Hehe. I’m the one in the back assessing everything before opening my mouth. Easy to start off aggressive, but you really need to take at least minimal stock of a situation before barreling into something.
Edit to add: I think the ‘smug’ part was the smart-ass kind of smug. We’ve all been smartasses <yes, yes we have, even you quiet ones in the corners, admit it!> and you know that for your minimal gain, someone else has lost something that might have been important to them…for something that doesn’t really mean anything to you. It’s a bit mean-spirited, that’s all. Doesn’t make a bad person, just… a smart ass. =p
It was a leadership course. You led. IMNSHO, you passed with flying colors, no jerkism involved.
I’ll disagree with this assessment. If the point was to circumvent what the OP felt was a pointless exercise in the shortest amount of time possible, (leaving aside the question for a moment if this were wise or not) then I think he did it correctly.
Asking the group for a volunteer would most likely bring out a vocal member, which in turn would be more likely to be opposed by another vocal member which winds up with a debate and the chance to end it quickly has ended. If this tactic is to be employed, then arbitrarily selecting a quiet member would more likely seem fair by the group.
My question to the OP is why does having arbitrary exercises in training seminars make you feel manipulated?
Spending most of my career in Japan working for local companies or small branch offices of US-based companies, I haven’t ever been to any of these leadership seminars myself, so I’m missed out in all the fun.
I would think it would depend on the context of how useful the course is, in general, and if there were things which could be taken from the exercises. Endless versions of poorly-run, contrived exercises would get old far sooner than the six weeks.
That 20 to 25 people agreed with the suggestion suggests that he wasn’t the only one who wanted a break from the class.
I don’t want to go to work tomorrow. I think I’ll just skip it completely and as for my colleagues who rely on me sending them stuff for testing, well what I’ve been working on is pointless so I’ll give them some random little thing they can occupy themselves with for an hour or so. They’ll be glad to have the extra time to spend surfing the web.
Yeah cutting out of class early is kind of like that.
Former instructor here. Who BTW took a leadership course today.
If I had been teaching this class I would have been laughing my ass off at this solution. I would have been proud of the OP for thinking outside the box, which is one thing leaders should do.
The only part I would have done different is I would have lead a discussion about his leadership “style” and did he in fact lead or not?
“So Bob do you think that steronz was a leader? Why? Fred, do you think he achieved what the exercise was designed to achieve? What would you have done differently?”
And so on and so forth to eat up about 20-30 minutes and then give everyone a 90 minute lunch.
QFT
ETA: this is what we used to call getting our pants pulled down in class. The kind of story that we told to other instructors when we had meetings. Great fun.
Not jerkish at all. The job got done, and it sounds like everyone was happy with the result. You deserved that lunch.
Yeah, that was his objective. But that wasn’t the objective of the exercise. In following his own agenda, he made a decision that put someone else in a position that they may not necessarily have wanted to be in. Quiet, nonconfrontational personality types are easy for dominant personality types to exploit, and it sounds as though the OP did just that either intentionally or unintentionally. Which is not what good leaders do. I contend that he could have just as easily nominated himself for the ordering task and asked the group if anyone objected. If he already got them to agree with doing a rush job, then I doubt they would have a problem with him doing this.
Most people don’t want to go to work and would jump at any excuse to not go in. I’m sure few people in the class actually wanted to do this assignment, but they soldiered on anyway because they knew that the weren’t being paid to eat lunch for 2 hours.
double
I went back and reread your original comments. I agree that if he nominated someone specifically on the spot, he was a jerk. However, I took the OP to say that he suggested one of the quiet ones without being specific, which would not bad as it wouldn’t put any one particular person in that situation.
I think it would be less likely to work for him to suggest himself, as others would assume it was an ego thing. People would be more suspicious of the argument. By suggesting someone else, then he’s showing that he doesn’t have a vested interest an any particular outcome, just that he wants to end it early.
