First Entry : Brain Storming

Becoming a leader is definitely not as easy as it may seem. Donald H. McGannon once said before, “Leadership is action, not position.” I now much agree to his saying. Two months back I was elected a camp leader for the society I just joined. Little did I know that the glamour which accompanies the title of the position would bring along with setbacks, difficulties and despair.

A leader is not a leader until his followers stand beside him. That was exactly what I felt when I looked at the attendance of the committee members during previous meetings. Not all were committed to their roles in organizing the camp. Besides, quite a number of times we were stuck in the middle of discussion. We could not generate any ideas for issues such as accommodation, games selections, and activities to be carried out. It frustrated us and it did not help at all in motivating our progress.

Critical Thinking Mid-term exam was slowly inching its way to me. Having noticed it, I quickly browsed through both lecture and tutorial notes. I stumbled upon one interesting chapter, “Brainstorming”. It immediately shone light on the current difficulty. I was determined to adopt this method during the next camp meeting. I was hoping that it would help us to come out with ideas about activities to do in the camp.

  The next meeting as expected we were stuck. Then I remembered what I learnt from the tutorial. After giving instruction to the secretary to record down all suggestions, I gave them the background of our problem. We were to come out with ideas for activities to be done for the unfilled slots. There was no big “mahjong paper”, so I replaced it with a smaller A4 size paper. I listed down a few sample suggestions such as “play games” and “sharing”. Then I reminded them that nobody was allowed to criticize and wild ideas were encouraged as well as that quantity matters. Our warm up exercise in creative thinking was to crack some lame jokes. I started telling them about the story of cows drink milk or water and others began picking up with some other challenging IQ questions.

After sensing that everyone was ready, we proceeded into brainstorming. Many started with the generally known ideas such as “sharing their experiences with others”, “more games”, “another session by speaker” and etc. Some threw wild and creative ideas, such as “have the campers run around the campsite”, “art work”, and etc. Many a times some of us wanted to debate the practicality of certain ideas but I immediately stopped that from happening. Towards the end of our 30 minutes brainstorming, I notified them about the time limit and gave them extra 3 minutes to close down our brainstorming session. After collecting all ideas, I thanked them for this rigorous “brain juice squeezing “exercise. We moved on to discuss some other details about the camp.

I was quite happy with the outcomes of this brainstorming session. I was satisfied to see that all members actively participated in the contribution of ideas. Well, I gladly hope that one of the ideas can be used. I will only reveal the answer next week. So, stay tuned!

 

Written by POH TZE PHEI 1091100566