Students in Business and Social Sciences are getting a chance to hone their leadership skills – something that is very difficult to teach in a classroom.
The Service Leadership Internship (SLI), which was started in 2012, adds leadership training and support to on-going experiential learning programmes in the faculties so students get a more rounded experience.
Business students already participate in summer internships offering consultancy services to small companies, while Social Sciences students do internships with NGOs in and outside Hong Kong as part of their Social Innovation Internship requirement. They now also receive leadership training that emphasises social responsibility and provides training and support so students can put the concepts they learn into practice.
Dr Lam Shui-fong, Associate Professor of Psychology, helped to set up the SLI and said the experiential aspect was essential. "Internships are an indispensable part of service leadership training. Students cannot acquire leadership skills by simply sitting in a lecture hall and listening to the experts' sharing on leadership," she says.
Renee Song Yuyue, a third-year BEcon&Fin student, was part of a five-member team that consulted a small IT company on its human resources and operational problems. They had one week of training followed by six weeks of consulting work.
"One concept they kept illustrating [in the training sessions] was shared instead of mono leadership," she says. "I was team co-ordinator and I would usually start by saying, 'we have to get something done by the end of the week, what do you think?' And I'd let the others do the talking instead of me leading the conversation.
"Shared leadership is more difficult because everybody has veto power and has their say. But I think that it's more beneficial because when you come up with a solution, everyone is really convinced."
"Shared leadership is more difficult because everybody has veto power and has their say. But I think that it's more beneficial because when you come up with a solution, everyone is really convinced."
An important part of the SLI is support from teachers, who visited the students on site, brought them back to class periodically during the internship and kept in touch. "We were not alone," says Renee. "If we had been, we would have lost our direction and been afraid. But meeting with our mentors gave us confidence."
The programme was funded by the Li & Fung Service Leadership Initiative, which is supporting service leadership training in all eight of Hong Kong's tertiary institutions.
