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.