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Westside Toastmasters is located in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California

SELF-GOVERNANCE LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Activity 1: Delegation for Self-Governance

Introduction. A key to self-governance is the leader's ability to delegate parts of the leadership tasks to followers. The task is more a psychological exercise than the procedural one.

  1. Using the following scale rate yourself to indicate how much you agree with the following items:

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    Strongly
    disagree

    Somewhat
    disagree

    Neither agree
    nor disagree

    Somewhat
    agree

    Strongly
    agree

    _____ 1. I can do most jobs better and faster than my coworkers.

    _____ 2. Most of my tasks cannot be delegated to my coworkers.

    _____ 3. Most of my coworkers do not have the appropriate skill levels to do the tasks that I could delegate to them.

    _____ 4. I feel uncomfortable delegating many of my tasks to my coworkers.

    _____ 5. I am responsible for my coworkers' mistakes, so I might as well do the task myself.

    _____ 6. If my coworkers do too many of my tasks, I may not be needed any longer.

    _____ 7. Explaining things to coworkers and training them often takes too much time.

    _____ 8. My coworkers already have too much work to do; they can't handle any more.

    _____ 9. If my coworkers do the tasks, I will lose touch and be out of the loop.

    _____ 10. I need to know all the details of a task before I can delegate to my coworkers.

    _______ Total

    Scoring key. Your total score should be between 10 and 50. The higher your score, the less inclined you are to encourage self-governance, since you agree with many of the common excuses used by managers to not delegate tasks to their coworkers.

  2. If feasible, compare your raw score with that of others of your colleagues.

  3. What conclusions can you draw from this comparison about your capacity to promote self-governance within your work community?

  4. What are some of the most important elements of delegation for selfgovernance?

Activity 2: Images of Self-Governance Leadership

Introduction. One way to clarify our assumptions about shared governance leadership is to use images to describe our ideal leader. Through the use of pictures, diagrams, or other physical representations, we can visualize this concept as a way to help us understand our views of the role of leaders in self-governing work communities. Making a pictorial image also helps us solidify our expectations and image of leadership generally and self-governance leadership in particular. These images reflect our personal theories of self-governing leadership. For example, viewing leaders as facilitators presents a very different image from viewing them as parents. Thinking of our role as an inner leader as being "in charge" conjures up ideas far different than thinking of our leadership in service terms.

  1. Choose an image to represent your ideal self-governing leader. List the characteristics of that image.

  2. Using any available art form, draw a picture or diagram of your preferred image of a leader.

  3. Think about the image you have just drawn. Share your image with others as a way to clarify its implication about your view of self-governing leadership.

  4. Discuss implications of various images on

    Your leadership style.

    The impact on your work community culture and structure.

    Your compatibility with current or past leaders in your work community.

    Potential shortcomings of each image.

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