Reflection On Leadership

During this class we took many assessments and I learned a lot about myself and what kind of leader I want to be. On your leadership potential I learned my behaviors are the same as leader, these are people who are opened minded, share ideas and values with the company and open to change in the organization. For another assessment t rate your optimism test I found out I am someone who is optimistic and I agree with the statement that people want to follow a leader that is optimistic, rather than someone who is pessimistic. Another assessment I took was called the 5 saboteurs test. There was a scoring grid and what each category means like BP-(be perfect), HU-(hurry up), PO- (please others), TH-(try harder), and BS-(be strong) I found out the my highest score is PO-(please others) and some characteristics include being happy when other others are happy, cares about other people’s needs, can have a hard time saying no, doesn’t like to annoy other people in the work place. Body language and verbal language include facial expressions and saying sure I can do that for you. For another assessment I scored a six which means I right in the middle between high and low resistance to change. I agree with this statement because I think for certain situations my resistance to change will be high or low. After taking all these assessments. I learned that as a leader why it is important to learn about yourself. These assessments can help you improve as a leader figure out your weak spots

Change in educational institutions is inevitable, and leading by learning is critical to meet the demands and high standards for student achievement. Standards and accountability demands placed on schools and school divisions require leaders to dismantle the notion of isolated practice and, instead, promote and instill more collaborative practices to support student learning. Fortunately, I am blessed to have the opportunity to collaborate with a variety of teams throughout the school division, supporting both division and school level goals. Because of the collaborative and multi-faceted nature of my work, gaining a better understanding of the change process as it relates to planning and sustainability has allowed me to reflect upon my own leadership style and its impact on systemic change. To highlight areas of growth in planning for change, a reflection of my leadership style is presented, followed by a discussion of a change regarding school improvement planning that should occur in my division. To conclude, a description of challenges and potential resistors is provided, highlighting the importance of understanding change theories.

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.

The purpose of this report is to interpret the leadership 360 survey data and formulate a working strategy to improve the weakest areas of my leadership. I will be using the data averages given by my other classmate’s survey results to develop an understanding of how my capabilities fare against other students. Additionally, I will provide specific goals in mind while discussing my results to demonstrate my understanding of the Dynamics of Leadership coursework and its applications to developing leadership skills.

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” —Warren Bennis. According to dictionary.com, leadership is defined as the position or function of a leader, a person who guides or directs a group. This is an accurate definition but leaders can be more than someone who just leads. Leadership is something that you gain with experience not something you are born with. Leaders encourage others to achieve greatness, not just tell them what to do.

One day when I was a kid, my father, my mother and I went to an ice cream shop, but unfortunately, they were running out of Ice cream, they only had two remaining for the three of us, my father gave one to me and shares the other one with mom. This lesson teaches me how the leader sacrifices for the sake of the group benefits over his own interest, and how to come to the best decision that makes everyone happy. Successful leadership is one of the most significant parts of human behavior, and one of the most important aspects that is directly involved in the work that is responsible for directing the various tasks and resources. The first step in a leadership road is to feel the importance of the message that you wanted to deliver and to believe in your ability to lead in order to have a strong personality. In addition, you should have the passion to work as a leader and face the good/bad facts with courage and wisdom. Leadership is not just about achieving goals, but it's a method and opportunity to make a change and help to grow people's mentality by making them achieve goals creatively instead of turning into machines that are just functioning via commands -- Manager style. A leader’s mission is very critical and many aspects might contribute to the desired change. However, I believe that there are four principal attributes that play a very important role for a successful leader, which are: humanity, commitment, vision, and inspiration.

When I was writing my college application essays and trying to dig out some daily experiences to show my leadership skills to admission officers, I always asked myself a question: when did my first act of leadership emerge? Should the honor of the first leadership act go to becoming a part of class council in middle school or should it go to leading a biology research team in high school? I spent a long time wondering if making all my classmates follow a clean-up duty schedule back to middle school was a real act of leadership. At that time, I took it for granted that the acts of leadership must somehow relate to those fancy names of positions and statuses. However, after coming to college and studying more about leadership, now I realize, the acts of leadership are amorphous and are not necessarily related to any position and status. So if I want to trace my very first act of leadership, I need to rewind a bit more. Maybe rewind to the family gathering when 5-year-old I led my 3-year-old cousin to paint with crayons on a perfect white wall in my grandparents’ house while all the adults were chatting. Or maybe rewind even more to the time when 2-year-old I sat in a baby chair in a restaurant and tried to attract attention of another toddler across the room and let her repeat the actions after me. These insignificant behaviors are actually my very first acts of leadership. They meant something, although not big enough to change the entire world. The acts of leadership

