Diversity

As the semester keeps rolling, I keep on reading this great book! This chapter on "The Value of Diversity" was once again another fun one to read. I compliment the author on discussing this area of group work. Even though I feel very knowledgeable in the topic of diversity, I was still able to capture some great new ideas. For this entry of my blog series, I will discuss the role diversity could have on the current environment around me.

Just to give you all my personal background, I am a 20 year old Caucasian male who grew up in a very affluent area with minimal racial or ethnic diversity. I am German, English and Swedish but have no great sense of pride for where my ancestors came from. Even though I grew up in a non diverse area, I was able to establish connection with other groups through the guidance of my parents. My father was very vocal on serving others and I was able to interact with many different types of people during my community service(specially true at Springfield College). Of course, I have to thank my YMCA summer camp for helping me meet even more people from diverse backgrounds. The key thing that I have learned over time is that diversity means much more than religious or cultural beliefs and ethnic or racial background. These are just the particular areas of diversity that our society has chosen to concentrate the most on. This is just a reality of our society, but I will not concentrate much on this flaw.

The one area that I feel would help Springfield College grow is if there was more ethnic, religious and cultural diversity. The majority of our students are European-Americans with a Christian heritage. They have lived in the United States for their whole life, and have not grown up in a bilingual setting. The minorities primarily consist ethnically of African-Americans, Latin American, Indian or exchange students from China. The only other religion I have encountered is Judaism and unfortunately nothing else. Due to my friendliness, I have been able to locate many of these minorities and be friend them but I am not the common student. The majority of time, it is not very common to witness much interaction between the different groups that Springfield College hosts. Unfortunately, Springfield College cannot pride itself in many areas of diversity when it comes to both students and faculty.

I feel that Springfield could have an extraordinary transformation if they were able to create the possibility of real diversity on our campus. Not just diversity in our student body but also in our faculty and board. As a student, I feel like I would be able to learn so much more if I was able to discuss religion with fellow Muslim, Jewish and Christian students. Then be able to discuss ethnic and racial relations with students of all races, ethnicities and economic classes. Then go to a camp management class where I would able to hear students from a totally different areas of the country or world show off their camp facilities. Then by the time I graduate, I will have taken at least a third of myclasses with professors who are not considered part of the dominant group. I feel that this type of transformation would truly help any our college serve its mission of spirit, mind and body.

Of course I know I have singled Springfield College out during this blog entry, but I wanted it to serve as an example. This is an example of what the majority of the United State is like when it comes to not only our college environments, but also the communities our families live in. I have been able to visit many communities that have captured the essence of people of different backgrounds uniting. It is powerful to see how much that interaction has helped student, children and adults in the long run. People are inspired and truly realize that the world is full of possibility, not harm. Our country could learn a lot if we were able to fully capture the value of diversity.

Ten to twenty years down the line in my YMCA career, I want to be able to confidantly say that my YMCA embraces the value of diversity and what it can bring to a community.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of Interest are always a good time, they bring a party to life! Seriously though, I feel that this chapter was well organized and can be a great self reflective exercise for any leader in a group. I enjoyed how the authors discussed strategies for managing conflicts of interest, and then mixed negotiating into it. For this great blog of mine, I would like to concentrate on my YMCA experiences since I was brought into the Springfield College program.

Once I began to read more into the styles of managing conflict, I immediately started to think of my experience this past summer. During one of my many projects, I had a difficult time effectively working with an individual that in the past I got along well with. It primarily stemmed from an incident out of the working environment, and as a result we began to have separate interests. Our team leader handled the situation very well by facilitating a thirty minute conversation where we were all able to express how we were feeling. It was a good strategy for handling the intergroup conflict but it still was not one hundred percent successful. I had mixed emotions with all of this because I knew that our number one team goal was to complete the project. My life is all about having fun, and I unfortunately felt like I was unable to enjoy myself. I no longer felt like I could be my true self around this person. As a result, I was not fully expressive and made a classic mistake. I placed individual blame on a person for a mistake our group made. It was a common mistake that many make, but I realize that my actions were not based on the interests of the whole group. It reflected the personal conflict I was having with this individual. If I was completely interested in the whole group, I would have calmly talked to the whole group about our fault and how we can recover from it. It sounds sad, but not until I read this chapter, have I felt really complete with this whole situation. I now realize exactly how I would handle the situation in the future, and have learned to manage my conflicts of interest in the working environment.

