Leaders and Followers

I realized that all leaders need followers and during class we discussed this idea. I thought this was a valid point. The way that a leader treats their followers can greatly impact their success or failure. It is very imperative for a leader to treat their followers/teammates with respect. Leaders need to give back to their followers in order to succeed.

Also during class, we were asked "will an outsider pay for what you have" and this was very interesting. Currently I am job searching and this is a very important question. I need to be able to offer companies something that they can't live without and have leadership abilities that makes them clearly understand why they should follow me in the future. These are two very hard questions to answer and I know I need to make strides to improve these two areas.

Two Themes

The themes of the class are leading others and leading self which is imperative in leadership abilities. I found leading self to be interesting because this has to do with the first two weeks of class. We had to lead our self and take on a leadership role to make sure we did assignments on time and turned them in. It was up to the individual to make sure they completed their work, no leader was there telling them when things were due and how to accomplish them. I thought this was very interesting to see the variations in individuals when leading themselves. The emails that were read in class gave examples of the various differences in individuals ability to lead them self. Some individuals did not turn in assignments or struggled to make components of the assignment work. I think this really did challenge individuals leadership skills and their capability of finding a solution. As for learning to lead others, people definitely need to learn how to do this and improve their skills because they will be doing this in their work environment. We have not experienced this that much in class yet but will once we start working with groups. Overall, this course can be very beneficial but I believe that it is in the student's hands on what they choose to get out of it. If you apply yourself you can improve your leadership abilities but if you decide just to do what you can to get by it will be less beneficial.

The Queen

Today during class we watched The Queen to observe leadership aspects. The class actually had organization compared to the last class, with the help of the TA, Courtney. It was interesting to see how many people tried to asked her questions in order to get some answers but obviously she had instructions not to answer these questions. Students are still trying to obtain structure and leadership in this course but I think they should just relax and try to do assignments to their best ability. They need to be flexible.

Leadership without defined tasks is chaos.

Again class was interesting due to the lack of instruction. All through college, students have gone through semesters with structured courses where the whole semester is outlined and discussed in the syllabus. I believe that this course is trying to get students to go against the norm and not be so structured. I think it is good for students to have a course like this because it helps us be more flexible and learn how to adjust. Especially when it comes to leadership, individuals need to learn how to be able to adjust to different situations. The leadership that was displayed in class was good and bad. I do think it was hard to lead the class today due to the fact that the individual that stood up had no authority or idea what they were to accomplish. It is hard to lead others when the leader does not know their intended goal and tasks. The class had a combination of leaders and individuals that would follow but overall the whole class period was chaotic. Through the semester it will be interesting to see the dynamics of the class continue to evolve.

In the beginning...

The first day of class was very interesting since the class structure was completely different than what most students are used to. Most students do not respond well to mystery and unknown circumstances of class. I think this was done on purpose to see how students would respond and which students would take the lead and try and provide some organization for the class. Also, I think the first class was structured this way to see how students would interact with each other and which students would take the responsibility in trying to provide information to the class and be a leader.