Throughout my camp journey I was given lots of opportunities to help lead and help my group through its activities and in the challenges that we faced; many of which revolved around the importance of teamwork and leadership skills. Camp helped me use these different skills such as delegation and problem solving to help overcome challenges I faced.
One example of where I used leadership was during the food preparation through the week. Here, I used important leadership skill of delegation to help distribute our food roles by giving everyone separate individual food packing responsibilities. Everyone had a different area to work with; with some people helping pack the esky, some with breakfast, another the lunch, while the rest helped pack the dinner and desert. This was important because it meant that we could evenly distribute the workload and showed how we needed to effectively work as a team to achieve the task within our time limit.
Another leadership skill I employed during camp was team problem solving. This was needed when we were trying to pack the weeks’ worth of food into the esky, which would only fit in certain combinations. We solved this by giving everyone turns to have their say on how we could solve this problem. As a result of this communication and problem solving, we managed to overcome this problem and fit all the food into the esky compactly.
Here the use of leadership skills was important as it meant no one was talking over each other, everyone’s ideas could be heard, and allowing us to work as a team and effectively address the problem.
Overall, camp was a really fun and useful experience, which presented many challenges and opportunities for growth. Through these experiences, I was able to further develop and build upon my existing communication and leadership skills (especially those of delegation and problem solving), allowing me to be a better team member and team leader.
