Byron's Leadership Philosophy

When one thinks of powerful leadership, football movies with aggressive, tough love coaches that deliver inspiring speeches come to mind: someone powerful and with huge presence. While it is true that such a person can be a strong leader, I personally utilize a different leadership style, and tend to lead using a different, but still effective leadership style that complements my qualities as a leader.

• Democratic - I definitely rely on the people around me to help me make informed decisions. Even if I know something is true/the best course of action, it’s still worthwhile to engage in discussion with those you are leading to ensure group cohesion and to get other people’s opinions.

• Aware - Understanding the mood/needs of the group is essential for effective communication and to interact with the problem solving process.

• Flexible - Being able to make exceptions to general rules or think outside the box is key to success - like Bono’s theories of differing hats, sometimes different perspectives or solutions are needed to accomplish a goal.

• Role Model - To motivate other people, you also have to exemplify the qualities you want to see in others. Personally, I try to be unbiased and open to suggestions; I see the leadership process where a leader guides those following towards a victory, not someone who pushes the group to success.

• Practical - It’s important to not overset goals and tell people to shoot for the stars. In the real world, real goals and honest leadership is what I try to exemplify.

To summarize my philosophy, I would identify myself as a leader that focuses on realistic goals that are in the interest of those being led.

Grace's Leadership Philosophy

What Kind of a Leader am I?

3 major qualities of a leader: Motivation, Proactive, and Communication

1. Motivation- Motivation is key to a leader's success. It is encouraging employment development through creation of higher job satisfaction. As a leader people look up to you and it’s your place to give them inspiration and reassurance. If you are not motivated to do anything, nothing will get done, this is why I believe positive reinforcement is needed. Even having employee of the month, or little things like that can increase someone's attitude easily.

2. Proactive- Being Proactive is having control of your life, and making choices based on value. You give 100% and think before you act, find a way to make it happen, taking initiative, taking responsibility. I have noticed in school when my hard work isn’t paying off, I get very discouraged. I want to give up and just stop trying. But then I had a new state of mind and took time to talk to my teachers, asked for help, and have a more positive forward view,  I did not give up. That is taking leadership in your life and that why being proactive is so Important to a leader’s success.

3. Communication- Communication is a quality that I believe is essential to have as a successful leader and even in all aspects of life. Communication is transmission of information and understanding from one person or group to another. Communication is so important because it helps in everyday life with people in the workplace, your parents, friends, and even leading a sports team.  If you can not communicate with other people you are going to fail at many things. Overall if a leader has  great communication skills, then they will successful in everyday life.

Overall being motivated, being proactive, and having good communication skills  are essential to being a good leader; but also what helps to grow to be a good leader is a person who learns from their mistakes and improves in the future. The best workers don’t give up! You can’t look at the obstacle as a thing that will stop you. Some people look at “impossible” as an obstacle, great leaders look at “impossible” as a challenge. If you can look at obstacles as a challenge then you will have a significant business and leadership impact by inspiring others. Those leaders are the ones who will inspire great people in their every day lives!

Tony's Leadership philosophy

Maddy's Leadership Philosophy

Being a good leader is about much more than having subordinates and telling them what to do. Leaders have to think towards the future instead of in the present. They have to set goals and work to accomplish them. They have to plan for successes and failures. They have to motivate and be positive. They have to be always aware of the people around them. To me, a leader’s true role can be summarized in two main points: never lose sight of the goal and relate well to co-workers.

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Never Lose Sight of the Goal

In order to accomplish this, leaders must:

• set accomplishable goals through intelligent strategic planning.
• define standards and minimums that must be met, but encourage goals to be taken above-and-beyond.
• organize themselves with a detailed plan and timeline.
• live by the statement, “Begin with the end in mind,” meaning to envision the desired end result and regulate the project to accomplish that result.
• keep priorities straight and not get caught up in insignificant details.

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Relate Well to Co-Workers

In order to accomplish this, leaders must:

• develop trust within their core group of employees, and show this trust by delegating important work to them.
• show respect in order to gain it.
• adhere to Theory Y (the assumption that employees like work, are creative, seek responsibility, and can exercise self-direction) and lead employees based on it.
• demonstrate positivity to motivate workers even when times are tough.
• cultivate good understanding with co-workers by being conscious of the best time and method to communicate with them.

