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Author Archives: sashay3
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Final thoughts on Leadership course
This leadership course has taught me a number of things about leadership and moreso about myself. The assessments, not necessarily all, gave me a better understanding of the way I think, act, and react. I’ve come to realize I am a more task oriented leader. While I do care about the feelings of others, to a certain extent, when there is a task at hand to be completed, that goes to the forefront for me and everything else is on the back burner. I’ve also learned that I truly despise blogging. When introduced at the beginning of the semester I never really had blogged before on my own, and definitely not forced by an academic course, hence I had no real basis for objections. Experiencing the difficulty I came across in finding the time to write a blog, nevertheless finding the words to express my thoughts, if I had any at all, became somewhat excrutiating and led to a lack of completion. With that said, and while I accept complete responsibility for not trying harder, I think the blogging should have been optional for those that rather blog every week than to write an essay type of paper summarizing their experiences. I found that I am much better at looking back on what I’ve done and learned, and summarizing that into a well written essay than to blog about my thoughts and/or experiences each week. Nevertheless, this will not turn into a complaint letter because I also learned much about leadership.
A well rounded leader seems to be the most successful. He/she can shift betwen situations, people and tasks easily and gains followers almost effortlessly. A leader cannot be a leader without a following and to gain followers one must give off a air of passion, charisma, intelligence, among other traits. Leadership has its own contraversies when questioned whether it is an innate trait or something we can learn like math or science. I, personally, think its a mixture of both. Some people are born with the “talent” like athletes but they need to practice it in order to reach their full potential as we’ve mentioned numerous times in class. Others learn to be leaders because their situations have forced them to be so.
With regards to the leadership group work, I have to say overall we worked together despite our schedule conflicts and managed to help Sandra’s business idea take its first steps into possibly becoming a reality. Sandra was designated as our CEO because it was her initial idea that brought the group together. However I feel that Marie really stepped it up for the entire group. She took the initiative of making sure we stood on top of deadlines, knew what the milestones required, and was always responding via email rather promptly. Prixilla and I, took on the roles of researching our respective/designated areas of the business and we did what was expected of us. Although we were not necessarily the leaders of the group, we gave our input in various decision making conversations and those ideas were taken into consideration and implemented if valuable. Overall, I truly feel the presentation could have gone much better. I felt the males looked much more organized, informed, and passionate about their project. I never felt as unprepared for a presentation as I did that day. I think if we would have made a mandatory time to practice, go over each others parts, give a chance to constructively critique one another and put ourselves in the shoes of the audience and question the presentation as one would expect another to do, then we would have had a much better presentation.
With that said, I enjoyed this class. I really liked that it was a small intimate class which was a nice refresher to the larger sized classes where there really isnt room for discussions as we had them. I liked the variation of the books; how one was more informative and the other was more about the leadership experience. It was an interesting class and I wish more classes could be set up in a similar manner.
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Knowing the World
Reading this chapter, felt more like it was still focused more on learning how to “know ourselves” rather than learn the world. In a sense, I understand that to know the world you must first know yourself. And I guess that since we never fully understand ourselves we could also never fully understand the world, but it is something that grows over time and is ever-changing. With that said, to know the world, from what I understand from this chapter, is to know how to learn and not necessarily adapt to conventional ways of thinking and learning. In the beginning, Bennis discusses learning and he quotes Walter Wriston when he says “things that matter cannot be taught in a formal classroom setting.” What he meant by this is that we are shaped by our experiences and that is how we truly learn. Sitting in a classroom, memorizing information to later regurgitate it on an exam or when asked a question by the teacher is not really learning. Bennis calls this type of learning “acceptance of conventional wisdom.” People tell you this is the way things are or ought to be and this is what you need to know and you forget to listen to your “self.” Intuition, gut feelings, what you feel is the right path or thing to do, is often pushed to the side because someone else told you “this is the way to do it.” Bennis goes on to say that innovative learning is the best and most realistic form of learning. Being active, imaginative, listening to others, listening to yourself (impulses and such), and participating are all a part of innovative learning. I recently read an article where it says you should drink alcoholic beverages at work, not to get drunk but because it liberates the mind of conventional thinking and allows one to be more creative. You may not be able to solve an intense math problem but when they did their research they found that moderate alcohol consumption can reduce people’s ability to pay attention (as anyone who’s ever been drunk can attest), which frees them up for creative problem-solving tasks. In essence the alcohol served as a stepping stone to get the participants to think innovatively. They were not worried about what they thought the right answers were or trying to recall a memory of when they learned the solution back in a classroom setting, instead they acted on impulse and as a result they performed better than the sober control group. I thought the article was rather interesting in how it connected to Bennis’ “innovative thinking” discussion.
