HDF 290 Reflections

Retreat Reflection

The first retreat activity which had a lasting impact on me was the discussion about where on the continuum of good to bad leaders different famous figures should be placed. I remember that on several instances I found myself disagreeing with much of the group on the grounds of ethical leadership, arguing that in order to be a good leader one must be leading one's followers to a better future. I'm not sure I knew how important ethical leadership was to me prior to this activity, as I don't believe I've ever been challenged to discuss leadership in such a way. So in that way this activity was an invaluable opportunity for me to cement my values in my mind, which is itself a crucial step to good leadership, according to the 4 V's theory of ethical leadership (citation).

Another activity which had a lasting impact on me was the discussion of the StrengthsQuest strengths. It was enlightening to discover that our class collectively had nearly all of the myriad strengths of the StrengthsQuest, and it was interesting to hear different class members speak about how the strengths personally apply to them.  I also found that repeatedly writing down classmate's names on the sheet of strengths was a great way to learn their names. I also liked how the activities collectively blended emphases on how we share both many similarities (such as the activity in which we walked to the center of the circle when something that a class member wrote about themselves also applied to us) and many differences (such as when we had to share something different about ourselves to unhook our arms from the group). Also effective were the activities which emphasized both similarities and differences concurrently, such as when we aligned ourselves at different ends of a spectrum based on our responses to different questions and discussed our responses with people near us on the spectrum.

It was also helpful to have a presentation and discussion about the requirements of the leadership minor, as I probably would have been more confused about them otherwise. However, when we discussed the inventory on the retreat, I remember feeling very unprepared to work on it. This was largely due to the fact that I was just starting my first semester at URI and had not kept any of the work I had done at Lehigh University prior to transferring, so I was worried that I would not have enough evidence for the inventory. Fortunately though, throughout the semester my classes provided several experiences which fit the qualifications of the leadership inventory, so by the end of the semester I felt much better about my chances of succeeding with it, and actually ended up having more evidence than I needed.

An activity which I do not believe has had a lasting an impact on me was when we had a name of a famous figure taped to our back and we had to ask our classmates yes or no questions about the person to find out who he or she was. Perhaps I just missed the point of the activity or perhaps it was mainly meant to just break the ice and get us talking to each other, but either way I believe I would have benefited from either an explanation of the purpose of the activity or from the activity just being removed from the retreat. Another activity which I don't believe has had a lasting impact on me was when we directed a blindfolded classmate to build something by speaking only a limited number of words at a time. Something that I did like about this activity was that it was interesting to see from an anthropological perspective how we eventually adopted a system of clapping or stomping to communicate whether our blindfolded classmate's actions were accurate or inaccurate, but I did not perceive a readily evident link to leadership in the activity. Again, maybe I just missed the point of the activity, but in that case I would have benefited from a clearer explanation of what the purpose was.

Overall though, I found the retreat to be a fun opportunity to think about leadership in different perspectives and interact with my classmates in meaningful ways. The fact that everyone seemed very active and engaged despite needing to devote their Saturday morning and afternoon to it spoke volumes to how effectively it achieved those purposes.

Organizational Leadership Reflection

I believe the business unit of our class was among the most valuable of our units. The presentation based on an interview with a leader in the local community was a great opportunity for me to connect with and learn from a leader in education reform, MET School co-director Nancy Diaz. I was initially apprehensive about the assignment because I was unsure whether someone  in a prominent position would be willing to make time to have an interview with me when there was little to no incentive for them to do so. However I eventually realized that I would be able to incentivize the interview by also proposing doing a separate interview for a short documentary on the MET School for my Psychology of Learning class which they could in turn potentially use as promotional material. So it may have been mainly for that reason that she ended up being willing to meet for the initial interview, but either way, it was an enlightening experience to speak with her about how she thinks about leadership. Among the lessons I've taken from that experience were the importance of asking oneself what one is willing to fight for, the ability to use previous disillusionment with the education system as an impetus to help change it, and approaching leadership as a relationship-building position in which one focuses more on empowering people to make good decisions than micro-managing.

