At first, I thought being a leader was simply stepping up, and taking control of a situation. While that may be considered leadership to some, as I have learned in this class, that is only a microscopic piece of the monster pie that is leadership. Throughout the class I have learned that leadership is not only stepping up, but also involves communication, a vision, and trust.
According to K & P, leadership is an ability that must be learned. It is a practice that must be observed throughout a period of time. One might feel that he or she can walk right into a room and start to lead, which is something I used to believe, however, since joining this class; I have determined that leadership is not something learned overnight. In order to be a successful leader, one must have trust from the group, and trust in himself. The group must have faith in the leader that he will lead them in the right direction, and the leader must have confidence in himself that he can lead with dignity, and will not fail. The leader must have a vision as to where he wants his group to go. If he does not have a vision, then he really has no purpose for leading. Communication is a key for any type of leader. When the leader is able to communicate his vision and thoughts for the group, the group will begin to have more faith in him, but when the leader fails to communicate, his leadership, and the group will fall apart.
For me to be a more successful leader, I feel that I must incorporate these principles into my daily life. For example, during the football season, I was able to lead by example through my effort, behavior, responsibility, etc. but I feel that I was never able to communicate my goals and ambitions that I had set for the team. Although we achieved our ultimate goal, which was to win a state championship, I feel that I never clearly made my goals for the team clear in order to have a more exciting season. As the season began to draw on, and everybody grew tense and began to lose the sense of fun in football, as a leader, I failed to try and get everybody to look at the bright side of the season, and at times, I actually began to show negativity, which was a bad thing for me to show as a leader.
Dear Big Boy Van, I am glad to see the post because I felt the same exact way until taking a leadership class. I think it's interesting that you feel it takes time to mold a leader rather than a person just being able to lead at birth because I feel the exact same way. Thanks again for another great blog post and I will be back again soon to comment on more.
ReplyDeleteDavid, you have pieced together a series of good posts. You are connecting class discussions and content to your posts, which is key. Your interview with your uncle was substantive; he really mentioned several of the concepts we had explored in Kouzes and Posner's work. My only critique with that post is that you could have made these connections more explicit. I appreciate your honesty in the above post. As you know, becoming a leader is a journey and it requires a willingness to be self-reflective, as you have been, in order to advance down the road. This post had more puntuation and typographical errors than we would like to see; be sure moving forward to proofread these before you post. Keep up the good work!
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