On Tuesday, Nov. 11, the Student Leader Fellowship Program hosted a workshop focused on leadership styles, strengths and weaknesses, as well as how understanding one’s leadership style can be beneficial in various environments.

Leah Cody and Abbey Leinonen, coordinators at Superior Edge and the Volunteer Center, began with an icebreaker activity to help students feel more comfortable with one another. Afterward, they introduced the “True Colors Personality Quiz,” which they gave to students as they arrived at the workshop. The quiz categorized participants into color-coded groups that reflected different personality and leadership styles, offering insight into how they might work best in professional settings.

“This test aims to use psychology and personal preferences to help participants better understand how they think, work and communicate in the workplace. Through a better understanding of themselves and their peers, they’ll be more adaptive leaders and more capable of decreasing conflict,” Leinonen said. “Each color matches with a set of behaviors of every person in a mirage of colors and may not identify perfectly with each one, which is why everyone has secondary colors and will score points in each category …. So, blue tends to be emotionally driven. They seek harmony in groups. They are enthusiastic, creative and sympathetic. Gold tends to be loyalty driven. They respect rules and authority. They are responsible, organized and appreciative. Orange [is] short-term driven, welcomes change in variety, and [is] adventurous, competitive and impulsive. Then greens are typically logically driven, independent thinkers and are focused, efficient and analytical.”

Students then discussed their assigned colors with one another, reflecting on whether the results accurately represented their personalities. The conversation highlighted the unique strengths and challenges associated with each color, emphasizing the importance of situational leadership. Participants also shared real-world examples of times they had to adapt their leadership styles to different circumstances.

“Each color has elements that actually aid them in leadership and make them great,” Cody said. “Team members and a well-rounded team have members who incorporate each of these colors and a whole mirage of colors to help them succeed.”

Leinonen introduced Situational Leadership Theory to explain the importance of knowing your leadership style.

“Situational Leadership Theory was developed in the ’70s, so it’s relatively new. The idea behind it is that there’s not one perfect leader or leadership style,” she said.

Each situation and team requires different approaches to succeed, and a true leader style is always adapting. This is why being aware of your secondary colors and other color styles can aid you and everyone else in leadership. People’s colors show how they think, how they interact with each other and how they react in leadership situations. Being conscious of these elements and how they pertain to each team member can help you adapt your leadership style to best fit their needs, and guide you as you interact with them.”

Students then participated in a “round trip” activity, where they applied their leadership skills to imagine how they would approach traveling around the world and the destinations they would choose to visit. The exercise was designed to demonstrate the importance of adapting to new situations and collaborating as a team to achieve a shared goal.

The groups also discussed their differing travel goals, some expressing interest in exploring multiple countries while others preferred focusing on specific destinations. This conversation led into a discussion on leadership ethics and how personal values influence decision-making.

“[Ethics] refers to well-rounded standards or right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits [to] society, fairness or specific virtues,” Cody said. “So when it comes to ethics versus values, ethics pertain to more of what the society we live in has determined as right or wrong, and they’re what form the structures of our laws in our society. Values are a lot more individualized, and they pertain to each individual while they are often shaped by the environments we are in, and influence us as well.”

To conclude the workshop, Cody and Leinonen led an interactive activity in which participants positioned themselves on different sides of the room based on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with various leadership ethics scenarios.

The conversation explored the influence of ethics on leadership, the role of power versus influence and the effectiveness of leaders. Students also debated whether leadership is inherited or can be learned, and if women face challenges in leadership roles due to societal biases.

Students left the event feeling informed and energized with the knowledge they gained from this workshop.