A good starter exercise. Have used it mainly within organisations and have found that mostly people from the same organisation have similar views (so there wasn’t much debate to be had). However, the organisations I was working with have very high retention rates and most of the learners have been working for the organisations for a long time. Which might explain the similarities in views.

I did find I didn’t need 25 minutes for the discussion, thought that is most probably because of the homogeneity of the group.

I could see this activity working better in organisations where perhaps there is some disharmony among management, or in very mixed sector/industry groups.

Looking at the differences/similarities between leadership and management, and exploring their relationship. A very pertinent exercise to run in present times because it also touches on the challenges of good leadership in times of change (eg economic), and the need for strong, transformational leadership being increasingly important.

I desperately wanted to run this exercise with one all-female team, and one all-male team, as recommended in the trainer's notes, to explore gender differences in perceptions of leadership, but wasn't able to do this as I had only 3 females in a group of 14. However, I was still able to debrief the group about research which has been done highlighting these differences. A useful talking point but could be tricky for anyone who felt uncomfortable with this level of diversity training.

The exercise fitted in well with a theme we have in our organisation of "Everyone is a Leader" and the handout on recognised differences between leaders and managers was useful given out after the exercise; the trainer can then pick out just a few of the points students made during the de-brief and link their comments to the research.

I displayed the following quotation during this exercise: “Leadership is a 'people' activity, distinct from administrative paper shuffling or problem-solving activities” (Richard L. Daft and Dorothy Marcic) and then revisited this quote at the end of the debrief and with reference to their handout to ask them for their views on it.

Again, could be done comfortably within 60 minutes, especially if you're doing it with a team of existing leaders (mine were first-line supervisors).

Having the managers decide for themselves which cards (behaviors) belongs to managers and which belongs to leaders is great. Because they are involved and basically deciding it for themselves, the results have an impact. Two days later they were still referring to managements aspects which they thought were that of a leader and remembered it. We could easily incorporate this into the personality assessments as they now knew what is that they had to work on or embrace.

I used the Leadership Identikit activity as the opening exercise in a Team Leader Development Programme. It set the scene for the course perfectly because it enabled participants to focus on attitudes and behaviours needed to be an effective team leader really early on in the session. I ran it with five participants (one group of three and a pair) and it still provoked lots of lively discussion even though these are relatively small numbers. We could have gone on discussing the management/leadership attributes for at least another 30 minutes after the exercise concluded because it really did get people thinking – many were surprised just how different each other’s perceptions were. Thank you Trainers’ Library for another gem!

The trainers brief was clear and easy to follow, and the discussion questions helped to encourage delegates to share their thoughts. When the delegates were doing the actual exercise the cards provoked some interesting debates, which we were able to discuss when reviewing the exercise.

I recently used the Leadership Identikit module as part of a Leadership Skills course run in-house for a travel company. The identikit provides a number of statements referring to either leadership or management and delegates need to read out each statement and then together, decide which title it should go under. Regardless of where the delegates end up putting the statements, this exercise leads to a fantastic discussion in which a multitude of views are shared and mulled over.

As the facilitator, it is important to keep the group on track and within the parameters of the exercise, otherwise there is the potential for the discussion to end up in all sorts of places! I found that occasionally I had to prompt, but that in the main there were enough delegates with differing points of view to have a good discussion around each statement and to ultimately decide where it belongs. The handout that shows the evidence on leadership studies helps to sort out the answers and provide everyone with some “real” analysis of the difference between the two.

All in all, this exercise helps everyone to discuss the issues, understand the research and comprehend that in today’s societies there needs to be a mixture of both styles. In order to explain this, I talk about the Industrial Revolution, the history of piecemeal work, the move into towns and factories and the need for an overseer (manager) and the culture of today’s society and the need for something above and beyond. I would agree with the length of time this exercise takes but that’s also with my padding out.