A leader does simply command and call to action, finds solutions to problems through engaging in conversation and listening more. Leadership has been one of the most common character traits instilled in myself since high school, considering my high school’s philosophy is to prepare leaders through academic excellence, character, and extra-curricular. Transitioning into college I have been taught just how important learning how to lead is. I have been taught a leader on campus will be more successful in school, have greater networking opportunities, and will more likely find successful career opportunities. One of the key characteristics to becoming a good leader is being able to listen. According to the Huffington Post blog, “a person learns about 85% of what they know through listening” (Jose Costa). Therefore, by attempting to listen more and give greater attention to the conversation I ultimately was able to learn more directly about myself.

“For attempting to teach others is sometimes the best way of teaching ourselves” Daniel Defoe said. We learn leadership skills when going out our way to teach someone else how to do something. Teaching others lessons also help shape who you are as a person. You don’t have to always be a teacher but just know people are looking up to you. Teaching someone can come in negative as well as positive ways in society. Leaders can lead a person through a right path because they don’t want them messing up something that only comes once. But just like there are good leaders there’re bad ones too. We all have that one role model we look up to; wanting be like them. You don’t have to be like these celebrities on tv because you're not them. We want to be better than them and want more for ourselves. So strive for better and don't follow around the wrong crowd.

In the readings, for this assignment, Covey writes that humans are four-dimensional beings. The dimensions include To Learn, To Love, To Live, and To Leave a Legacy. He argues that people will work according to how they are treated based on opportunities to use all four components of their dimensional being. Bolman, argues that there are many characteristics and studies that have been conducted about leadership. There are some things that are similar, but there are also differences depending on context, situation, and culture.

They are the first point of contact for all of our patrons; we do over 300 events a year, many of them with over 200 guests. My employees are aware that they are representatives of the values and mission of the college and that if they disrespect a patron they are placing the whole organization in a bad light. They are also aware that they are one of the main reasons why we hold a great reputation around campus and in the surrounding communities. They are the ones who are making sure our patrons have a great experience when in our care and they are also in charge of making sure every patron arrives and leaves safely when attending our events. They play a very important role within our organization and without them, we would not be able to do what we do.

At the beginning of the semester after taking the assessment I found out that I needed to work on my leadership skills in influencing others specifically motivating performance, ethical power and team dynamics. I also found that my interpersonal skills like communication needed some work. My stronger human relation skills include valuing diversity, organizational change, behavior, human relations and self-performance.

The important lessons learnt in this course along with all activities in the group and review the course materials such as Organizational management and leadership by Dr. A. Satterlee, and, Resilient leadership by Dees, made it possible for each of us in group 1 to learn the need of being open-minded, being effective with considering the biblical guidance to be a true leader and this is not only for new life style as Executive leader’s student but also this change will help in the future career. The fact that group dynamic is the phenomenon that shapes the entire work is a new discovery.

As an educational leader, I have encountered several new and existing school policies. I never thought deeply about the various processes and the stakeholders involved in policy formulation and implementation. This semester I am engaged in the course Managing Educational Policy as School Leaders (EDLM 6005). This is Semester III, 2016/2017. My course coordinator is Dr. Timar Stephenson. Dr Stephenson was my course coordinator once before and was very helpful whenever I needed clarification or when I had a difficulty. I am thrilled to embrace the new ideas and learning opportunities embedded in this course since it teaches issues which I experience at work. Dr Stephenson, during his introduction reminded his entire class that success in this course would only be realized through hard work, dedication, and commitment. Therefore, it is imperative that I have the right attitude as I navigate this course. The course involves seven weeks of intense work. I am pleased to have a wonderful group facilitator by the name of Rhonda Joseph who has already given us a BBC to explain the requirements of the course and our first two modules.

Due to my passive nature, I’ve always avoided leadership roles. With that being said I still aspire to be someone who can be looked to as a leader. In order to reach that goal I observe and try to mimic the actions of people that inspire me. There have been many people I’ve taken orders from, but I have “followed” few. Those are the ones I consider to be true leaders, and have tried to be like myself.