Leadership Has Not Changed Very Much From The Beginning Of This Course

Understanding what leadership is, it is leading, influencing, commanding and guiding people. A good leader leads the pack, influence them as a role model, command them and sticks them together in crisis and guide them to be the best in professional as well as personal life. Thinking about who are leaders or are they made, in my personal view, I would say that, everyone is a born leader, where some stands up and fly, and some others sit back and watch.

Being a leader is more than simply holding a leadership position or having the ability to lead. Everyone is capable of being a leader, but not everyone exercises his or her leadership abilities. Each person’s idea of leadership is different. My idea of leadership has developed over time, and being a member of the President’s Leadership Class has helped me develop my philosophy of leadership further than what it was two months ago. My personal philosophy of leadership is the ability to effect change through leading by example, taking initiative, and encouraging others.

My view on leadership before coming into college was very brief. I knew what leadership was in a vague way, not in the descriptive way that I have learned about in this perspectives on leadership class. At first, I thought a leader was someone you just looked up to for a specific reason. During this class I have learned that leadership is so much more than that. A leader is someone who you can look up to but in a way that you know you can fully trust them with anything, and the things they say are accurate and they hold them self to a high standard. A leader does not just have one quality they have a bunch of qualities and traits that connect them as a leader.

Before going through this journey of self-discovery, my view of leadership was accurately described by John C. Maxwell “ Leadership is influence.” (Maxwell, para. 25, 2012). I believed, before taking this class and Northouse’s (2013) assessments, leaders were defined by the extent to which they could influence others to achieve company goals. I thought that, when discussing leadership, the leader was the most important aspect of the leader-member dyad and that it was the leader who had the greatest influence over how successful the organization was. Leaders themselves, in my view, should have been the focus of leadership studies and it should have been up to the leader to develop his/her skills in

Leadership is about setting goals and initiating action to create change. My view of leadership is being able to encourage, stimulate, lead and motivate others, there are many ways to lead. While at Troy University, I would like to be a captivating leader. Being a captivating leader will make me take dominance of my personality. Some of the personalities that I have and which may lead me to become an exceptional captivating leader include high extraversion, being open-minded, observing, receptive and understanding.

According to Webster’s Dictionary, leadership is the power or ability to lead other people, the act or instance of leading. I believe that Leadership is an art, the art to get others to follow and accomplish a common goal or task in a harmonic manner. A leader can be shown in all kinds of shapes and forms. To be a great leader many people believe it consists of modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart. Over the course of me learning how to become a better leader and being in leadership roles, I’ve learned that all these are very necessary to be a great leader.

At the beginning of this class, leadership was something I hoped to enhance throughout the duration of this course and in the next few years. Through the course, I have learned more about myself and the type of leader I am through the relational leadership model. Learning about the strengths I have as an individual, the leadership skills and styles, working with other people through communication and listening. I have learned relevant concepts that served as the foundation to leadership philosophy. Leadership has a lot to do with relationships. One thing that has stood out to me is that they see the definition of leadership as a relational and ethical process of people together, attempting to accomplish positive change (Anderson&Bolt, 18).

The characteristics of leadership and what it means to be a leader to me is someone who not only wants themselves to succeed but wants others around them to succeed even more. Being a leader is a trait I thrive to achieve everyday, sometimes with success, sometimes not. Throughout my career as a student I have continued to develop my understanding of what it means to be a leader. In one instance I was awarded the leadership role of captain of the junior varsity soccer team, something that I had not comprehended the value of until later.

Before this class, I had a very primitive and vague definition of leadership. Not only did I define it as per my views and ideologies, but I also said that each individual has their own definition of leadership. My initial belief was that leadership does not have a clear cut definition, but there were well defined leadership traits which made an individual. I also initially believed that personal traits did not translate into leadership traits with no strong correlation. After going through the various modules this class offered, it is safe to say that I have significantly redefined leadership and underwent a strong personal assessment. This paper talks what I took back from each of the class activities, assignments and how my self-assessment compares to the perception of others.

Before taking the leadership class I viewed leaders and managers the same and I was thinking that only a few people at the top of an organization can lead. However I was wrong and today I view leadership as the challenge and responsibility of every individual with potential to make a difference. Today, I view leadership as a social influence. It is initiating and guiding and the result is change. Leadership is more art than science and more skill than knowledge (Manning, p.61).

At the start of this semester, I had a very narrow understanding on what leadership was and what leadership could do. I was always under the impression that leaders were cultivated through a series of trials and tribulations where this single individual’s vision was faced with extreme difficulties. Through this course, I have learned leaders are, in fact, created, but not through the narrow lens I always saw with. Leaders can be created through the need for leadership, by cultivating leadership traits in individuals, and even from the spontaneity of challenging situations. Our scope of learning leadership was expansive this semester: we first identified the definition of leadership having to include leaders, followers, and the situation,

At the begging of this class, I thought that a leader had to be someone who had an extroverted personality and had what people see as leadership skills. What I learned and noticed as this course went on is that not everyone is a born-leader and some leadership qualities can be learned if you try hard enough. Now I think of a leader as someone who is in charge of getting people to meet a certain goal together. A leader is also someone who is confident in themselves and can reflect their confidence on to their followers. I also know that my definition of what I see a leader to be will change over the years in due my life experiences.

The concept of leadership is not a common entity among the ideals of people. Most people are just looking for a leader to lead them but are not willing to step up and be the leader themselves. Leadership can come in many different forms and is based off of the followers and the experiences they live. Leadership, whether it come from the traits someone is born with or the skill set they have acquired over time, I believe is something everyone should aspire to have. I believe that everyone should always aspire to be something greater without letting anything sway them.

Being a leader to me is a person's who is dedicated to helping people attain their personal goals. Being a leader means exhibiting moral and ethical courage, and setting an example for everyone that they lead, and impacting a person life in a positive way. Leadership is a skill, behavior, relationship, and an influence process. This course has been very insightful for me on a personal and professional level. One of the many things that will stick with me is a quote I read from the first power-point. The quote stated, “Leaders are people who do the right thing”. Before taking this class, I didn’t see a difference between leaders and managers, but after going into detail in reading I now realize managers and leaders are different. Managers like to control their people, leaders do not.

When I decided to follow the advice of our CFO to take a leadership class, I was expecting to learn how great leaders think, how leaders manage people, and what makes a person a great leader. I was looking for an inspiration, and I was hungry for leadership knowledge. Going back to week one of the Leadership class, we were asked to define in our own words what is leadership. I described a good leader as a good follower because I believe in servant leadership. According to Robert Greenleaf (1970), servant leaders are servants first and leaders later. The servant leadership model places great emphasis on building relationship and promotes teamwork (Nayab, 2011). Kouzes and Posner (2012) mentioned that leadership is everyone’s business. Leadership is not about seniority or titles (Kruze, 2013). Leadership is not about power or authority (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). Leadership is not about how many followers you have. Leadership is not about how educated or how knowledgeable a person is because academic achievements do not guarantee that an individual is going to be a great leader. Leaders are not born, they are made. Leadership is passion and is a responsibility. To me, leadership is an opportunity to be surrounded by people and be able to create unity to achieve the team’s goal.