This past summer I also witnessed my first formal negotiating experience in a YMCA setting. I would clasify it as an integrative negotiation with two people both having the shared vision of a successful music program. Even though the intent was to create a great new program, I still felt tension between the two people in the conversation. They both explained what they wanted in a descriptive way, and backed it up with how they felt. The one factor that shaked everything up was that one person received some critical misinformation. This misinformation involved the salary and exactly what her job responsibility/description would be. So basically she was informed at the meeting that they wanted her to do more but receive a smaller salary. It was quite comical because once they were all on the same page, they still remained repeating the four steps of the negotitation process It took forty minutes of intense debate to finally start creating some possible agreements that would maximize the joint outcome. They finalized the music program, her responsibilities in the program and she would be compensated financially. It was a great learning experience as a student who knows that they will in some day handling the finances of a YMCA.

Managing conflicts of interest can make or break the efficiency of a group. I know that when it comes to successfully working with any group. I will need to have the skills necessary to adjust to different styles of negotiation, intergroup conflict and managing conflicts of interest. Another week brings another great blog! Keep tune to next week when we look at diversity!

Controversy and Decision Making

The past week has been a dandy when it comes to working in my two groups. I have seen some breakthroughs followed by some breakdowns. Both groups are still swinging through the journey of the semester pretty well. The molding process has been a great one, and I am excited that both groups are running pretty smoothly. This week our reading was based on controversy. Controversy is simply when two people just can’t reach an agreement. Surprisingly though before going to Springfield College or taking this class, I did not realize how great controversy can be for decision making. When people respond to controversy constructively and cooperatively, it can become one of your greatest assets as a group.

I feel like in my group where I am not the labeled leader there will always be some controversy between me and the leader of our group. She has done a great job so far this semester being on top of things, and taking great initiative in showing the group that she cares about this program. I sense though that my passion and dedication to youth sometimes can test her nerve.

For instance, today we traveled to Pell Farms for Hayrides, pumpkin picking and animal feeding. She needed me to be there at least ten minutes before four, but unfortunately I did not get there until four exactly. This was merely because Alfred (Brookings student) needed to have a dance audition for a contest at his school. I am just such an emotional leader that I decided that to take time to wait for Alfred, so that he did not have to miss the Partners Program. Of course this meant that we would not arrive on time, but for me there was no way I could not have this boy come to the program. I worked too hard during the week in finding him a new college partner, that there was no way that he did not show up today. A similar situation occurred last week when we dropped off Alisha’s little sister because their mother forgot to pick her up. I was once again late to Partners and there was less time for interaction between the Brookings students and the college partners.

So of course as a result, we were late again and I could tell that my leader was flustered due to my tardiness. We ended up leaving a little late for the farms and the pre-departure logistics were shaky due to my tardiness. We still had a great time at Pell Farms with all the animals and running around the hay maze. The most significant part of this controversy though came in our weekly Site Coordinator meeting tonight.

I was really impressed that she brought this situation up to the table and openly apologized for not being able to control her emotions in front of the children. I just respected the fact that she was able to be so open about the issue, and put herself in a vulnerable position. She did not care about who was right or wrong, but she took responsibility for her actions. This has inspired me to apologize for my actions today, and to let her know that my tardiness was a consequence of my emotional side of leading. I really feel like this will be a great breakthrough for our working relationship.

I am just overall really enjoying these weekly discussions that have helped me break down everything in my work setting. I was extremely impressed when I was challenged during the week by my advisor. She asked me to use our discussions and reading in this book to determine my next move for the group. I know for this entry I did not grasp much on my other group, but don't worry there is always more things to be heard next time! I do not want to lose your attention!