This again is only an argument about how to accomplish the outcome he wanted.
OK, but wouldn’t it be nice if the course were designed to actually inspire people? I think Rick has it right.
It would be nice if any work-related or training assignment was designed to inspire people, but they usually don’t. The goal of this one seems to be to teach you how to work as a team (not necessarily how to lead one) in accomplishing a particular task, ideally by applying concepts covered in the class. Inspiration doesn’t even look like its suppose to figure into it, just as unlikely it is to figure into getting that TPS report ready before the deadline.
If the OP’s goal was to get out early and avoid being manipulated (?), he could have done that by walking out. If the OP’s goal was to do a rush job for the sake of convenience but hide his true intentions by encouraging a bunch of other people to follow suit, he did that very well. I honestly just don’t see how that is a sign of leadership deserving of attaboys.
First off, I want to say that it’s really a lot of fun having a minor chapter of my life dissected to such a thorough degree by Dopers. I’ve just been sitting back, watching the analysis roll in.
Keep in mind that this happened close to 5 years ago and my memory’s never been particularly stellar, but I’ll try to fill in a couple of holes here.
I don’t post enough for people to know anything about me, but based on my other posts it’s not a secret that I’m in the air force, and therefore I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that this was a required course for all junior enlisted members to become NCOs. The instructor isn’t a professional, just someone slightly older than all of us who volunteered for a 3 year special duty assignment teaching this course. Instructors probably get no more than 9-12 weeks of training and student teaching combined before they’re thrust in on their own, although my specific instructor was at the end of her 3 year tour.
So that will explain a few things and either make me seem like less of a jerk or more of a jerk depending on how you value man-hours in the military. But I can tell you right now that the military throws around man-hours like a drunk Japanese businessman in Vegas.
I felt we were being manipulated because while it wasn’t expressly stated that there was a correct answer, that’s the impression we were given. I don’t recall exactly how it was worded or presented to us, but the idea we had at the outset was that we could go to lunch as soon as we were done, but we wouldn’t be done until we got the order right.
The person I picked to provide our arbitrary rank-order was someone well-respected by the class but who ordinarily wouldn’t have spoken up. My fear was that if I volunteered myself it would be seen as a power play, and I really didn’t want to spur any discussion whatsoever. I picked the person I thought would be least likely to garner any objections from the class. I remember being a bit worried that she’d be all wishy-washy and ask for input, but she and I were tracking and she spit out an answer right quick.
Did I show strong leadership? I don’t think so. Having an obvious reward like an early lunch made my task way too easy – I really just had to snap people out of the game and the motivation did the rest. I can elaborate about what a real leader would have done, but I think others in this thread have said it better. Incidentally, we did take a Meyers-Briggs personality test, and I’m an INTJ, aka a “mastermind.” I like planning, I don’t necessarily like leading, nor am I particularly good at it, so I think that fits me well.
Was I a jerk? I’m still not sure. To some extent, I would have forgotten about the whole incident if my wife hadn’t said I was a jerk, or if I had immediately dismissed her. In that regard, Taomist has a good point that the fact that I was feeling smug probably means I was being a jerk. Incidentally, “highly self satisfied” seems negative to me, so even by the tamest M-W definition, smugness isn’t a positive thing.
I don’t feel at all bad for the class. By the way, the class really gelled as a group and this was one of the events that really brought that home for us. We all got to walk out of the building past other classrooms full of bickering students. The course itself was 2 weeks of good material stretched out 3x too long, as is the air force way, and I’m sure everyone was just happy to spend 1 less hour there. Perhaps somebody really wanted to stick around and learn, but I’m doubtful, and I’m not going to worry my head about that.
I do feel bad for my instructor, because we all really liked her. In the air force, there’s an unwritten rule that supervisors look out for their troops and vice versa, and I put her in a position where she may have caught shit for not teaching the material properly. It’s doubtful that she did actually catch shit, but it’s still not a cool thing to do.
