Your Leadership Coat of Arms

Every leader has certain things and values that they value and find important. Values that guide the leader’s behavior and embodies the leadership philosophy of the person. In this exercise, participants are asked to create their own Leadership Coat of Arms.

Practitioners:

This activity is based on a further elaboration by JO Education’s staff of a resource curated by the partnership of the Erasmus+ Project FAVILLE.
One of the aims of the project FAVILLE was that of developing a digital application containing several resources that could be used both face-to-face and online by groups of people and learners, under the direction of a learning facilitator.

Objectives:

Leadership development and self-reflection.

Structure of the process:

Through this funny activity participants will look into themselves getting a clear understanding of what defines and characterize them as leaders.

Brief participants about drawing their own Leadership Coat of Arms. Explain briefly the importance of consistent values in leadership and ask them to reflect what beliefs and values they find important as a leader.
Assign 10-15 minutes of time for them to draw their coat of arms, representing the 4 most important items they value in leadership. Encourage participants not to be concerned about how nice their drawing is, the main thing is expressing what they think is important for a leader.
After everyone finishes their drawing, ask participants to share and explain their drawings (you may do it in groups of 4-6 participants, if you have many participants).
Questions to consider:
* What items did you add to your Leadership Coat of Arms?
* Why are they important to you?
* After the discussion and debriefing round, you may ask participants to stick their coat of arms drawings to the wall, so you have a visual gallery of Leadership Coat of Arms.

Your Approach:

Users can either draw their Coat of Arms on paper or digitally.

If used online you might have various options:

> If you do not have an online whiteboard tool, you can use Slack or Google docs to share and comment on the created images.
> If using video conferencing software alone, invite the participants to share their screen and show their digital image, or hold up their physical drawing for the group to see.

Remarks

Drawing materials are indispensable.

Source/Acknowledgments:

Facilitators of Virtual Learning (FAVILLE)’s partnership, JO Education, Italy

Keywords

Timeframe: 15-60 minutes
Entrecomp Competencies: Vision, Valuing ideas, Motivation & Perseverance, Creativity, Self-awareness & self-efficacy, Working with others
Fields/Needs: Evaluation
Online: No
Age group: 14+
Number of participants: Up to 30 people
Who can play: Everyone