Megan's Leadership Philosophy

My Leadership Philosophy

Adapting my Leadership Philosophy:

My sophomore year, there was a group of ten seniors on the varsity soccer team, all with very different leadership philosophies. Being on that team helped me to gain insight to the type of leaders that resonated best with our team and motivated us to achieve our goals. My junior year, I became captain of the team. I was not a perfect leader, but I strived to mimic the leadership qualities of some of the seniors that had graduated the previous year. After suffering a season ending injury, it was difficult for me to adapt to being a leader off the field rather than on. Through that experience and the lessons I’ve learned in this class, I’ve adapted a leadership philosophy that I now plan to use on and off the soccer field:

Goal Setter: Begin with the End in Mind

As discussed in 7 Habits, I believe it’s important for a good leader to be a goal setter. Those who set both long and short term goals are better equipped to achieve because they know exactly what they are working towards, thus giving them purpose and a definition for their own success. Goals also help a good leader stay on track and be proactive.

“If you don’t plan your plan, it will remain a dream.” -Richard Templar

Inter- and Intra- personal

As we discussed in class, I believe it’s important for a leader to be both inter- and intra- personal because leadership takes both insight to other people’s actions and emotions as well as your own. If you can’t reflect on your own actions, it’s not likely that you will be able to empathize and motivate others. This can be related back to the idea of synergy in 7 Habits.

"Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” -Colin Powell

Theory Y Leadership

After learning about both theories X and Y in class, I learned that I prefer to lead in a way that avoids micro-managing. I feel that micro-managing is frustrating to others and shows a sense of distrust among teammates or employees. Therefore, I think leaders should trust that their teammates are motivated, should be rewarded for their hard work, and are able to accomplish tasks without hovering. I feel that micro-management prevents growth among lower level employees or teammates.

“High expectations and trust is the key to everything.” -Sam Walton

Communication

After the communication unit, I’ve learned it’s important that when working as a group or team to achieve specific goals that everyone is always on the same page. Everyone should always know exactly what is expected of them, and that takes constant communication. To do this, all types of communication should be used wisely: verbal and non-verbal.

Communication- the human connection- is the key to personal and career success.” -Paul J. Meyer

Passion

Leaders emerge through passion. A leader is much more likely to inspire and motivate if he/she has intrinsic motivation. If a leader has a sense of passion, that spark can ignite others to become excited about their own work. This will lead to a domino effect of motivation.

“When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.” -Ronald Reagan

Think Win-Win

After reading this passage in 7 Habits, I realized that I’ve always thought far too competitively. Comparing yourself with others who are on your own team or in your own work setting is detrimental to group success and collaboration. A little competition in a work or team setting to motivate one another is healthy, but constantly comparing and competing can spark negative relations between co-workers or teammates.

“The world is divided into those who look at others enviously and those who look at others as a motivational tool.” -Richard Templar

My Journey into Leadership; Making an Impact as a Teen Leader

My Journey into Leadership; Making an Impact as a Teen Leader

Lobbying on Capital Hill

I believe that leadership takes form in many situations.

A leader is anything from the captain of the high school football team to the first person to speak up in a quiet room. There are leadership qualities within everyone, but it takes the right environment to reveal them. It also takes the right people to provide opportunity for leadership to prevail.

I believe that past experiences don’t necessarily define your future.

I have never found myself to be much of a leader within a school setting. In middle school, I was not close friends with anyone in school because I was too focused into my figure skating, a community that made me more comfortable to be a leader. I remember in 8th grade, I ran for student council and lost. I thought this would be the end to my non-existent career in leadership, because people didn’t believe in me. Towards the end of 8th grade, I decided to stop skating for many reasons, and I was left without a strong community to become a part of. It was difficult for me to regain connections with people from school because everyone had already found their place by then. I couldn’t find the leader within me to open myself up at this point. Luckily, graduation was right around the corner and soon thereafter, I would be heading back to overnight camp. I hadn’t realized until I went back that summer of Freshman year that this could be my community. Even though I only got to see this group of people for 4 weeks out of the year, I felt open and comfortable with myself and the people around me. I decided after that summer to become more involved into my youth group so that I could be a part of a similar community year round.

