HDF 190: FLITE (FIRST-YEAR LEADERS INSPIRED TO EXCELLENCE)

URI MINOR IN LEADERSHIP STUDIES, CENTER FOR STUDENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

CORE REQUIREMENT FOR THE LEADERSHIP MINOR

LEARNING CONTRACT

Goal: To identify and utilize my top VIA Strengths Honesty, Kindness, Social
Intelligence, Humor and Perspective in an organizational/interpersonal setting that aligns
with the mission, vision, values and sponsored programs and activities of URIs Center
for Student Leadership Development. To reach this goal, I decided to become a member
of URIs Student Organization Leadership Consultants (SOLC) to shadow and facilitate a
retreat.

Activity: To complete my learning contract I began attending SOLC meetings starting

second semester and I enjoyed the atmosphere of the group. I continued to attend
meetings, as well as shadow and facilitate a retreat. I thought that I would make a good
facilitator because two of my top five values are kindness and humor. I think that when
facilitating retreats, it is important to be kind to everyone participating, but I also like to
add in my own piece through humor. I thought that facilitating a retreat would not only be
fun, but also rewarding because I would be challenged dealing with different situations
that present themselves during each
event.

Evidence: A picture of myself and my co-

facilitators along with the organization
(Delta Epsilon Mu) that requested the
retreat. The photo shows the organization
members in front holding up their value
contract that we made that day, with all of
the facilitators behind them (in the purple
shirts).

Annotation: For my learning contract, I chose to become a member of Student

Organization of Leadership Consultants (SOLC). The purpose of this group is that
members are able to facilitate retreats that other organizations on campus need in order to
bring their group closer or figure out how to work together. Once requests come in for
retreats, different opportunities are available for SOLC members in terms of how they
think they can help. There is a lead, who is the main contact for the facilitators and does
all of the paperwork and meets with the main contact from the organization that the
retreat is for. Next are the facilitators, who run the show by contributing to the planning
of which activities to do during the retreat. This takes a lot of collaboration and
flexibility, because your idea may be good at one point and then something better comes
along and your idea may be bumped. Lastly, there is a shadowing opportunity for
members who have never facilitated before; its an awesome opportunity to see how
retreats are run and to get a feel if this is the right club for you.

I started by attending the meetings on Mondays at 3 pm. After attending a few meetings
and getting the feel for the group, I signed up to shadow a one hour retreat. I signed up on
the later side, so I had missed all the planning and important details, so I just observed
how the facilitators ran a retreat and how they were able to roll with whatever was thrown
at them. The group that I was observing had had only one meeting this semester, so we
did a lot of name games. And when it came to the main portion of the activity, we played
mind-field the groups were getting it so fast. I observed a facilitator completely change
the path that they had to travel and didnt write the path down but rather memorized it. I
realized that you dont have to always have a plan, and if you change something, the
participants are not going to know because they dont know what the plan even is.

After shadowing, I signed up to facilitate a four-hour retreat. I was very nervous going
into this because this was significantly longer that the retreat that I shadowed, and I didnt
know everyone that I was going to be facilitating with. It also turned out that I had a first-
time lead, so I really didnt know what to expect. However, the lead organized it so well
that we had no issues planning. I hope that every retreat planning goes as smoothly as my
first did, but the feedback that I heard from other facilitators in my group that have been a
part of SOLC for a long time that this was the smoothest and most organized retreat they
have done. I facilitated two activities, the first was with a co-facilitator and is called focus
ring. This is when a smaller group has to move a ping pong ball from the top of one cone
to the top of another cone while holding the ball on top of a ring which is attached to
multiple strings. The group can only use to strings to move the ball, and during this
specific retreat, we set up multiple challenging obstacles, muted and blindfolded certain
people, and even made them go from Atrium 1 in the Union all the way down to the
bookstore. The other activity I facilitated was the spider web, which is where a ball of
yarn gets tossed around the circle and each person gives and receives a compliment or
some form of positive affirmation, as well as holding onto a piece of the yarn. The yarn
ball gets tossed around the circle until the last person has it, and it turns out looking like a
spider web. I then had different groups of people drop the section of yarn they were
holding to show that everyone has an impact on the group and even if one person drops it,
the web is no longer the same.

My top five values are Honesty, Kindness, Social Intelligence, Humor, and Perspective.
As a facilitator, I had to know that the best way to help this group was through using my
values. I went into it being honest with myself and with the organization members,
because their main goals were to become more like a family and work better as a team.
Therefore, I couldnt ignore that there were problems and when I saw something that was
prohibiting them from growing; I had to utilize my strength Honesty to be comfortable
calling the individual out. Going off of that, my second value is Kindness and I had to
also use this when I was trying to help the group grow. Although I did call people out, I
tried to do it nicely because being called out is never fun. Using my value of Social
Intelligence, I was able to be friendly to the organization members, but I was also able to
notice when people were getting frustrated or overwhelmed with the activities and I was
able to also incorporate my value Humor into this because I would try to lighten the
mood by making people laugh or at least smile. Finally, I saw myself utilize my value
Perspective because I have been in groups or organizations who didnt get along, so
during planning I wanted to do activities such as the spider web because then everyone
leaves the event with a positive affirmation.

Overall, I learned a lot on how to facilitate a group of college students, and I also saw
myself actually use all of my top values. It is important to know that I have these values
for a reason and that I am using them through organizations that I am joining, and that the
people I am meeting and working with are pushing me towards making me the best
possible human that I can be. I am expecting to make mistakes over my time here at URI,
but I know that I will grow from making those mistakes and from being willing to try
something new.

Instructor Signature: ____________________________________________

Student Signature: ______________________________________________