Leadership Focus Session 1: Kick-off at Hoffman Challenge Course

Leadership Focus Session 1: Kick-off at Hoffman Challenge Course

This is the kick-off session for the fall Leadership Focus, a series of workshops that are held over the course of the semester. The Leadership Focus is taught by Clint Sidle, director of the Park Fellows Program, and is open to all Johnson students.

Leadership Focus Overview
The Leadership Focus program follows a progressive leadership development sequence that starts in the fall and concludes during the spring semester. This sequence covers five broad areas of the leadership experience – first, discovering leadership (defining what leadership is, especially for oneself), and then, applying leadership through the development of personal, interpersonal, team and system mastery skills. The fall schedule covers the first three of these broad areas while spring revisits some of them but focuses more on interpersonal and team mastery. This kick-off workshop is recommended to those taking the Leadership Focus and others who are interested in learning about teams and leadership in a live setting.

Session 1 Hoffman Challenge Course
The workshop serves to introduce the Leadership Focus and develop the group as a team by placing participants into hands-on learning situations. These learning activities include a progressive series of group initiatives and individual challenges in both low and high elements that are designed to address issues of leadership, communication, planning, and trust. They are minimally physical, somewhat unconventional enjoyable activities. Most challenges are impossible to solve alone, and each may require a different approach. Skilled trainers assist groups in drawing lessons from these experiences.

The program will be conducted at the Hoffman Challenge Course. The Hoffman Challenge Course is a premier, state-of-the-art facility, completed in the fall of 1997 on scenic Mt. Pleasant in Varna NY. Incorporating many recent innovations in challenge course design and technology, the Hoffman course has an extensive range of both low and high element challenges. Retaining the traditional challenge course focus on personal exhilaration, the Hoffman Course places a special emphasis on teamwork and group problem solving.

What Students are Saying about the Hoffman Challenge Course LSP

"This is a fantastic program. It made me think about what makes an effective leader."

"I learned a lot about leading teams and how to directly apply these concepts to the work environment."

"I got a lot of great feedback about myself and had a ton of fun!"

"The quality of the course was amazing and the debriefing sessions gave me quality takeaways that will apply to my future work."

Important Notes: Please wear closed-toe shoes and comfortable clothes suited for light activity.  Breakfast and Lunch will be provided.

Directions to the Hoffman Challenge Course:

• From the Cornell Fieldhouse follow Campus Road to Judd Falls Road
• Turn right onto Judd Falls Road to Rte. 366
• Turn left onto Rte. 366 and follow into the Town of Varna (about 2 miles)
• In Varna, make a right onto Mt. Pleasant Road. Follow for exactly 2.7 miles
• At 2.7 miles just before the observatory, turn left and park in the gravel parking lot
• Walk in along the tree line about 1000 feet to the HCC.

Fall Leadership Focus Schedule
All classroom sessions are held from 4:25pm to 5:40pm. Please click on the links below to register for other sessions.

Area: Discovering Leadership (what is it?)

• 08/31/2013--Session 1 (Full-day kick off): Hoffman Challenge Course at Cornell Outdoor Education Center
• 09/10/2013--Session 2 (Classroom): Learning to Learn from Experience
• 09/30/2013--Session 3 (Classroom): Leadership Theory
• 10/02/2013--Session 4 (Classroom): Transformational & Transactional Leadership

Area: Personal Mastery (managing self)

• 10/16/2013--Session 5 (Classroom): The Leadership Wheel
• 10/28/2013--Session 6 (Classroom): Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• 11/02/2013--Session 7 (Full-day session): Personal Mastery
• 11/11/2013--Session 8 (Classroom): Emotional Intelligence

Area: Interpersonal Mastery (managing relationships)

• 11/18/2013--Session 9 (Classroom): Difficult Conversations

Structure and Credit
In an effort to develop and maintain the cohort of learning partners effectively, the Leadership Focus is offered as a series of one-hour sessions supplemented by half-day and full-day workshops. The entire series for the Fall Semester will be offered as 1.0 credits on a pass/fail basis. You must attend at least 80% of the sessions to receive credit.

(Please note: You can register for either of the full-day sessions (Hoffman Challenge Course on 9/07 and/or Personal Mastery on 11/02) without signing up for the rest of the series. Each of the full-day sessions is worth 0.2 credits. Classroom sessions, however, are only open to those students participating in the full series.)