Leadership Synthesis Paper

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University of Iowa *

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06J:262:EX

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Management

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Apr 3, 2024

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docx

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Mitch Bobitt Carly Armour Career Leadership Academy May 6, 2019 Leadership Synthesis Paper Everyone has their own definition of what they believe leadership to be. Some consider it a natural talent that only a certain few are able to attain, or that it is defined by the actions that you take throughout your day to day life. The truth, however, is that there is no single right way to lead. In this essay, I will reflect on my personal definition of leadership, the processes that go into becoming a leader, my unique strengths that allow me to stand out amongst my peers, and other important concepts that I have learned in this class that have guided my personal leadership philosophy. In this class, we learned about the Relational Leadership Model while developing our own personal philosophy about what we believe leadership to be. This model highlights the importance of building relationships, and how these relationships are the focal point of the leadership process. This model aims to build commitment toward positive purposes that are inclusive of people, empowering to those who are involved, is ethical, and recognizes that each element of the model can be accomplished by being a process-oriented individual. The component that was most beneficial to me in this class was “empowering,” and this component focuses on promoting the involvement of others by getting rid of the barriers that may block the development of individual talent and involvement. I learned that in all environments- whether it be in the workplace, at school, or during day to day life, it is extremely important to

empower others to be the best person that they can be. This aspect of the Relational Leadership Model has had an impact on my personal philosophy, because through class activities and readings, I’ve learned that as a leader, power does not have to be exclusive to one individual. In fact, when everyone is included when making big decisions, it tends to take pressure off of the “leader,” and allows multiple point of views to be shared encouraging a collaborative and creative environment. Another concept that was taught in Career Leadership Academy that has served as a foundation of my personal leadership philosophy was learning and truly understanding all of my CliftonStrengths. My top 5 CliftonStrengths are Activator, Competition, Empathy, Individualization, and Achiever. During the Strengths Based Team workshop, I applied my strengths Activator and Achiever during the hula hoop activity (Armour, 2019). I worked together with my team to form a plan about how to lower the hula hoop, and figured out what it would take to put the plan into action. During the second activity, my strength Competition came into play while racing against the other team to flip the tarp over while making sure our team’s feet never touched the floor. I applied my Individualization and Empathy strengths throughout both activities by making sure everyone was on the same page, that everyone knew what their responsibilities were during the exercise, and encouraging my teammates to work around their individual strengths. By having a good understanding of what my key strengths are, I’ve been better able to understand myself, what I’m good at, and apply these strengths to my day to day life. One of the assignments that I completed in Career Leadership Academy was to create a goals and action plan, in which I identified three achievable goals for the semester and created

action steps for myself to achieve these goals. Next, I listed my CliftonStrengths that I thought could best help me achieve these stated goals. I think that by being able to write down my goals and some steps that I could use to achieve them, the goals seemed much more realistic to me and I felt as if I could actually achieve them. By the end of the semester, I found that by applying my strengths and following my action plan, I was able to meet each of these goals completely. My first goal was to achieve a 3.5 GPA this semester, and by using my Activator and Achiever strengths, I was able to end the year with a GPA that I am truly proud of. For my career related goal, I decided that I would secure an internship for this summer. I used my Individualization and Activator strengths to put forth the time and effort into finding an internship that would best suit me, and I ended up securing one at the Marketing and Design department here at Iowa. As for my leadership related goal, I aimed to find volunteer opportunities around Iowa City. By using my Achiever and Empathy strengths, I did research online to find volunteer opportunities around Iowa City, I met with the owner of a local non- profit, and I was able to participate in some really fulfilling volunteer experiences. When looking at my leadership in practice over this semester, the group presentation really highlighted the benefits of working with other young leaders to achieve a common goal. I think that our group was extremely effective and that we worked extremely well together. For example, each of us have different CliftonStrengths that we applied throughout the activities, and we were able to rely on one another to create a presentation about an important problem within the community. When doing research for our presentation, Kayla used her strengths to find a lot of great resources that were really relevant to our topic. Madi used her creativity to create original PowerPoint slides that incorporated the Career Leadership Academy colors, and

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