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.

Group Communication

This weeks chapter hit on the area of group communication. As we all know one of the key factors to success for any group is effective communication. Communication involves how we send and receive messages, the communication networks we have in groups and the patterns of communication in a group.

First off let me start by saying that we definitely use two-way communication in order to hear everyones thoughts and get a clear consensus in the YMCA Club Leadership Team. Even though it may involve more time, I feel it is the best way to make sure that this is an educational process. In my YMCA leadership team this week I really felt as if I was successful in effectively communicating with my group. This communication occured not only in our weekly leadership team meetings but also with my individual meetings. For one person specifically I know I was able to have a productive one hour with her specifically because we started off with great communication. We were able to problem-solve very well for the responsibilities of her position that were giving her the most difficulty. Then also in my leadership team meeting our group was able to come up with a core set of group goals that we have laid out in front of us for the semester. I would say that when we were creating these group goals, we were using problem solving skills to narrow done what exactly we want to accomplish. This was all accomplished even though we had a half an hour earlier meeting time for the week. I realize that time of the day impacts communication within groups, but the extra time actually helped us have a more successful smoothing into the meeting. I want to maintain this good form of communication, and I know it is one the key goals our group has identified.

The other group that I am in definetly is using two-way communication in order to get everything done. Even though we do have one collective leader who handles many of the logistical issues within the group, it never feels as if she is using authoritatian communication. We also have a lot of discussion and consensus towards many of our decisions. This past week was the kickoff of our program and there was really a minimal amount of communicational errors. The main breakdown I have with communication involves understanding why we are unable to have more college and student partners. I have all these ideas for new possible college partners and I did not find out the answer to my questions until the middle of the week. Along with that I unfortunately missed our weekly coordinator meeting due to a trip for my YMCA club. I honestly do feel like I let down the group. The majority of the reason being that I could have told them much earlier in the week about missing the meeting. As a team member I feel like it just is not fair to the other group members and I am hoping that we can rearrange meeting times soon. I have had with difficulties with the meeting time and I need to effectively communicate that with the team.

I enjoyed this reading on communication because once again it gives me some more grounding on the topic. We all know how important communication is and I know that constant reminders are key to following through with the art of effective communication.

Group Goals & Social Interdependence

The assigned reading on goals and the concept of social interdependence hit home with my work in the group of the YMCA Club. Like you might know from my past entry is that due to unfortunate events I was unable to attend our first official leadership meeting. Fortunately I had no surprises for my life and I was able to have a fairly constructive meeting regarding group goals. We were all able to tap in our ideas for what we thought would be effective group goals for the semester. We did not have as much discussion but once the meeting concluded I was able to type them all and look at them with my advisor. We plan to take these goals and really work on solidifying them within the whole group. This will involve constant reminders and conversations regarding the overall vision of the group’s success. I was also able to sit down with every member of my team this week to talk about their individual goals. I heard great things from the whole team regarding what they expect to get from this experience, and it had a strong correlation with the group goals. As the leader of this group, I hope to help every member of this team reach their goal. If for some reason I am not able to, I will see it as a way that I was unable to reach my individual goal. My individual goal is to be a coach and resource for this whole team so they can reach their potential. As for the trust factor, I know that there is a sense of respect but I am still waiting to see that strong bond grow within the group. I am not trying to say I do not see a bond forming, I just know that there can be factions within the group. It still appears though that the group is looking forward to working in a cooperative fashion this semester. People plan to use and take advantage of each others resources in order to reach our goal of offering an effective student organization that offers professional development, volunteer work, leadership opportunity and FUN!

