Success in Groups and Leadership

Success in Groups and Leadership

by Jacob Chan

Image: Gen. McChrystal visits Paratroopers in Gorbuz/ Wikipedia Commons


This week we reviewed the importance collaboration and leadership in class. Collaboration and leadership are crucial to success and they must function together in order to achieve success. Part of the lessons learned over the week were about group work based off of Tuckman’s 5 Stages of Group Development.

A great example of effective and long-lasting leadership is Gen. Stanley McChrystal who commanded American forces during the War in Afghanistan. The tone of this talk consisted of Gen. McChrystal describing the relationship of leadership and working together to achieve a desired end state. He described how great leaders can and should allow their mentees/subordinates to fail, however not to become failures. Education, self-improvement, and leading from the front, are the core of developing the group. The intent of this dialogue was meant to instill the value that great leaders allow their mentees to fail but for the purpose of learning from those failures. This methodology improves training value in developing leaders as they are taught not what, but rather how to think. This is very crucial to the 5 Stages of Group Development in order to allow the proper resources and personnel to be tasked appropriately and efficiently to best achieve the desired goal. Gen. McChrystal and other leaders like him are very good examples of different styles of leadership and masters of the collaborative art.


TED Talk: "Listen, Learn...Lead"


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