My Leadership Philosophy

My personal definition of leadership is the ability to help guide and work with a group and work together to achieve a common goal. I think that there are many ways that a person can be a leader, or be in a position with leadership without fitting into the definition that I provided. Leadership is difficult term to provide just one definition for, because there are so many ways that the role of a leader will change with each situation that they are. I think that my style of leadership is to step up to the role of leader when it is needed. I typically do not seek out leadership positions, but rather wait for them to prevent themselves, and then take advantage of the situations. I try to incorporate the ideas of everyone, while making my ideas

There is a part of me that would like to go out and lead whenever possible and make sure that everyone knows that my opinions are the correct ones, but in our society it is frowned upon for a woman to be upfront and take a position of power without being labeled as bossy. When I was younger my older sister would always try to read to me or make me play the games that she wanted to play. At that time I saw her as bossy because she was always in charge and never let me do the things that I wanted to do. Not only did this make me want to ensure that I steer clear of being an overbearing leader, it made me understand what it is like to be in a position where your ideas are not heard, or are heard but disregarded because the leader has the authority to choose how things will be accomplished. I have also been in situations where I had to share my leadership role even though I believe that I deserved it more than others. In this situation it is important to realize that while I may believe that I will have the most effective leadership, other people will typically have the same confidence in themselves. Also each person has their own skills to bring to the table in leadership roles, therefor it is typically a positive thing to have more than one leader, because it will be easier to relate to a larger group of

I think that the one aspect of the relational leadership model that is easiest to relate to is to be inclusive. In all of the examples that I shared it has been important to be inclusive of everyone's ideas. With my sister and me, I wanted her to include what I wanted to do into our games. This would have been able to not only empower herself as a leader, but it would have empowered me and allowed me to understand that my ideas were just as important as anyone's. With the shared team captain role I was team captain of a volleyball team with 3 other teammates. I had to ensure that I was empowering others by not putting them down just because I wanted the role more. This also led to me putting in extra effort to be as ethical as possible because I did not want to make any decisions or choices that would lead to someone getting hurt. Because I knew that I was emotional about the topic, I had to try to be extra