Group Memo

Even though Professor Feinberg said our group leaders failed the class, I don't think Sarah is when it comes to our group. Since everyone knows how the exam was, I want to analyze how my group leader is doing so far. Sarah is thinking ahead and organizing our group great! We have two times set to work on our group memo and she is including everyone in the process. Sarah is asking for our thoughts and opinions and not trying to push what she wants on us. She is constantly communicating with us and giving us a heads up on important info for class (ie extra credit!) Sarah does an excellent job of clarifying expectiations as well. Hopefully this keeps up the rest of the semester!

These are all qualities that a great leader needs. I am really glad to be in a group where I feel included and there is lots of communication. I bet our group will be the best in the class :)

Tower Building

So this week we got our team leaders. I got lucky with a good group and leader! My team leader Sarah has been very helpful and has established a open communication system. Which is very important for a leader, so this is a good sign :) During the tower building exercise, when we first went out in the hall she asked us if we had any ideas for the tower. After we discussed ideas for minute she then delegated responsibilities to the group members so we could get the tower built in the time we had.

Since I just read the "It's Your Ship" book, I'll relate her leadership style to that. Our first e-mail we received she put her phone number in it and made sure if we had any questions at all to e-mail her. Sarah has established an open-communication system which is going to be very important in this class. Sarah was also acting like the Captain when she asked what we thought should be done to build the tower. When the Captain first took over the ship he interviewed each member to get to know them and see what they thought should be done on the ship. Sarah did this on a smaller scale, but with the same principles. She wanted to get our input so we could build the best tower our group could, and we did :)

Even though we did not win the overall competition, I think we won our first battle as a group. :)

Leadership Workshop

I really enjoyed listening to Kirk Weisler Monday night. I learned a lot from him in that short amount of time. A lot of the things he talked about was "common sense" but yet a lot of us do not take the opportunities he was talking about.

The thing that stuck with me the most from what he said was "readers are leaders - leaders are readers." I am not a big reader at all but Kirk got me excited about wanting to read several of the books he talked out. They seemed to have topics in them that I could apply to real life. I would have probably never heard about most of those books if he had not come to talk to us. I wanted The Dog Poop Initiative book to read at our next staff meeting and was so excited when we each received a copy. We have not really had any major issues on this topic, but I still think it would be a good idea to read it just as a different way of doing the meetings. I want to be like Kirk and inspire my employees to want to keep learning, not only about fitness but being leaders too. They are all leaders in their own areas and like Kirk said leaders need to keep learning.

Kirk was a great example of a leader. He inspired me (the non-reader) to want to go actually buy some of the books he was talking about. He was able to capture our attention and keep us engaged for a long time. Kirk also gave us several lessons that we will be able to take with us on our leadership journey. He wanted to give us examples of how he applied these lessons in real life, which was easier for us to pick up the concept of.

Hopefully the leaders in our class were at the workshop and listening to what Kirk had to say. This way they can be contagious and inspire us!

Choosing Leaders

This week in class was pretty interesting and a lot more fun. I really applaud the people in class who got up and spoke in front of the rest of us. They are all leaders of some form in my opinion. But I could defiantly tell who I would want to be a leader from the beginning just from their 20 second speeches. What I look for in a leader is someone who is outgoing and personable. Someone who has some experience leading others and who has clear goals. Also, someone who can work well with all different types of people. If you could get up there, answer a random very open question, and make us laugh at the same time you are pretty good. There were a few that still stick out in my mind, while the others I probably could not even pick out again or tell you something they said.

On Wednesday it was so interesting to see that each team that came in did the exact same thing. They got their assignment then huddled together. Even the last team huddled, but they took their assignment a completely different way. It was obvious who the leader was in that team, but they all were brought out to be great leaders in the end. They all participated in doing their assignment and was enthusiastic and outgoing. I would like to have any of them as my leader for the class.

It will be interesting to see who the leaders of the class will end up being...