Leading Groups

I was facilitating a workshop at a leadership conference a couple years ago. We had groups of about 25 freshmen rotating through different rooms in the school. Between the first few rotations I had been hearing about a student who was being a disturbance during the presentation. I remember when the student came into my classroom he reminded me of Justin Bieber, he was a shorter kid with shaggy brown hair and he was wearing a flat billed hat. He was already chatting with the people around him and it was clear he was going to keep up his behavior from previous groups. We started the workshop by introducing ourselves as the presenters and then I immediately addressed the student who had been causing so much trouble in other workshops. I addressed him in front of the entire group and commented on his cool hat. I mentioned that I appreciated his since of style but I would be grateful if he would take his hat off being that we were inside a building. The student could have said no, could have disagreed but he didn’t. He took his hat off and was a totally different person than others had described him as. What was different? I leveled with the student. Instead of taking an authoritative position of power over him, I put the two of us on the same page. I used something as simple as wearing a hat indoors to address an even bigger problem before it arose. The student participated throughout the rest of the workshop and even had some good things to say about our topic. This is something I have always remembered throughout the workshops and presentations I have done as an FFA member and as Peer Mentor.