Andrew Towns 1

Leadership Philosophy Paper II

Throughout the course of this class we discussed many different styles of

leaderships and have heard from people in various industries about how they apply

leadership in their lives. Initially My view of leadership was one of an absolute

authority that has the best intentions of the group in mind, biblical leaders like

Moses. But seeing how broad the definition of leadership really is and how many

different styles there are has changed how I view leadership. Leadership is just

driving a group towards a shared goal, whether you are the one making all of the

decisions or just sharing your viewpoint and allowing the group to decide, either

can be a form of leadership.

Although we didn’t really talk much about the assessments in class it was

interesting to see how I scored for the true colors assessment, a tie between green

and orange. I think we were told to pick one if we had a tie, but honestly looking at

the color personalities it seems to me like a mix of the two is a good fit. Just from

the papers we were handed out it says that green is a visionary, strategically

centered, and that orange is trouble shooter, and action oriented. To me this

seems like someone can adapt to new situations to solve problems. In my campfire

story I talked about my experience in the chess club in high school. In high school

chess actually took up quite a large portion of my free time as I was in love with the

game. I believe my specific personality uniquely lends itself to the game and my

true colors results seem to agree.

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The leadership theory that I identified with was Transformational leadership.

While I do think leadership requires different approaches to different situations, for

instance some organizations would benefit more from servant leadership than from

transformational, I believe transformational is the one I can see applying myself to.

Transformational leadership just sounds amazing by definition. Idealized Influence

of Leaders, Inspirational Motivation and Ability to Inspire Confidence, Intellectual

Stimulation and Creativity, Individualized Consideration of Group Members, how

can you go wrong with all of those things? However I am not a very charismatic or

especially inspiring person, I’m more of a problem solver than delegator.

When I talked about my disappointing experience with leadership in the

chess club in high school I had thought about ways to ensure that didn’t happen

my second time around with chess club 2.0 here at UC. The club worked out fine in

high school and I had fun but it didn’t really feel like my leadership meant anything.

It was more of a group of friends playing chess than an organized group with a

goal. And for that reason the club remained small and exclusive. If I had

established my role as a leader by being open about my vision for the club and

discussed with the other members what they wanted out of a chess club maybe we

could have made some action toward that goal. Perhaps the 4-stage model of

group development was what we were missing. Without asking others what they

want or where they want to go it is nearly impossible to make progress, or any

attempt comes at the risk of destroying the group.

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Having taken this class I am much better equipped to interact with people in

a leadership setting and have acquired many skills through which to enact

leadership. Skills such as getting on the balcony and how to avoid work avoidance

and identify when it is happening. Having speakers come in and give us a real life

account of what leadership can be in the workplace was a great help to my

understanding of the theories we discussed in class. It can be hard to talk about all

these theories and methods without a situation to apply them too, and even if you

do understand it will be quickly forgotten if not used. Maybe my beliefs on

leadership didn’t exactly change but they were certainly expanded.