Another very rewarding aspect of the business unit was the ability to have a group discussion with the guest speakers. I've been very interested for years in learning about the mindset of successful entrepreneurs, but this was the first time I've actually been able to ask them questions about that mindset. Some things they mentioned which have had a lasting impact on me are the importance of constantly challenging the way one approaches problems, understanding that even when there initially appears to not be a solution there almost always is, the importance of constantly networking everywhere, and the value of trying to repay collaborators with business services when money is too tight to pay them monetarily.

Another of my favorite parts of this unit was the extra credit paper on the meaning of progress, which I was able to use to write about the value of constantly thinking about how one's actions impact the collective existential enjoyment of oneself and the people one cares about. I wish I had made more of an explicit connection to the unit in my paper, but nonetheless it still provided a great way to orient myself to think about what the ultimate purpose of organizational leadership should be.

The extra credit paper was also a main area where my StrengthsFinder strengths were able to shine through, as it gave the Ideator in me the opportunity to think about the broad and widely relevant concept of progress, gave the Futuristic thinker in me the opportunity to envision a world in which more people shared my understanding of the meaning of progress, gave the Strategizer in me the opportunity to plan how I would organize the paper, gave the Learner in me the opportunity to conduct some independent research on the meaning of progress (in this case by watching a TED Talk about measuring national progress based on how much a nation improves the happiness of its citizens), and gave the Achiever in me the opportunity to earn extra credit in the course. The interview presentation was another area where a couple of my Strengths came in handy, as the Strategizer in me helped with thinking about the best way to plan and incentivize the interview, and the Learner in me guided me to choose an interviewee who I was interested to learn about anyway, which made the project more of an enjoyable learning activity than a chore.

The main aspect of this unit that I believe could have been improved was that it did not seem long enough to give the issue of business leadership the deep consideration which I believe it deserved. As I write in my inclusion reflection, perhaps the business leadership unit could be lengthened by shortening or removing the inclusion unit.

Educational Leadership Reflection

The education leadership unit was also among my favorites. This was especially true for me because of my dream of being a leader of an educational institution, but I suspect that it was also interesting to others in the class because we are all members of an educational institution so it bears relevance to all of our lives. My favorite part was again the presentation on education, because it gave me an opportunity to learn more about leadership in education, a topic for which I have highly intrinsic interest. It gave me the opportunity to conduct additional independent research on the MET School and learn about it in ways that I would not have solely with the initial interview and the MET School video project, and to integrate and apply this research and sound bytes from the video interview in a coherent and novel way.

I also very much enjoyed the guest speaker in this unit, Dr. Dougan. It was interesting to see how someone in a position normally seen as responsible for keeping students from creating chaos actually sees a lot of value in things like protests and is mainly just concerned with keeping students from crossing into potentially dangerous territory with their activities. As such it was in interesting example of how a leader's mindset and values might be different than one would suspect based solely on stereotypical conceptions of his job. Dr. Dougan also provided a useful example of effective public speaking, showing the value of speaking slowly and intently, pausing and repeating points for effect, and making strong eye contact.

The extra credit essay was also among my favorite parts because the topic, excellence in education, was important and relevant to everything that was discussed in unit and provided a great opportunity for creative and critical thinking. Similar to the first extra credit paper, it was also a main area where my StrengthsFinder strengths were able to shine through, as it gave the Ideator in me the opportunity to think about a the broad and widely relevant idea of the meaning of excellence in education, gave the Futuristic thinker in me the opportunity to articulate my vision of an excellent educational institution which I hope will exist in the future, gave the Strategizer in me the opportunity to plan how I would write the paper, gave the Learner in me the opportunity to relate the topic back to my learning about education in previous classes, and gave the Achiever in me the opportunity to earn extra credit in the course. The education presentation was another area where a couple of my Strengths came in handy, as the Strategizer in me helped with thinking about the best way to plan the presentation in conjunction with my MET School video so that I could apply some sound bytes from the video interview in a different context and incorporate additional research about the MET School, and the Learner in me guided me to again choose a topic that I was interested to learn about anyway, thereby making the project a more intrinsically enjoyable activity.

