By attending a school board meeting, I was able to observe the democratic leadership skills being put into real life application. The board meeting was attended by twenty members who included the chair, secretary, treasurer and seventeen members. The chairman was responsible for coordinating the activities of the group. This was a unique opportunity for me to witness some of the leadership skills that we had learnt being put into practical use. I was able to record the strategies that the chairman used to coordinate the meeting from the beginning to the end. The first step that the chairman took was to call the meeting to order. The agenda of the meeting were then reviewed and approved. The secretary was then reminded that she needed to record the minutes for the meeting. The minutes for the previous meeting were read and approved. The chairman then informed the members that they were now welcome to provide their motions, ideas and proposals.
The chairman of the board used the democratic leadership to run the meeting. The members were able to actively participate in the decision making process. The first motion was about security and how it can be improved in the school. Each member was given a chance to present his view on the matter. The secretary recorded the proposals given by each member. The chairman was at this time playing the role of guiding and controlling the group activities. He decided who was to speak while at the same time ensuring that each and every member is given an equal chance to participate in the group activities. Ideas were freely exchanged in the meeting as heated discussion arose over different issues. The chairman encouraged discussion among the members. Once the entire member had contributed their ideas, the ideas were the criticized one by one where some were ruled out. An agreement was reached by acclamation. A dispute arose all over sudden where some of the member felt that the chair was favoring certain members of the group. This is after their contributions were ruled out. Some members even threatened to leave the meeting if the chainman did not address the matter. The chair called the meeting to order where he suggested that each potential solution be subjected to voting where the majority vote would take the day. The members were then able to participate in the process and were all happy with the overall decisions they arrived at.
There was high level of creativity that was evident from the contributions that were made by the members. There were some qualities of the chairman that made the meeting to be successful. He was honest to the member on the issues that needed to be discussed even when some were not in favor of what he believed in. He was also able to use high level of intelligence to address some of the conflicts that arose during the meeting. He was courageous and ready to face the challenges he experienced during the meeting head on. He was also creative in the manner in which he addressed some of the issues which enabled the member to remain focused on the agenda of the meeting. His competence had made the board member to trust him with the board chairmanship position which he executed with a lot of dignity (Adams & Galanes, 2018). He was able to treat the member in a fair manner and gave and every member equal chance to participate in the activities of the group. He was able to inspire trust among the board members who respected him for his ability to make decisions. He was sincere and communicated the decision of the group even when it did not favor his position on the given matter. The benefits of this style of leadership that I was able to realize form the meeting included high level of creativity which was clear from the number of solutions suggested. The session was quite productive as the members were committed to agenda of the meeting. The chairman had to use his communication and interpersonal skills in order to ensure that he did not lose any member as the meeting progressed.
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Some of the challenges that I observed during the meeting include communication breakdown and difficulty in reaching a consensus on a particular matter. This meant that the minority decision was overridden by the majority decision even when such a decision may be useful in addressing the problem (Parés, Ospina, & Subirats, 2017). There was one behavior by some members that made the chair angry. Two members in the meeting were using their phones under the table while the meeting was in progress. This prompted the chair to ask each member to turn off their phones or put them in silent mode. I was impressed by the manner in which the chairman was able to address the challenges that were being experienced. In the management of the conflict about unfair treatment of some group members, he was able to identify the source of the conflict and find solution to it.
In conclusion, democratic leadership is the most effective style of leadership when it comes to group meetings. I would however recommend that the rules of arriving at a decision are made clear from the word go to avoid disagreements. A democratic leader is a person of integrity, intelligent, competent and trustworthy. He must be able to provide the members with hope by outlining and emphasizing on the mission and vision of the group. He must be able to appreciate the decision of each and every member. I however recommend that he should be able to make tough decisions where needed to hasten the process of decision making.
