«Leadership Workshop. School edition» hosted by UCU came to the end

The «Leadership Workshop. School edition» online course has come to the end. The project was implemented as part of the study called «Leader character among teenagers», organized by the Center for Leadership of UCU with the support of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership (Ivey Business School, Canada).

It is important to develop leadership among teens. Clearly, it is essential to understand what exactly needs to be developed. It is also important to understand the perception of the leader by the younger generation since the perception guides the behavior and defines expectations. Taking into account these assumptions, the Center for Leadership of UCU together with the Applicant Recruitment Department of UCU launched an online course titled «Leadership Workshop. School edition». On the one hand, the project was designed to develop leadership and teamwork skills through studying and solving real case scenarios. On the other hand, the project was an opportunity for us to explore leadership issues among students and develop appropriate curricula, recommendations, policies, etc.

«Leadership Workshop. School edition» journey began online on March 6. One hundred and fifty teenagers from the Lviv region, working in thirty teams, were utterly absorbed in four weeks of teamwork trying to elaborate solutions to the tasks. UCU students were involved as facilitators working with each team helping them with organizational issues, guiding them, and monitoring their overall dynamics and work. Each team chose a leader responsible for communication within the team whose job among other things was to motivate the team to move on and do all tasks.

In addition to improving their hard skills, the workshop participants had a chance to develop their soft skills. They attended a leadership training course organized by Andrew Rozhdestvensky – CEO at Center for Leadership of UCU, and a teamwork course conducted by Marta Tychenko – Head of Student Career Department.

We are sincerely grateful to the students of the Lviv Business School of UCU (LvBS) and the Institute of Leadership and Management UCU (ILM) for sharing their cases. Thus, our participants had the opportunity to study real cases and gain practical knowledge, which is extremely important in the learning process.

On Saturday, April 3, the final of the Workshop took place. The teams presented their findings to a jury made up of the developers of the studied cases as well as UCU experts. The prize for the winning teams was complimentary registration for Career Navigator online course organized and delivered by the UCU Applicant Recruitment Department. The course is scheduled for May. The team who ranked 2nd and 3rd were also rewarded with gifts.

We would like to share some feedback from our participants with you:

• Khrystyna Dmytryshyn, a facilitator of one of the teams:

«A team of six students, whom I facilitated, worked on special tasks from JuniorZ project of Olexander Pedan and Maria Pavlichuk. The focus of the task was developing motor activity in school. Our goal was to develop a strategy to promote project ideas through new sports during the pandemic that would help spark students’ interest in physical education online. It was interesting to observe and coordinate the whole process of work, to see how the students developed leadership qualities and how organized they were becoming when they were elaborating their goals, objectives, implementation stages, budget, etc. They even conducted a STUDY of the target audience with a representative sample of 287 students! I am very proud of my team, which, by the way, ranked second in the presentation of the case solutions. I agree that modern teenagers are becoming more proactive.»

• Stefania Kordoba, an 11th-grade student of Zhovkva Secondary School №1:

«This is the first time I have taken part in such an event, and I am fully enjoying it. I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this course, which allowed me to understand how great it is to be involved in doing great things together as a team.»

• Solomiya Krysko, a 9th grader of Mizhenets Secondary School named after I. Mohylnytskyi:

«Leadership workshop is an invaluable experience. Thanks to the experience I received when solving real cases, I was able to develop critical and design thinking skills, which play an important role in solving vaguely structured problems. It was a great opportunity not only to discover but also to develop leadership qualities. It is nice that we have people and institutions in our country that offer the teenagers such an opportunity.»

• Vladyslav Dovhyi, a student of a separate structural unit of Technological Vocational College of Dnipro State Technical University:

«Such classes develop our thinking and help us focus on a specific goal. The skills I gained during the course helped me understand the value of teamwork because I prefer to work alone. »

The most important and critical part of the project is still ahead. This is the study result review done together with colleagues from the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership (Ivey Business School, Canada). The findings of the study will become the legacy of the global scientific community and lay the foundation for reforming school education in Ukraine.