There are regular expressions which people in East and South Europe use every morning from a long time ago to greet each other. The special today in Felsőörs was that many people greeted each other in the language of their mate. Our morning started in this way after a long-long night.

At morning we reflected to the night programme too. Beside many favorable feedbacks, some of the people took the opportunity to give voice to constructive critics. It is really interesting that while we are learning about self helping groups, we really try to relect on our own conflicts and group dynamics concerning our own community here. I am sure that our small temporary community and the participants personally also will profit from this courage equally.

The main topic of our morning were leadership styles. We learned about these mostly through practical exercises. At one of them, every person had a pair and one of them were blindfolded. In this way they could try the three types of leadership styles (autocratic, democratic and „laissez faire”). Few of the pairs went really close to the nearby stream, and other blindfolded ones -directed by democratic leaders - almost literally had a volleyball championship at the field nearby.

Before the lunch we heard about an experiment from Hungary: it was interesting to think together about the possible effects of leadership styles in child groups through Ferenc Mérei’s classic study. With a lively discussion and our new experiences we are looking forward to the afternoon, which promises really interesting topics and an excursion together to a local restaurant.

Picture: Playing volleyball with democratic leadership style