School of Embodied Leadership

SOEL - is a summer leadership retreat that GMU sends 20 students to. The retreat is 5 days long in CA, and is intensive training on students can develop themselves into leaders. SOEL teaches leadership from a eastern philosophy; focusing on mind, body, and soul and how you need to be centered with yourself before you are able to be a strong leader. The students sleep in group tents, prepare group meals as a group, exercise, and given opportunities to be team leaders.

So I heard about this leadership retreat today for the first time, and it sounds kind of interesting at first but also it sounds a little iffy as well. I believe that since the retreat is based on living in groups, exercising and cooking with groups, it has great potential to begin the development/teaching of team leadership. What a team leader needs to accomplish, how to manage a group, and how to know when to interfere or not when working towards the goal of the group.

Also think that this is a time that students can become more aware of the Leadership Exchange Theory and the relationship that the students will experience between leaders and being supporters.

It was hard to find any real information on this Leadership program on the web, but I feel that it was a lot of opportunities available to it to teach participants about Team Leadership, Leadership Exchange, and even the Path- Goal Theory due to its focus on working and living in groups. I do not think that the leadership program takes advantage of the group practices as much as they can.