I believe that helping others will also help myself.

Since I finally felt comfortable with a group of people, I was able to become the leader that I had wanted to be before. Instantly since joining, I had become overwhelmed with leadership opportunities. Everything from group leading and planning programs to traveling and representing my region in a larger setting. I started my journey into leadership with becoming a member of my temple’s senior youth group board sophomore year. I was elected to be the social action vice president due to my involvement in Stand for the Silent, a non-profit anti-bullying organization. As I started to do more planning for my small youtah group of about 20 kids, I discovered my love for teaching about social justice and volunteer work. In January of sophomore year, I traveled to DC with 8 other teens to attend a conference on social justice and advocacy. I was so excited to be able to learn about some of the relevant issues in our government and have the opportunity to lobby to my state senators and district rep. Being able to do something like this made me become passionate about making an impact through social justice.

I believe in the impact social action being a gateway to leadership.

Regional Board of mine and another region being installed

I decided to take my passion further by running for the regional board of a North American youth group rather than my small setting temple one. I ran and won on the platform of creating a chain of impact. By that, I meant that I wanted to make an impact on them or towards an issue, to want to make an impact on another person or issue. Now that I am in a high position of leadership in my regional environment, I am able to provide more leadership opportunities in a social action realm for others to become inspired in the same way. Whenever I plan my social action programs for our events, I always bring myself back to the question of, “Will I make an impact?”.

I believe that making a difference as a teenager isn’t as hard as it seems.

Aside from my work in a religious setting, my work in this class has helped me be able to make an impact. The school spirit project allowed our class to create a sense of community within GBN. The T-Shirt committee gave people an outlet to express their love for our wonderful retiring principal, something that a lot of students were looking for. The spirit day committee helped in creating community by uniting people together through school spirit. Finally, the marketing committee helped out encouraging students to attend more events and follow through with spirit days. This organized leadership structure really helped us succeed in creating the impact of increasing school spirit. It is small projects like these that can have major impact on a community.

This I believe.

Jared's Leadership Philosophy 4-5A

Jared

• Honesty
• You are responsible for a team of people and it’s important that your business and its employees are a reflection of yourself.  If you make honest and ethical behavior a key value, your team will follow you.  Honesty was a key component in this class because students had to take constructive criticism from not only Mrs. Ingersoll but from their peers as well.  One example of how honesty was used in class was when we were brainstorming for ideas about the t-shirt.  Some people’s ideas were not good ideas so we had to let them know that their idea was not useful.  We then proceeding to tell them what they were looking for so the student could provide better ideas next time.
• Ability to delegate
• Its important to remember that trusting your team with your idea is a sign of strength, not weakness. Delegating tasks to the appropriate departments is one of the most important skills you can develop as your business grows. The key to delegation is identifying the strengths of your team, and capitalizing on them. Find out what each team member enjoys doing most. Chances are if they find that task more enjoyable, they will likely put more thought and effort behind it. This will not only prove to your team that you trust and believe in them, but will also free up your time to focus on the higher level tasks, that should not be delegated.  With a lot of group tasks, there are a lot of arguments about what’s a good or bad idea, who’s right and wrong and more.  Ryan Sterne, a senior and participant in Deca, took on the role of a leader and helped delegate issues and debates that were held within the class.  This provided social equality amongst the students and allowed them to work more on the project rather argue why they were right.
• Communication