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Knowing Yourself
“People begin to be leaders at that moment when they decide for themselves how to be.” This first quote in the beginning really stuck out for me in the chapter. I think its absolutely true. You cannot be a leader when you are still following and being largely influenced by others. I believe that understanding yourself… your strengths, weaknesses, passions, and despises, all enable you to be self-aware hence becoming a better person and a better leader should you want to be a leader. Knowing yourself allows you to take advantage of situational leadership (as discussed in Northouse), because only you will know in what situations will you rise or fail in. If you know that you are good at communicating and relating to others, if a leadership role requires such abilities you could take on that role knowing that you will succeed, whereas if you knew that you were not good and seeing tasks through and delegating responsibilities to others, you would not put yourself in that leadership position because you would be setting yourself up to fail. Understanding yourself aids in the path of finding what it is you truly want to do with your life, may it be becoming CEO of a major corporation or a housewife and parent of X amount of children. I believe this because it creates clarification of your goals and aspirations.
“Noone- not your parents not your teachers nor your peers- can teach you how to be yourself.” This is another quote that stuck out to me because many people let others mold them into the people they want them to be and they never truly break out of the mold and express the person they really are. I think we are always growing and changing and who we are today could be different from who we were yesterday. Others will always have their judgments, criticisms, and ideas of who we ‘ought’ to be but that doesn’t meant that is who we ‘are’ or we we feel we ‘should be.’ That is something that you find on your own through reflection of your own experiences. Others teach you things in a way to have you learn the information as they have presented it to you, rather than using the Socratic method, where one uses their own critical thinking abilities to find their own answers/solutions. The socratic method allows one to think for themselves and allows them to reach within themselves to find solutions to their problems, answers to their questions, they didn’t know they had before. I think using this method also aids people in finding and understanding themselves better. You realize that you had the ability to find the answer yourself the whole time. You learn to be independent of others, and you can begin to rely on yourself. I think this when you learn to rely on yourself is the “moment you decide yourself how to be” as was stated in the beginning of this blog.
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Leadership & Acceptance
Bennis starts off chapter 2 saying “leaders come in every size, shape, and disposition– short, tall, neat, sloppy, young, old, male, and female.” While we may all read this and agree, I can’t help but question its authenticity. Are all leaders accepted despite the very things that make them who they are? I would have to argue no. The most prevalent case being the presidency. Since the US independence from England there has been not one single female president to date, or vice president for that matter. If anyone can be a leader, given that they’ve acquired the basic ingredients of a guiding vision, passion, integrity, trust, curiosity, and daring, as mentioned in the text… why are we still questioning our readiness for a female president now in 2012 where women have come a long way from the stereotypical housewife. Women have become CEO’s, Oprah has her own television network, and many more are venturing into entrepreneurial start ups. I wonder how long it will be before the nation is ready for a female leader. I guess it is “as Norman Lear puts it ‘on the one hand, we’re a society that seems to be proud of individuality. On the other hand, we don’t really tolerate real individuality. We want to homogenize it,'” as quoted by Bennis.
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