An aspect of the unit which I believe could have been improved upon, however, was the timeline assignment. I can see the value of starting the unit by thinking about how much education has changed due to leadership in the field over the years, but the role of leadership in each of the events we presented was typically not clear, so the relation to education leadership seemed questionable. Similarly, while the admissions challenge was interesting in that it showed the differences in opinions about what people perceive as valuable in a student body, the link to leadership in education was again not as clearly emphasized as it seemingly could have been.

Family Leadership Reflection

The family unit was also a very rewarding unit, which was surprising given that I did not initially think family leadership would even be part of the course. When I thought of modern leadership issues, family leadership had not really come to mind, but in reflection I see now that it should have, because leading a family is probably the most impactful and challenging leadership position that most of us will ever have.

The guest speakers were again among my favorite parts of this unit. Rarely if ever have I had an opportunity to ask people personal questions about their families and the challenges they faced within them, so I cherished this opportunity. Among the points they discussed that had a lasting impact on me were knowing when to pick your battles and submit to little things rather than turning them into an argument, and to recognize that the values one has for a short-term partner may not coincide with those one has for a long-term partner.

I also valued the case study as a novel and interesting way to apply leadership theories to a conflict which resembled one that we might have in our own families. However, it also revealed a couple areas way in which the course could have been improved. For one, it seemed like we hadn't learned enough about decision making strategies to effectively apply any such knowledge to the paper, revealing that perhaps more emphasis should have been placed on decision making at some point in the course. Also, it seemed like too much time was being spent emphasizing the importance of being extremely impartial and always providing multiple options. I can see the value of doing so as a marriage counselor, but it seems that as a leader of a family one would often need to voice one's preference for one option over another so I don't see why the emphasis on impartiality was so crucial to family leadership. Perhaps I am just missing the point here, but if so then I may have benefited from a more explicit explanation of why impartiality is crucial to family leadership.

The extra credit essay was again among my favorite parts of this unit given that the topic, the meaning of a "good" family, was crucially pervasive to everything in the unit. And it was again a main area where my StrengthsFinder strengths were able to shine through, as it gave the Ideator in me the opportunity to play with ideas about what constitutes a "good" family, gave the Futuristic thinker in me the opportunity to articulate my vision of what a truly good family would look like, gave the Strategizer in me the opportunity to plan how I would write the paper, gave the Learner in me the opportunity to learn more about the topic by watching a TED Talk about agility in families and relating that to my paper, and again gave the Achiever in me the opportunity to earn extra credit in the course. The case study paper was another area where a couple of my Strengths came in handy, as the Strategizer in me helped with thinking about different options to suggest in the paper, and the Ideator in me helped me think about how ideas from leadership theory could be applied to the case study.

Inclusion Reflection

Largely due to how much I enjoyed the other three main units, inclusion ended up being by far my least favorite. I do see a lot of value in promoting inclusion in the workplace and believe that  emphasizing a diversity of perspectives is probably very beneficial to most organizations. However at the end of the unit I was left unconvinced that inclusion is a major enough area to be considered on par with business, education, and family as units in a modern leadership course. This seems especially true considering that issues of inclusion are, if my understanding of the job description of most human resources managers is correct, typically more salient in the mind of an HR manager than a leader of an organization. It seemed like the most important issues of inclusion could have been addressed in a class or two rather than an entire unit. As I explain in my final reflection, shortening this unit could have enabled for a deeper and more fulfilling exploration of the other units. As I've said before, I may have just not fully understood why this unit was so important, but if that was the case than a suggestion for improvement would be to more clearly explain its importance.

