Teamwork

This week's topic was about teamwork which was pretty helpful for me in my activities. I really loved the comparison of types of people in the world. There are fire starters and fire fighters. The starters are the ones who are optimistic and help get a goal accomplished while the fighters are the ones who bring others down. As a pyro I love the comparison. I've always seen myself as a fire starter amongst my peers and hope I always will be. I think a great leader is somebody who can inspire all those around them to accomplishing a common goal. Not only do they get the goal finished, but they get everybody to be excited and cooperative in reaching it. This week I tried to get people to become excited about common goals and bring teams together to accomplish our dreams. I found that if I found the "fire starters" the success happened much faster. Happiness and optimism is way more contagious than negativity. Another thing that I liked about the presentations were the levels of relationships. At first I thought it would be best to have a significant relationship with everybody, but as I ponder this I've come to a conclusion that every level of relationship is important. If everybody were your best friend it would be a little hard to be a good leader. When we strengthen others they in turn strengthen us. Teams are important and I hope that I can always be the best team player that I can be so that my team as a whole will prosper.

Somehow friday went by real fast

So I forgot to post this by friday last week, but I thought I'd do it anyways. Last week we learned about leadership styles. There were many kinds of leaders, but there is one that is most important. This style is the situational leader. This person must know how to act in different circumstances, because sometimes one style won't work as well as others. One thing i've been trying to do is look at circumstances and think about what I'd do if I was in charge. It has helped me see things differently and brought me to a realization that I'm not always right. I can't be perfect, but I can try to be. My weakness is trying to work with details and actually making things happen. I'm great at the big ideas and creativity which is my dominant trait. This is great in some instances, but not as much in others.

Strengths and Weaknesses Dam

This week we focused a lot on our personalities and how we can become more effective leaders by analyzing our strengths and weaknesses. One question that came up was "What should we focus on and improve... our strengths or our weaknesses?" After lots of frustration in our class on what we need to work on, I came up with a great metaphor to better answer this question.

Think of life as a dam. Not just any dam, but one made of rocks and sticks and mud. We don't have an unlimited supply of resources, only the materials given to us or that can be found in the surrounding area. The dam represents our personality... it has strong spots and it has weak spots, but regardless of how good it is, a dam is a dam. The water in this case represents certain challenges or scenarios. Like life, times change and different obstacles come our way. Spring, for example, has stronger currents from melting snow. This could represent a difficult period of our lives. Often this spring can be related to our young adult life where many different paths face us and we have many choices to make. Here we must strengthen our weak spots in order to protect ourselves from being washed away. The seasons change and so do our challenges. Fall for example has slow currents and is a perfect time to fortify our strong spots to prepare for the future.

The most important thing that we should realize is that we must have moderation in all things. Focusing on the extremes is rarely effective in the long run. As we observe ourselves we must always be aware of our pros and cons in order to progress. Not only should we learn from ourselves, but from others as well. Learn from mistakes from history, learn from the successes of our ancestors, learn what works and what doesn't so you don't have to get in difficult positions that have happened before.

ENTP

Recently, I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to learn a little bit more about my personality. The outcome of this test was Extroverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving (ENTP). This result wasn't much of a shocker to me. Personally I don't think that these tests are a revelation, but more of a tool to help us understand our personality better and how to associate with people who have different characteristics The description of ENTP says "Quick, ingenious, stimulation, alert and outspoken. Resourceful in solving new and challenging problems.Adept at generating conceptual possibilities and then analyzing them strategically. Good at reading other people. Bored by routine, will seldom do the same thing the same way, apt to turn to one new interest after another." This nailed my personality right on the head. After putting to words what I probably would have had a hard time doing I am now able to look at my strengths and see where I must improve. This will also be effective in teams and on projects by helping me find what types of people I need to get multiple views and strategies to complete a task. Hopefully I might be able to improve on my personality and can use it to become a more effective leader. No personality type is better than another, and each have their own set of pros/cons. If we can realize that we're all different from another and that we are children of God and are striving to be like him we will have great success in dealing with our fellow men (or women).

Servant leadership

This week we talked about servant leadership. I felt that this is important because you must be a servant before you can be a leader. A quote that really caught my attention was

“A servant-leader is a servant 1^st... it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead” –Robert Greenleaf

I decided to focus on giving service to others this week and see how it benefited my leadership. Some things that I did included helping a friend with a broken car, computer support for a kid in my hall, and just being there for people when they need somebody. In doing these basic things I found that the amount of influence I had on others increased. People were more open to asking for my help and were more likely to come and talk to me. I think this is necessary to being a good leader. When you win over the hearts of the people being a leader is much easier. Service is a great way to gain the trust and strong relationships from others. I'm trying to be like J. Willard Marriott and doing MWBA... or management by walking around. This happens by opening up myself to others and even basically walking door to door and seeing what I can do to help everybody. Service also brings humility and can direct motives in the right direction to lead others in the good way.