Explore Leadership

This honors experience encompassed my enrollment and completion of the exploring leadership honors seminar during the summer semester 2013, at the University of Cincinnati. The class had a very small enrollment, 6 students, which allowed much more one-on-one attention with our Ph.D. professor, Dr. Ken Dillard. In this seminar, I learned the different ways that I can lead people and how I can become a leader. Through different leadership theories within the chapters of our textbook we learned how leaders can differ through traits, culture, gender and more. Certain theories taught us how we could emphasize and balance different aspects of leadership such as maintaining a good relationship with our followers, but also staying goal directed and driven. The goal throughout this seminar which was stated early in the term on the first day of class was for us to establish our leadership identity, by writing our a leadership theory. This theory could be completely comprised from original thought or could encompass different aspects of all the leadership theories that we had learned each week. We learned through the history of different leaders what did and did not work for them as they led certain generations, social classes, cultures, and genders in the past and integrated this knowledge into our own theory. Each person in the class read a leadership book, outside of our normal textbook reading, that we wrote a report on and my leadership theory had many aspects of the book that I read, Spirituality and leadership, intertwined within it. I chose to enroll in this class and complete it because I wanted to gain as much knowledge as possible so that I may become an influential and effective leader in the near future. I have never been a leader other than the Captain of my cross country team at Notre Dame Academy, but hope to become a leader some day after I complete my Ph.D. By doing in home care for elderly clients, through St. Charles Villa, I have become a leader. I have become a specific kind of leader to those that can no longer take care of themselves. Through this occupation, I have learned how much your followers or people that look up to you can rely on you and expect answers from you as their leader when anything small or large goes wrong. I learned through this leadership seminar that in order to be an effective leader you do not need look or act like a powerful human being, but only to be a source of guidance and wisdom when things dont go as planned. This class taught me that anyone, whether outspoken or quiet can but a leader. This was a meaningful experience as the seminar has given me the confidence that will make me able to effectively lead people in the future, whether it be to an elderly person as they get through their daily activities or to employees that may work under me someday. This experience exceeded my expectations, because I didnt know that I would be or would even be able to write my own leadership theory by the end of the semester, a leadership theory that can be useful to me and to anyone else that leads people in the future.

This experience relates to other honors experiences that I have had in my laboratory in the past. I have always been a follower in UCs CCR Laboratory, and shortly after taking this leadership seminar I started to become a leader as I took on my own project. This seminar gave me the tools and confidence to become the leader that I needed to become in order to complete my senior thesis. Previous knowledge and a specific skill that I obtained before completing the leadership seminar was the skill to be able to unite and empower the team and all the different members that were part of that team. All 72 teammates brought different strengths weakness, and personalities to the table and I worked to overcome this obstacle. Other knowledge that I previously gained through my job was how to give elderly clients confidence that they were able to do difficult tasks once again after injury and also the ability to console them when things werent going just right. Through this seminar, I acquired more diverse people skills as I gained the ability to talk with and lead people that are much different than me. In general the class deepened my understanding of leadership by making me more open minded and aware of the ability that I leader has to change the course of peoples lives through his/her abilities and actions. Below you can find my very own leadership theory and what I feel makes someone an effective leader and what also makes people united as a team. I have chosen this item as an artifact of my experience because it ties in all of knowledge that I gained throughout the entire class and brings it back to the aspects of leadership that stood out in my mind individually as a person and a leader.