Reflection on Leadership 1301

Prior to taking LDS 1301 with Professor Freed I had taken two student leadership classes in high school, been part of the student leadership committee at my church, and considered myself to be a leader. And while I still hold that to be true, I now know so much more about what it means to be a leader. I’ve learned so much about the different types of leaders and how the world’s view of leaders have changed over time. I’ve learned why certain leadership approaches work better in certain situations better than others, and I’ve learned more about myself as a leader throughout the course of this class. I will be able to apply what I have learned in this class throughout the rest of my life. It will help me to better understand the relationships between leaders and their subordinates in situations when I am in a leadership position as well as in situations when I am being lead by someone else. If I had to summarize the most influential take aways from this class in three main points the first one would be leadership is more than just guiding a group from point A to point B. A true leaders is more than the person to which others follow, but someone who values relationship with others, values ethical decision making, and encourages others to do the same. A true leader brings out the best qualities of those around him or her and uses them to achieve a common goal. The second take-away that I value from this class is the broad spectrum of types of leaders and leadership approaches. This helps me to remember that we are all leaders, because someone who is great in one area may not be best suited to lead others in another area. Instead, we can learn to develop our own personal leadership philosophies and apply them to our every day lives. The third main point that I will take away from this course is the importance of leading authentically. To me this means developing and figuring out who we are as individuals and as leaders and sticking to it. It means to stay true to yourself and to the things you value and always leading in an ethical manner. It also means developing an authentic leader-subordinate relationship, and understanding that just as much as subordinates learn from their leaders, leaders also learn from their subordinates. It is these three take-aways and more that I will continue to instill into my everyday life and into my own personal identity as a leader.

Academy Lecture: Jessica Cox

An overwhelming theme in Jessica Cox’s message was to not let your own fear hold you back from doing what you want to do. She certainly did not let any fear associated with her disability hold her back from doing and achieving what she wanted to. Cox spoke about being persistent with yourself when going after something you want, saying “desire is 80% of success”. When you have a desire to do or be something and work continuously for it you can overcome all fear and doubt. I can relate this to mylife, because oftentimes I feel like I could accomplish so much more if I wasn’t fearful of failure, of disappointing others, or of the what-ifs involved. It is this fearful thinking that holds us back so much more than anything else. We must overcome our fears so that we can build up fearless leaders who look beyond the challenges and setbacks we face everyday. It is important for leaders to be persistent and focus on the main desires of a group, because otherwise it would be way to easy for a group to succumb to their difficulties and never make it to the end goal. Leaders must be able to see past these difficulties so that those they are leading can learn to see past them as well. The less time we spend focusing on the difficulties in our lives, the less prevalent they will become, and soon we won’t even see them as things important enough to hold us back from achieving our goals. This is the mindset that I believe leader, as well as everyone else, should strive to have. If we don’t have our own doubt and fear holding us back then we really don’t have anything holding us back at all.  By believing in our own abilities, focusing on the positive, and overcoming our fears we can achieve whatever is set before us and encourage others in doing the same.

Academy Lecture: Colleen Coffey

I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Colleen Coffey on the subject of mental health. I especially enjoyed this lecture because in addition to providing us with important and valuable information, Dr. Coffey also shared her personal story. She spoke as if she was having a casual conversation with us, and used language that helped her relate to the room full of college students. Her story helped me to understand that mental disorders are a wide variety of different things, from short-term challenges all the way to diagnosable and prolonged disorders. It opened my eyes to the fact that people don’t have mental disorders because they are crazy, but people experience mental disordered because we are human. Like Dr. Coffey said, “we all will deal with emotional difficulty to some degree in our lifetime”. These difficulties will look and be different for everyone, but as a friend and as a leader the best response we can have to others experiencing emotional difficulties is to apply the contact theory. This means breaking down walls and barriers to meet with others in authentic communication and relationship. We can do this by opening ourselves to others so that they will do the same, creating an open dialogue about the difficulties we are facing, and sharing stories with each other. We all experience difficulties, but we can find comfort, healing, and peace in taking the time to open ourselves to the help of others and also presenting ourselves in way to help others as well. We all desire to be known, to have someone who cares about us and to be connected to other people. There is a direct relation to having this sense of belonging and to how we feel about things as well as to our mental health. Having that primitive need for community met improves how we feel about ourselves as well as provides us with a group of people to turn to when going through a difficult time. As servant leaders, we are called to put the needs of others first, to build them up, and to foster that sense of belonging. The simplest way we can do this is by loving one another without condition and judgment, just as we desire to be loved the same way.

Academy Lecture: Dr. Bassard

            In her lecture to the Academy for Leadership Development Dr. Bassard focused on two main characteristics of leaders: vision and voice. She focused on these two main points through out her speech. She started out by stating her belief that leadership is more about influence and vision than a title, position, or power. This is something that I strongly believe to be true. Dr. Bassard spoke about the vision of a leader, how a leader sees what others don’t see and sees with eyes of faith as God calls upon them in their life. She spoke about how leaders speak up for things that others won’t, and how they speak the word of the Lord and trust that He will work through them. I appreciated her connection between the work of a leader and the call of God on their life, because I think they go hand in hand. I believe that often times we emerge as leaders because we are called to take a stand or take action for something that the Lord puts on our heart. Dr. Bassard talked about how often times the path of our leadership, or our passion, will call out and find us. As leaders we are called to “look for the half empty shelves” and look for the gaps in society. It is in these gaps that the Lord often calls us to lead. This is a concept that I had not thought about before, but it aligns with my belief that we are called to lead and that God places us as leaders in certain situations for a reason.

I also learned from Dr. Bassard that leadership also has to do with personal values and our own individualism. We are all called to be leaders in different ways and in different situations. Often times we look down upon our selves and think that we can’t lead others or even do something ourselves because we aren’t a certain way and can’t do a certain thing. But as Dr. Bassard said, it is the very things that make us different and the things that we often don’t like about ourselves that God uses to make us into the very leaders He calls us to be. He uses the things we don’t understand about ourselves to fulfill His will for our lives and to lead others. Although we don’t understand it, part of being a leader is trusting yourself and trusting the Lord’s plan for you. This can be hard to do, especially when things don’t go go as we planned for them to, but we must trust that His plan is greater than ours. We must do what is right, advocate for others, and speak up for injustice.

I can apply what I have learned from Dr. Bassardd to my everyday life by living a life guided by faith. I can keep my eyes up for what the Lord calls upon me, for the things that I can stand up for and make a difference for. I can go against the status quo of society and reach out to the broken and misunderstood. I can be a leader without having an official position of power, but by simply speaking up for another and putting others before myself.