The Partners Group still has yet to really establish any group or individual goals within this program or team. The reality though is that we all do have a shared vision, and that is to run a successful program that helps the youth. In order to run a successful program, we all understand that we need to set up the college and youth partners up for success. We all do have separate styles in successfully achieving this outcome, but we all share a vision. This past week we have strived for this vision by successfully training the college partners and creating structure for the program. There is no real competition with anyone in our group, and we have worked cooperatively to get the job done. You can sense that the group has naturally been gaining more trust and comfort around each other as time has past. I really look forward to the first week of programming to see how our group is able to work with the demands that these youth and college students bring.

The First Week of Groups

The first full week of school is coming up to its finale and it was great to finally get the ball rolling with the two groups that I am a part of. The two groups that I am a part of are formatted much differently from each other and my role differs in both. In one group my role is to direct and lead six people through decision making processes, strategic planning and be the liasion for the community. For the purpose of this blog series they will labeled as team Mighty Ducks.

The Mighty Ducks were able to have a great full day retreat this past Sunday at our local East Campus facility. It was the first time we all met together as a group, and we were welcoming three new members. Fortunately these three new members already knew the majority of the group already, so the transition was not too difficult. The one thing I wanted to make sure I did was to have one-on-one meetings with the new members before the retreat, so they could gain an understanding of what the Mighty Ducks were all about. I tried to play the observer/participant role so I could be engaged in our discussion but still see habits of each group member. This helped significantly because I was able to acknowledge that some members of the group are shy to give their opinion while others are not. As the leader of the group though I need to make sure that I work to hear everyone's thoughts. I felt like the activities and role plays that we conducted were successful, and with the help of my advisors we were able to connect them with our group dynamics. The real tester was when we finished our team building activities and started to talk about the good stuff. This good stuff included an hot issue that our organization has been puzzling to solve for the past year. We certainly went over our time limit for the discussion but it was great to see how the group interacted. Once I felt that we got to the point where we were saying things that already had been heard, I decided to step in to take the leadership role in making a decision/plan. The group had a consensus agreement with the decision and we conducted it this past week at our meeting. One big help for our group was the fun games we played during our breaks, and these helped our brains refresh. The group definitely had a great time and it was a good fresh way to start the semester out.

The rest of the week due to family reasons I was not able to spend as much attention with the group as I would have liked. I unfortunately missed our weekly Mighty Ducks meeting but it was great to watch our new Vice President step in to run the meeting. The day I came back I was enthrailed to see that all of the Mighty Ducks group was there to represent our organization at a Campus Fair. I am really excited to see where the rest of the semester takes us, and how we continue to use what we learned from our retreat.

In the other group I am a part of I have a much different role. The group dynamics include six undergraduate student and a graduate student who is meant to serve as our advisor. The groups responsibilities involve creating programming for an after school youth program that runs from Monday to Wednesday. For each day, two of us will be at our site supervising the activities of the day. We are given the title of being known as the Site Coordinators. Even though the GA is meant to serve as the leader for this group, it is evident that she still is comforting herself into the role. This is mainly because she has never been in this program before, and is still really trying to figure out her role. Overall though already it seems that she is a very easy to person to get along with who will be a great resource for the group. We had our first real official meeting on Monday in order to get ready for the semester. We started it off with some fun games and then got into the whole programming part. Unfortunately it took us a good fifteen minutes to really start a productive conversation where we put our ideas onto paper. I would say the main reason for this was because we still are trying to figure out who is supposed to actually be the leader of the group. It ended up being one of the six undergraduate students who was a Site Coordinator last year who took the initiative to organize all our great ideas. After we were done creating these great ideas, it ended up being me who played the role of making sure that we got all the group involved. I love to make sure that responsibilities are always being shared, so I asked one person to relinquish one of their duties to give to another person. Our two hour meeting was a great first step for getting the program started. We will meet up again this week to fully plan the remainder of our semester and plan the orientation for our staff/volunteers. It will be interesting to observe how the group reacts and works with each other for the remainder of the semester. The best name I can think of for this group will most likely be Team America

The remainder of the semester should be a great one with Team America and The Mighty Ducks. I really like how for each group, I am given a different role and this should help my development with group work. I will be able to see two different worlds of working with groups and really develop my group skills the best way possible.