My philosophy

In my opinion, leadership is about being able to follow others while knowing when the time is right to be confident and voice your thoughts and emotions in a way where others would want to follow you. I think leadership is also about bring able to recognize your mistakes and let that drive you to do better the next time. I would relate the word "strong" because, when you consider yourself a leader, I think it's about how you bounce back from disagreements to losing. My philosophy is most people think of competitiveness and a person being a" know it all" when you think of leadership, but leadership is mostly the opposite because you should understand you have to sometimes have to follow people to get them to follow you back. I know as a leader that you cannot please everyone and make everyone happy, but I feel you have to be likable and be able to relate to others. When you have a common bond or similarity with another person, it is easier to share your opinion and thoughts and easier to help one another. For example when we did the activity with the pipes and trying to get the golf ball in the cup. There were many times where all of us had to follow one another. This was easy to do because we all had a common goal, which is to get the ball in the cup. When one idea did not work we were trying another person's idea and follow their lead. This was a important factor because no one had the attitude that came off as bossy. There might had been times when we disagreed but this was not a obstacle. At the beginning of this course I had a preconceived notion about what I thought leadership was. I was considered a leader to others and to myself but I did not deeply know how to be a follower. I thought leaders never followed unless they really had to. I now see the correlation between the leadership and following others. It does not mean your weak when you humble yourself to follower in certain situations. It simply means you want to be open minded to what others believe in or value.

What altered my perspective on leadership

During the zebra/water activity. The action that re-framed my thought about leadership, was when Adrienne and Anna had a disagreement. I personally never really took the time to understand why a person was shy to voice what they believe or be confident in their ideas although they are a leader. I noticed with Anna's reaction to what Adrienne said and Adrienne's delivery. I know we were crunched for time and we all were trying to figure out a way to solve the puzzle. However, since this was a group setting and we were in a small space, not communicating in a effective way  was a great example of how we as a strong group of leader have to become followers at some point. In this situation, Anna and Adrienne had strong beliefs in their ideas, and they both wanted to heard. They were confident in their thoughts and were competitive about whose idea would be better. I agreed with Matt when he was really excited about the different reactions that took place during this activity. Everyone in groups had different experiences and different types of ways of communicating. This altered my perspective on leadership because before this activity, I thought leaders have different ways of communicating and regardless if it's the right or wrong way, as long as the job gets done it's fine. On the other hand, after this fiasco that took place, communicating clearly and respectively is the right way to communicate. In the end we did not win this activity due to misunderstandings and not communicating with a open mind. I now understand why knowing how to utilize what you think a good leader should be is important to be a successful leader.