And yet, I still can’t shake the feeling of satisfaction that goes along with breaking a game.
So I think there’s a lot of good responses in this thread and I’m glad that there’s not a consensus because there’s not even a consensus in my own brain. Thanks for everyone’s 2 cents.
If you were in the group you could have vetoed it.
I am also an INTJ, and I like your description. It’s dangerous to put us in groups of people, because we’re always thinking around corners. 
Again, there is NO deadline to conclude that what the OP did was jerkish.
Being a jerk? It depends on the meeting. As a former public school teacher I frequently had to sit through meetings that were required by the district or the state, even though all the teachers and our principals knew that we’d be better off elsewhere. We had to sit through these for a certain number of minutes per week, month, or year. If someone got us out of one of those, but we knew we’d have to re-convene the meeting later … well yeah, I’d be unhappy. But I doubt everyone would vote for that.
I’m a little confused as to why many people are asserting there was a consensus in the group. In my experience of consensus-based organizations, it would have taken the two hours just to reach the consensus that everyone wanted to go to lunch early. Consensus-based organizations are not run on Robert’s Rules of Order or any other majority-rules system, and it seems that the group steronz was in operated democratically. Plus, there obviously wasn’t consensus, because the instructor didn’t agree with the decision that was made. In an organization based on consensus, that “annoyance” would have to be processed … to death. This may explain why consensus is not used much as a decision-making tool.
Complete jerk move. Especially when you consider it from the instructor’s perspective. They have a class to teach and class exercises that support the lectures. It is the attendee’s job to do the exercises, as instructed without being disruptive.
And if someone wants to be disruptive, then we’re going to be having a conversation about it, either privately or right there in the classroom, if needed
I’ve had people like OP in classes I’ve taught. It makes for a lousy training experience for everyone.
I just thought of something else, too.
Even if you’re the smartest person in the room and know everything the instructor is trying to teach*, there are still going to be people in the class who are there to learn. Those people deserve the courtesy of not intentionally killing whatever lessons may have been learned from the exercise.
- I’ve taught people who thought they knew everything. I’ve never taught people who weren’t able to take away something useful.
Unfortunately, I think we are all letting our perception of leadership courses coloring the discussion.
Was the OP a jerk? Yah, and that when the instructor tried to get them to stay he persisted. If the whole group persisted because what the OP did became a runaway thing which he can’t control, then less of that, but everyone was being a jerk.
But was it justified? And whose fault was it for the outcome? Depends on so many unknown details. But count me in as the group who think that the instructor didn’t do a good job.
You were in a Leadership Training Course and you stood up and conducted a leadership move to get away from a stupid buzz-wordy, warm fuzzy exercise? Sounds like the course worked to me. 
Okay, yeah it was a little overbearing, but those exercises are just a lot of silly busy work made up by some little marketing group or another. I vote for yeah you were a bit of a jerk, but in a very effective and positive way.
OK, what was the objective of the exercise?
Taking the OP at face value, the exercise was set up to create time-consuming conflict and had no specific “correct” solution. I presume the point was to engage the students in a discussion that was almost certain to bog down into opposing viewpoints, and then watch to see if anyone could lead the group out of the quagmire by building some kind of consensus – and I’d further venture a guess that being the last group to finish wouldn’t wow the instructor.
That said, it sounds like the OP did what the exercise intended, just in a novel way by stepping outside the artificial framework.
As far as the two-hour lunch is concerned, don’t leaders always talk about incentives? Don’t we always say we have to offer top pay or benefits to get top performance? Are we just mouthing that, or do we mean it?
These guys finished first, reaching the apparent goal – are they not the top performers? Have they not earned some sort of consideration?
Regarding whether it was outside the spirit of the exercise, well, learning that it was in the military increases my belief that it was a good solution. What does the military really want in a crisis? Results, not bogged-down inaction, and not necessarily doing things in the old, expected way.
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