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  Being able to clearly describe what you want done is extremely important. If you can’t relate your vision to your team, you won’t all be working towards the same goal.  Training new members and creating a productive work environment all depend on healthy lines of communication. Whether that stems from an open door policy to your office, or making it a point to talk to your staff on a daily basis, making yourself available to discuss issues is vital. Communication was key within groups because when group work was divided up, we had to figure out who was doing what.  In my group, we communicated who was staying in the classroom to make announcements about spirit days and who was to go make the posters to hang around the school saying what the upcoming spirit day was and when it was.
• Sense of humor
• Encourage your team to laugh at the mistakes instead of crying. If you are constantly learning to find the humor in the struggles, your work environment will become a happy and healthy space, where your employees look forward to working in, rather than dreading it. Make it a point to crack jokes with your team and encourage personal discussions of weekend plans and trips. It’s these short breaks from the task at hand that help keep productivity levels high and morale even higher.  In the book  7 Habits of Being a Highly Effective teen, the author incorporated humor through his personal life within the texts so the reader would find the reading educational, humorous and relatable.  I found the book much more educational when I realized I face some of the same problems the author does and how he created change in his life in order to compensate for the mishaps.  
• Confidence
• Part of your job as a leader is to put out fires and maintain the team morale. Keep up your confidence level, and assure everyone that setbacks are natural and the important thing is to focus on the larger goal. As the leader, by staying calm and confident, you will help keep the team feeling the same. Remember, your team will take cues from you, so if you exude a level of calm damage control, your team will pick up on that feeling.  In the movie Emilio’s Dream, a young African American man was born with disabled legs, like many others in his community.  Instead of giving up and accepting his fate, Emilio biked around his country in order to support his family.  When his story became public, people decided to help Emilio.  Emilio came to the US and got surgery so he could have prosthetic legs.  None of this would’ve been possible if Emilio didn’t have the high confidence that he had.

• Commitment

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  If you expect your team to work hard and produce quality content, you’re going to need to lead by example. There is no greater motivation than seeing the boss down in the trenches working alongside everyone else, showing that hard work is being done on every level.  It’s important to show your commitment not only to the work at hand, but also to your promises. You want to create a reputation for not just working hard, but also be known as a fair leader.  In order to see out projects, the members of the group had to be committed to work.  In class, Mrs. Ingersoll and students stressed the importance of commitment because if not everyone was on task and working then the project would collapse and fail.  Commitment also played a huge role in the trust exercises with the hula hoop outside.  We needed everyone to work together in order to raise the hula hoop up with one finger.  If we didn’t work together then it wouldn’t work at all.
• Positive attitude
• You want to keep your team motivated towards the continued success of the company, and keep the energy levels up. Keep the office mood a fine balance between productivity and playfulness.  If your team is feeling happy and upbeat, chances are they won’t mind staying that extra hour to finish a report, or devoting their best work to the brand.  A positive attitude is necessary when working on a project because if there is any negativity involved, it brings down others and it destroys the working atmosphere created by all the students.  Some students in the class have ruined group discussions and projects because they thought that the assignment was “mediocre”.  What they should’ve done is taken one for the team and tried there best because a negative attitude isn’t going to get you anywhere in life, let alone a high school class assignment.  
• Creative
• It’s important to learn to think outside the box and to choose which of two bad choices is the best option. Don’t immediately choose the first or easiest possibility; sometimes its best to give these issues some thought, and even turn to your team for guidance. By utilizing all possible options before making a rash decision, you can typically reach the end conclusion you were aiming for.  Creativity was key in our “Promote School Spirit” project because it forced the students to think on their own and outside the box.  Creativity was used to create posters, t-shirts, and new forms of notifying the student body about upcoming games (Giant posters with schedules).
• Intuition
• When something unexpected occurs, or you are thrown into a new scenario, your team will look to you for guidance. Drawing on past experience is a good reflex, as is reaching out to your mentors for support. Eventually though, the tough decisions will be up to you to decide and you will need to depend on your gut instinct for answers. Learning to trust yourself is as important as your team learning to trust you.  One decision making process that affected the whole class was interviewing teachers to be the new principal after Dr. Pryma retires.  Although we all had different ideas of what we wanted as a leader for the GBN community and most of the people were alike, we all came to a group consensus on who fit the part of being the next principal of GBN.  

• Ability to inspire

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  Whether everyone owns a piece of equity, or you operate on a bonus system, generating enthusiasm for the hard work you are all putting in is so important. Being able to inspire your team is great for focusing on the future goals, but it is also important for the current issues.  Acknowledge the work that everyone has dedicated and commend the team on each of their efforts. It is your job to keep spirits up, and that begins with an appreciation for the hard work.  Whenever Mrs. Ingersoll told us to share our ideas with our classmates or when we shared our finish projects with each other, everyone was keep to say “Good job” or “Nice work”.  Everyone worked together in order to promote a cheerful and happy attitude within the classroom, making working more fun.  Even though Mrs. Ingersoll told us we did a good job, it was nice to hear it from our peers because its a different type of recognition.