Blog 2: blind square, leadership, core values

Though I was absent in the Blind Square exercise, I do have a good idea behind its intended purpose of serving as a learning tool for leadership and communication skills.

I think carrying this exercise out as a novice has its own set of challenges and learning opportunities as does someone who is performing it second or third time around. For example, doing it first time, we certainly experience the skills required in initiating a task, communicating and passing along an idea in a new team environment. Performing it thereafter, I think we should focus of establishing some metrics and then measure our progress. For example, some of the goals for performing it repeatedly could be:

- Establish a systematic and methodical approach to accomplishing this task (forming a square) rather than following trail-and-error method of the first time.

- Improve upon different aspects of the task such as improving the overall speed, more effective communication, better coordination, etc.

I personally believe in what Toyota calls "Kaizen" or continuous improvement. The important thing is to keep measuring the progress towards the established set of goals every time we carry the task repeatedly. In the process, we will hopefully gain valuable insights and knowledge of some key leadership and communication skills.

As far as my personal vision of leadership and how do my core values mesh with my actions, I have some catch up to do. Some of the areas that I need to work on are initiating a conversation, effective communication, and planning the agenda. As we work through different aspects of leadership, I hope to make a better assessment of where do I stand in the leadership ladder.