iLEAD Tool 5: What is good leadership? Leadership Role Play and Diamond


Full documentation with visuals from Tanzania forthcoming 2023

Rwanda Leadership Role Play: sharing in groups and families

Leadership Diamond

Purpose: Fun process to start discussion of 6 characteristics of 1) good leaders 2) bad leaders 3)good members 4) bad members with role reversal plays and ranking and voting on a Leadership Diamond. The aim are to break down barriers and distinctions between leaders and members and to build confidence and listening skills of all participants, particularly leadership visions of poorer and more disadvantaged women and men. The activity provides a good basis of conceptual understanding of leadership for discussions of peer sharing experiences and individual vision journeys in the next tools.

Steps and facilitation

Materials:
– cards in different colours for each group and pens in two colours: green and blue for each group

Preparation:
– large blank parent diamond diagram placed at the front of the hall
– if possible arrange to play a leadership song from another process as people arrive eg download the You Tube video on this page to a laptop with speakers and screen if possible.

Timing: 3 hours with break

Step 1: Leadership Drawing

20 min: As people arrive divide them into 4-6 groups of 2-6 people:
1) women leaders and better-off 2) men leaders and better off to work on membership qualities.
3) women members and poorer 4) men members and poorer to work on leadership qualities.
Each group is given cards of a different colour, 4 cards per person.
Sufficient marker pens are given to each group in two colours – green for good and blue for bad leadership.
Each person draws in green 2 good cards and in blue 2 bad cards.

Step 2: Group sharing and discussion

10 minutes in each group each person presents and places their cards on the wall at the front. First good cards in rows on top, then in a second round their bad cards in rows lower down.

Step 3: Role Reversal Play

20 min role play preparation: from each group half the people move taking with them the relevant cards so that there are new gender-segregated groups with both members and leaders 1) women’s good leadership 2) men’s good leadership 3) women’s bad leadership 4) men’s bad leadership.
Each group prepares a short role play with members playing leaders and leaders playing members in their respective groups.
10 minutes presentation and discussion per group .
As the groups come up they place their cards in their respective ranked position on a leadership diamond pre-prepared by the facilitator.

Step 4: Voting

10-20 minutes: Each participant is given 3 votes for the best leadership characteristics and 3 votes for the best membership characteristics. They do not have to vote for their original ideas, and they can give 3 votes to 1 criterion, or 1 vote to 3 criteria. Depending on numbers, time and sensitivity, this can be done by a simple plenary show of hands or in a more private way over a health/meal break or while others are doing Step 5.

Step 5: Leadership Song

30 minutes to write, 10 minutes to perform per song.
Now participants form three groups to write the short chorus of a song:
– women and men leaders to write a good membership song of how they want members to be.
– women members write a good leadership song.
– men members write a good membership song.
Each will be progressively developed in each group with verses in the following exercises(see song writing facilitation guide) and finally combined into one performance at the end.

Documentation

Video the Diamond plenary with translation, role play with notes and songs.

Photograph of all diamonds first without annotation. Then put small sticky notes with the meaning of the symbols and take a second photograph.

From this make an Excel sheet of the good and bad leadership and membership qualities, disaggregated by leader/member and women/men. See sample sheet.

Photographs of the diamond process and song-writing

Words of the chorus of each song on two large flipcharts placed at either end of the room for future use

Translation of each chorus and both texts in a Word document.

Qualitative process notes and implications for facilitation of following tools eg issues of sensitivity, particular participants who may need more support and encouragement to speak and come to the front or be encouraged to listen more and speak less and stand further back to let others forward.

For more details about GAMEChange leadership and movement-building principles, tools and processes see: