This week Nathan S. Ward, Assistant Director of Student Leadership, gave us a lecture titled "Great Leaders throughout History: Leadership Characteristics of Notable Leaders."
Some things that were impressionable in my mind were some quotes that he gave us.
"the best leaders inspire people to rally around a change, while poor leaders have to push, cajole, or even threaten employees to accept change." -John H. Zenger & Joseph Folkman-
"who you are affects how you lead."
For the past week I tried to live a life of example. It was very difficult sometimes when I was extremely tired to read my scriptures before going to bed. But I managed to read a chapter of New Testament and a chapter of Book of Mormon every morning and night no matter how tired I was. Sometimes, I feel that I ought to be doing more than just living my life in my role as a leader, but when I try to think about what I ought to do to lead, I realize that I really have nothing to offer my roommates as a leader, except my own example. However, one thing I have tried to do is be humble, positive, and uplifting. Many times this week, I felt very distressed and cynical. However, I made efforts to find the silver lining in the cloud and I let my vision be filled with the silver lining. I think that's how I got through this week - by being positive. And I could tell that my attitude could have much influence on the attitudes of my roommates. When I was happy, they became happy. When I was down, they became down. Attitudes are contagious, and I was able to uplift them by motivating myself to be positive. So instead of trying to push them and cajoling them to be positive, I inspired myself with a positive attitude, and in turn, I was able to "rally" my friends around my banner of positivism. Though on scale and in importance, this fades compared to the accomplishments of other leaders, I look upon these experiences as every-day stepping stones to acquire experience and attitudes necessary to brave through the harshest storms. Hopefully, I can continue what I am doing next week as well.
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This is a very thoughtful post. I was taking a leadership class in the Marriott school last semester called organizational behavior 3xx (I forget the number...) that had us test social contagions. We had to act out a certain attitude around people and see how they would react. We, of course, learned that happiness breeds happiness, interest breeds interest, cynicism breeds cynicism, etc. I doubt we have to compare ourselves to other leaders to see how effective we are, because whoever we are interacting with at that moment can be dependent on our attitude. We cannot expect to mean everything to everyone, but we can realistically expect to mean the world to anyone we talk to at that very moment.
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