Reflection Paper On Leadership

First, I intended to learn how to develop leadership skill which is powerful in today`s business environment and our general community involvement. In the business environment, we need leaders that have a strong commitment to be successful for the projects or goals as well. Sometimes, the goals can be changed and the projects are cancelled or be unsuccessful, but leaders should be there to continue handling the situations. So, I focused on learning how to take my leadership position and requirements from a general to specific one which can be also changeable, depending on the environment and conditions.

Over the years, a great deal of time, and research has been dedicate to the study of leadership. Even with extensive data on the topic, many still disagree on what leadership really means. Hence, leadership is a word that has many different meanings and different researched theories associated with it. On a basic level, leadership involves having and establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with followers, respecting followers, and leading an organization with excellence while ensuring that everyone is part of the team. Leadership is also a method by which a leader uses his or her influence towards getting a group of followers to take ownership or buy into a vision.

Throughout the time of my mental evolution, I have come to understand leadership as the influential ability an individual has among a community of people in order to implement their vision. Notably, Robert Evans stated there are three sides to every story. Theoretically, in a role of leadership those sides are: the constituents who are impacted by a leader’s decisions, the primary account of the leader, and the emotional chemical reactions between the leader and their constituents that resulted to the leader’s final decision. This quote helps to explain why in my theory of leadership I believe that in order to obtain influence, an individual should seek to understand the chemistry of emotions and the development of human life in order to achieve an open mind. For this belief, everyday I seek to redefine perceptions of people and life that was rooted in personal presuppositional theories in order to best advance forward in a sustainable inclusive direction.

At this point in our lives, I would say that most of us have been in a role where we knew our Manager was not an effective leader or maybe our experience has found us working under a great leader. How does one determine what makes an effective leader or not and what is this based on? Personalities of leaders and followers have a correlation to leadership effectiveness.

The leadership activities I have been able to observe, participate in, and help to lead are as follow. Several times I observe others in communication, pastoral, spiritual care, leadership training, engagement in diversity as in preaching, and in the handling of conflict. Other areas I observe others are in performing of water baptism, officiation of wedding, child dedication, and chaplaincy training.

I have attended the workshop event named “Leadership is not a title, It’s an action! – Dynamic leadership for the emerging student leader” for my second event paper. This workshop was held at three different locations of Collin College on Wednesday to Friday (from November 1st to November 3rd). However, I chose the Conference Center at Preston Ridge Campus, and it lasted for two hours from 1 P.M to 3 P.M. Moreover, this event has invited a guest speaker – Erika Gilchrist.

After watching the video featuring Dave Ramsey regarding leadership I was left with a lot of useful information and ideas. Mr. Ramsey and his friends sat and hashed out issues they have come across over the years while in the business world. They put a new perspective on leadership for me. Now, I know that being a leader involves more than just taking charge and stating I can do that. There is much more to the process than many people think. People need to have the desire and drive to be successful and lead others on the right path.

1. Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time.ANSWER

It was great to hear speakers, who are well in their careers, talk about how they got to where they are and the steps and obstacles they faced to get there. Mr. Jay Jacobs, Lt. General Ronald Burgess and Dr. Carl Stockton were different nonetheless, but they all had a general concept, character. A person with good character shows attributes such as integrity, honesty, courage, loyalty, fortitude, and other important virtues that promote good behavior and habits.

Leadership has become an ever changing concept for me. I have seen my idea of a leader evolve as a result of professional opportunities over the years. Currently I see leadership as an area that involves both the leader and the followers. Keeping that in mind, I reflected on my own leadership journey by examining my evolution as a leader and exploring those characteristics that have afforded me the most success and those that have demonstrated challenges.

Before attending introduction into leadership I assumed that I was a very good leader. I attained the leadership award at my high school, in the softball program I was known as a leader by both my coaches, teammates, and in newspaper articles. Given that I have all these awards for being a leader I assumed that there was nothing else to learn about being a leader. I know that you can always improve if you practice something, but I never realized that there are different ways you can lead and still be effective. Throughout the course, it has opened my eyes to different models, theories, and ideas that can help me improve my skills not only as a leader but as a follower as well. I learned that there are different leadership styles along with followership styles, self-awareness along with personality dimensions, and motivation models along with theories.

I still struggle with feeling like there are enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done. I find that there are still many days that I will work 10 hours, then handle family commitments, then exercise, then try to spend time with friends, only to find that it’s time to go to bed and I haven’t checked everything off my to-do list. I have been trying to improve upon this skill in a few ways including, choosing to be proactive, carefully considering how making a commitment impacts my overall well-being, and using a new calendar so that I can clearly see what commitments I have already made and how adding a new one would impact my schedule.

Leadership is such a simple term for such a complex phenomenon. As a child, I can remember adult phrases like “natural born leader” that contributed to my naïve notion of how leaders are preordained at birth with the gifts or qualities necessary for leadership, or at the very least nurtured by parents who were natural leaders. As a result, I never truly felt natural when called into leadership positions throughout my life.

Prior to attending the Business Internship course, my knowledge and understanding on successful business leaders was very limited. Although I had heard of countless success stories in business, I had never actually understood what it took to achieve such measures of success. However, it wasn’t until we had the privilege of hearing from four different business magnates in weeks 6 -9. Each of the business leaders gave an hour’s seminar and which was aimed at providing insights into their personal lives, working experiences and the core essence of 21st century business leadership.

In class, so far, we have discussed many different topics about leadership. One being different leadership theories. The one that I feel most represents the leader I want to be in the future is servant leadership. When we discussed servant leadership it was defined as this leadership model is based on the leader and the followers wanting to serve others. Basically, this means the servant leader you put your focus on the needs of others before your own. The followers goal is to serve clients and the leader’s goal is to serve the employee and implement the organization mission statement. The leader supports other employees by noticing their goals and provide the proper support to help them reach those goals. This