Youth Leadership Development - Interview with Dave Andrews (Part I)

Community work emphasizes building network with people.  By end April, I contacted Dave Andrews, author of ‘Building a Better World’ for an interview about his experience in development leadership program with the youth from refugee backgrounds.  It was an inspiring conversation.

Andrews mentions leadership development is about practice.  It is a practice that encourages people to assume leadership responsibility by taking initiatives.  It is about meeting with people, creating a safe place for them, getting them to talk about issues that they are passionate about, asking them to assume responsibility to act on those issues, and encouraging them to take initiatives.  Leadership is a function rather than an offer.  If people take initiatives and others follow them, they are leader.  Leadership is the relationship that a person has with other people and it happens naturally out of the process.

Based on his concept about leadership, leadership training is not developing leadership program.  It is about helping young people with refugee background to approach issues that they are concerned about in particular way.  The training is not about the content but more about the development process.  People always think leadership development in term of skills.  But what is more important is to motivate people to take initiatives, be acting leaders.  When the community workers have ongoing conversation with the acting leaders to reflect what they are doing, even if the acting leaders did poor in begin with, they can learn better each time they reflect on their actions.  In the process of reflection, when people realise that they can do better, they will ask for more information on knowledge and skills which are then addressed naturally.  It is an emergent process, not predetermined.

Many people scare to take initiative for fear that they will be treated as fool if they make mistake or cannot do it well.  Therefore, leadership training needs to create an atmosphere where people are not being labelled as fool or failure, but are being affirmed with their efforts so that they can critically reflect on themselves rather than being criticised by others.  It creates a culture that people are nurtured to take risk and flourish.

Andrews emphasizes that his approach is community-oriented and working with people at their pace. The process is slow as we can never do anything on our own.  We need to hold our agenda lightly, to have our ideas but be prepared for people to discuss and debate, to accept group decision that is not within our idea and support the group, to inspire the people the mistakes they make and how many times they make them to begin a process how they can work it out rather than fix it.  It is inefficient but it is critical.