In concluding this class, I have gained a new outlook on leadership than the one I had from before. I have learned that leadership isn’t about being in charge and leading a group of people. Leadership is about collectively joining thoughts and coming together to complete a goal. There are many different aspects that go into leadership. You must have patience to deal with different people and ideas. You must be able to sort through these ideas with respect to all of those given and be able to communicate to your team what the plan is.

We have made a finding that followership is just as important, if not more important than leadership itself. Without followers, there’s no leader. But than again, without a good leader, there’s no real reason for the followers. The followers need someone they can rely on to get their ideas across and to depend on to meet a required goal. Being a leader is more than just being in charge. I feel that somebody who tries to take over is not a good leader.

My statement would be what I pretty much said earlier. “Without followers, there’s no leader. But without a good leader, there’s no real reason for the followers”. Throughout this class, we have had many different talks and we got to meet many different kinds of people, all with different values and styles of leadership. I think we’ve all realized that a leader is only as good as their followers. The leader is what makes the plan but the followers are what make their ideas come to life. That is what makes a team successful.

New Outlook of Leadership

One thing that has stuck in my head since hearing it wasn’t from just a single person. This was from a few different people all with the same idea. In one of the first group exercises, Anna kept trying to speak up and get her ideas in but people weren’t listening. And if they were listening, it seemed to have just went in one ear and out the other because they never even took her ideas into account. At the end of the activity we all came together and talked about what went right and what went wrong. Many people agreed that Anna had great ideas and had potential to be a great leader. But than again, in the next activity, it was almost the same exact thing. Anna was trying to explain her ideas to us and people choose to just implement their own again. Now I know that she has a soft voice, but I found it very annoying to see people still being stubborn and not listening, which is something that we talk about often in class. All I could think about is how aggravated id be if people were shutting me out time after time, especially in a class where cooperating with each other is the only way to complete a goal.

            This doesn’t exactly re-frame my outlook on leadership but it somewhat shows me how others deal with leadership and how it affects others in the group. Everyone needs and wants to be heard. Speaking up and voicing your ideas takes courage and when someone is shut down long enough, they will stop sharing their opinions because of fear of getting shut down again. A person can only take so much before they decide to give up. I give Anna credit for being able to put it behind her that quick and to just sit back and let everyone else deal with it.

What are Values?

"How are values critical to leadership - and what are my own personal values"

Everyone has strengths, and everyone has weaknesses. In my personal opinion, what makes up a value is your strengths and how you use them. A strength is only as useful as you allow it to be. In example, if you are a leader and consider yourself to be careful and patient, than taking your time on a project would give you a higher rate of success. But procrastinating and putting a project off to the side will mean that you are enclosing the time period that you will be done in, which in return goes against your attributes of being careful and patient because you will be in more of a rush to meet the deadline.

            To me, values are your best attributes in which can be used to further yourself. Nobody has the exact same values and people work different in different environments. This is why it’s impossible to be a perfectly rounded human being. If you are loud, you’re not quiet. If you have never gotten a B in your life and study too much (my roommate), than you’re most likely very knowledgeable but have to sacrifice nights going out where you become socialable and get your face out there. It’s all personal preference and we may not even realize all of our given values. Really, values are ever changing as you grow up and have different experiences. Even with that said, I don’t think there could ever be a person to have absolutely no values. Anybody with a brain has some sort of thought about personal goals or even a way to describe themselves.

            When thinking about how values were shown in class, I immediately thought about the group activity where you were with two other people and one person was a listener and one was the recorder. As people were telling their stories, there was a list of adjectives on the board saying things like “wisdom”, “questionable”, and “energetic”. You were able to compare little details of the story to these words and almost get to know the person a little bit. The stories dealt with emotion and honesty, which could be a value right there. Being honest is something that most people want to be known for but not something everyone can achieve. Its like the saying “trust takes a lifetime to build, but a second to destroy”. People remember. If you mess up bad and lie about something, you may be labeled as disloyal in that persons head forever. In conclusion, stick to the values you hold most closely to you because you’ll be happier that way.

-Dave Reardon-

The first reason I joined this class is because I needed a filler to stay full time this semester. But I didn’t just choose this class because of that. I do plan on taking this class seriously and want to put the work in to do my part. I am in the Public Health field and all of my teachers keep saying how most of the time you will have some kind of a job where you’re constantly working with groups of people. When you have groups and group projects, you usually need a leader. My goal isn’t to be an outstanding leader and always try to be the one in charge. I want to be able to handle the challenge when one is given to me and earn the respect of my colleges that way. I want people to know that they can depend on me with deadlines and still respect me as a person even if we have different views on a certain subject. In the Public Health field it is important to listen to everyone. When saving lives and helping people is the main objective, many different factors are involved. People are going to have different views on pretty much any subject and some will be better than mine. I want to be able to handle criticism and learn from it without taking things to heart. At this point I think of a leader and leadership as the ability to handle a task with a group of people calmly and collectively. To really understand the subject you’re talking about and be able to communicate to others if they don’t understand. Communication is always key when it comes to being a leader and if there is no communication, than you are most likely not doing a good job. A goal and the people you’re working with depend on strong leadership. Letting people down is not something I like to do and want to be remembered for. Being a leader means you need to be open but also able to put your foot down when the time is right. That time is always hard to tell but a leader needs to make that decision. What I expect to take from the class is pretty much everything I described earlier. I’m not saying that I’m very bad with all of the qualities of being a leader but I truly believe that everybody could always use some help. It could be with being able to handle people in groups or even public speaking. Other people are always going to have different views and I need to be able to listen to them no matter how weird or wrong I might think they are. I think everybody has weaknesses and I want to tackle a few of mine in this class.