How Far Can You Stretch?

Over the past six weeks we have been running the Leadership Foundations Course in Samuel Ryder Academy. Each week we have gathered with a group of ten students who are going to be the senior student leadership team next year, digging deep into what leadership is and exploring with them each week a different aspect of being a leader.

• Week One - Teamwork
• Week Two - Skills and Qualities
• Week Three - Influence
• Week Four - Identity
• Week Five - Character
• Week Six - Perseverance
  
  

In the final week on Perseverance there is an activity where we ask the students to predict how far they can stretch a rubber band, and then ask them to stretch it to see if they were correct or not. Often, they under predict and can stretch the rubber band further than they thought. In this activity we are exploring the idea of ‘stretch’ and how we all have more capacity than we think we do. It also gives the opportunity to reflect on the idea of a ‘snapping point’, how far is too far to stretch yourself or the team that you are leading. Some of the teams realised that if they slowly stretch the rubber band in and out then over time the stretch capacity increased. A competition began as to which team could stretch their rubber band the furthest which caused from some interesting points to come up:

1. All the rubber bands are different (if only slightly) so they will all have a different stretch capacity before snapping. This is the same for us as leaders and team members, we are all different so therefore have different snapping points and stretching capacity. This means we must be careful not to compare ourselves to others, which can result in pushing ourselves too far.
2. When we do push ourselves too far, we snap… which one of the team experienced happening to their rubber band. One of our wonderful volunteers who was a facilitator on the course spoke to the students about the important of not stretching your team and yourself to ‘snapping point’ and the repercussions of doing it.
3. Within another team, somebody accidently let go of one end of the rubber band and it pinged back on their team member holding the other end. This lead us to discuss the idea of the responsibility we have as leaders when stretching others not to suddenly let go (either by accident or on purpose) as this has the potential to hurt others involved.

It has been an absolute pleasure to run this course. We have seen students grow in confidence, uncovering skills and increase their self-awareness.

If you would like to find out more about the Leadership Foundation Course please follow this link: https://www.stepschoolswork.org.uk/leadership-foundations-resources