In accordance with the lower level of interest I had in the subject matter, unsurprisingly the guest speaker and main project of this unit were also among my least favorite. Regarding the guest speaker, it was inspiring to see how someone with such a debilitating condition is able to muster the spiritual strength to continue trying to make the best of her life. However, the link to leadership was not very clear, so I don't believe I learned as much from it as I learned from the other guest speakers. Regarding the inclusion case study, a lower level of interest in inclusion as a topic led to less intrinsic interest in the assignment. Also, the intellectual benefits I felt I gained from the family case study of applying my knowledge in a novel way were not as present the second time, as writing a second case study felt more routine and repetitive than novel.

There were, however, a couple activities within the inclusion unit which I did like. One was when we were prompted with a difficult workplace situation and asked to split into a group which favored one action and another group which favored another, then communicate our perspective to the other group. I thought this was a great way to spark a deep dialogue about controversial situations, was pleased to see how engaged everyone was in the activity, and was left wishing that we had more time to continue with the debates.

Also, as always, the extra credit paper provided an excellent opportunity to think creatively and critically about a widely applicable topic, in this case the meaning of opportunity, and to exercise my Strengthsfinder strengths. It gave the Ideator in me the opportunity to work with ideas about the most important aspects of equal opportunity, gave the Futuristic thinker in me the opportunity to think about what a world with more equal opportunity would look like, gave the Strategizer in me the opportunity to plan how to organize the paper, gave the Learner in me the opportunity to learn more about the topic by watching a TED Talk about the benefits of greater economic equality and relating that to my paper, and of course again gave the Achiever in me the opportunity to earn extra credit in the course.

Final Reflection

Generally, I've been very interested in the assignments and activities of this course throughout the semester. Though there were times when I felt that I might have benefited from a clearer explanation of how what we were learning related to leadership, I still generally found most of the content of the course was relevant to my interests, so it was not difficult to maintain intrinsic interest in the assignments throughout the semester. I consider the guest speaker sessions specifically to be among  the most rewarding classes of any college course I've taken, and the freedom provided by the extra credit essays made them among my favorite assignments of the semester.

I also found the leadership inventory to be a great way to reflect on my learning and consider how I have grown. More specifically, I've developed a greater appreciation of how much I've improved my self-discipline and my ability to manage emotions and stress. The inventory also gave me an opportunity to explicitly articulate my intrinsic values and how I am integrating them into my life. It provided a medium for me to reflect on how I have grown as a leader in all of my classes this year, by accountably leading my COM 100 group project from start to finish, by clearly planning and achieving objectives in my MET School projects, by planning and conducting interviews in those projects, and by working collaboratively in group projects in all of my classes. It also allowed me to reflect on what my strengths and personality mean to me and how I can apply them to my long-term goals. Lastly, it gave me an opportunity to critically think about what I've learned about leadership theories in this class and apply a few of them to my vision for the Eudaimonia Institute.

As you can probably tell from the depth of the personal application of them in leadership inventory, the 4 V's of ethical leadership was the theory that really stood out to me as one that will probably most influence my current and future practice of leadership. As the introduction section of this website shows, I have spent much of past few years identifying my values for a couple years, and developing a vision based on those ideas, and I am now moving into the third and fourth V’s of voicing my vision and acting with virtue in service of my vision.

My main criticism of the course is that I believe it would have benefited from making inclusion a subtopic rather than a main topic, and spreading out the other three units. This would have given us more of a chance to absorb and apply information through the semester. At times, particularly during the theory presentations, it felt like there was so much information being given at once that it would be impossible to retain much of it. Indeed, when I went back to the theory presentations to write my inventory, it often felt like I was learning about the theories for the first time since I was hardly able to retain anything from those presentations.

That one criticism aside though, I've found Modern Leadership Issues to be probably the most pedagogically interesting course I've ever taken. I appreciate how much the instructors took risks with the format of the course, as it led to a course in which essentially every class felt very different than the last, which seemed to lead to the whole class being more active and engaged in this course than in any other college course I have taken. Though there were some aspects of the course that I do not believe worked as well as others, there were still many more hits than misses, and hopefully the suggestions in our reflections will be used to further refine and make it an even more rewarding experience for the students in the next HDF 290 class.