

It began with a series of theoretical based workshops that explored a wide range of concepts and ideas that contribute to the title of “being a leader”, involving individual reflection and group activities; with much emphasis on team work. An interesting concept I explored was different leadership styles that were presented in the form of a four colour triangle:

RED – authoritative, very task orientated - potentially at the expense of other things (e.g. team morale), could be compared to a dictator; “it’s my way or the highway!”

GREEN – analytical, concerned with doing things in the correct manner and “by the book”.

BLUE – people orientated, concerned with making sure team morale is high with members working cohesively and harmoniously.

YELLOW – in the middle of the triangle, rather “adaptable” a yellow will mould into any which way accepting what the rest of the team suggests.

These sessions provided me the opportunity to delve into self-reflection not only to discover how I might fit into different leadership styles but to also, through understanding myself, understand others.

The culmination of the course involved a two day expedition in Dartmoor National Park. This put into real perspective the ideas and concepts explored in the workshops. The first day proved challenging to us all as we trudged over the moor in gale force winds curtesy of Hurricane Ophelia; by the end of which I found myself rather fond of as the whistling winds harmonised my humming of a song with the same name – Ophelia – to the beat of the teams’ boots.

My team and I, Dartmoor. By Georgia Pengelly (own work).

The two days involved leading and being led, navigating across the moor. When seeing the theory put into real life situations, it struck me that people cannot be defined as only red, green, blue or yellow but leadership styles that people adopt change. The terrain and conditions were a major influence – when the going got tough heads tended to go down and the leader would morph to red. However when the going was good and the team knew exactly where we were, a more green/blue style would be adopted. When lost (rather easy to do if you have little experience on Dartmoor!) it was a toss-up between green and red. I learned that people cannot simply be put into clear cut categories of leadership styles and characteristics but we all have the potential to be red, green, blue or yellow and it is situational, skill and team dependent. It is a matter of having the awareness to know when to adopt a certain leadership style.



- Ben