Leadership

So the latest chapter I have read is based on Leadership with what it takes to lead, be a leader and the leadership process. It talks about different leadership traits, styles and then examines the impact a situation has on leadership. In this blog, I am going to really concentrate on how my leadership in both of the groups that I am.

In the Leadership Team, I have received the authority of being the Senior Program Director/President of the group. I received this authority from the members of the organization, not any specific person. Then when it comes to the other group I am, I am obviously sharing the leadership with six others in fulfilling our vision. I would categorize myself in this group as a energetic, fun and charismatic leader. I would classify myself as self-confident but I always have the mind of a student. This basically means that I know that at any point of time I could learn something that will help develop my skills. Once I was finished with my classificiation as a leader, I looked at the actual definition of a charismatic leader. It states it is a leader who has the extraordinary power to create vision for the distress in an effort to bring about miracles, and I was just like 'wow.' This is like Gandhi and Mandala territory, that involves some massive social change. I looked at my student organization and asked myself if I am able to do that for my members. I realized that in certain ways my energy and fun is able to create inspiration for others. I am not saying that I am light to these peoples fire, but I am just realizing that I can have that impact on others. Along with that, I realized that it never takes the title of being a leader to necessarily have that much impact on others.

Moving on from there it was really fun to analyze my leadership styles of being either autocratic, democracy and laissez-faire. These different styles are for me generally impacted the most by the situation. For example, it really just depends on how comfortable I feel with the group that I am working with. Suprisingly though, I feel that I am able to still create a buy-in with all these styles. Even though I may be giving strict or less strict orders I still feel that there is constant purpose in my leadership. I always will also like the distributed-action theory that I read about in the chapter. This is the theory that everyone can be a leader as long as information is shared properly and the whole group is involved. I just know that this is how leaders are built, and without there is no future in an organization. It also can be a great to prevent any type of burn out or over exhaustion.

I am starting to see that distributed actions theory more and more in one of my groups. We have been able to create some committees that let our members get some personal buy in. It is tough because some students(especially the older) have not really stepped up as much, but we have made much progress. The other group I am is depended on volunteers, and in any situations we are dependant on distributing power. The one area I would like to see transformation is creating more possible site coordinators for the future. In the past it has just been difficult to find possible site coordinators and I think that is due to lack of buy-in. I would look forward to see how we can engage our volunteers to step and take more active leadership in the program.

Overall leadership has been very prevalent in both of these two groups. I realize that this entry has been less structured than past entries, but it was the best I way could informally discuss leadership. I would just like to end the entry by saying that I feel personal buy in and vision is one of the keys to a successful leader. When this is created, I know that anything can happen out of a group setting.