SLC Reflection Next Steps
My service action proposal helped me to grow as a relational leader since it forced me to think about and utilize my different skills. Though this sounds strange, this proposal was exactly what I needed to truly think about my leadership skills. I think the two biggest parts of the project that used relational leadership were when I picked my organization and then when I took the interview and actually making the proposal. In both cases, I had to consider a variety of different elements such as my own interests, but also the needs of the community. By default, I felt I had to use my relational leadership skills of ethics and purpose in order to brainstorm my ideas. I felt that this project really helped me to learn more about my supposed weakness in ethics, since this whole semester I felt like I could never implement ethics. However, after this proposal, I feel I have a stronger understanding of this relational leadership concept. I unknowingly took my own morals and beliefs into account in order to decide I wanted to help the elderly. While planning the proposal, I also used ethics to help me decide the “how” of my project. I wanted the talents of seniors to help encourage other people to think ethically and decide to help improve senior resources.
Though I feel this project has helped me to grow as a leader and show me that it is possible to plan great things, there are still a few areas I need to work on. As mentioned above, I feel that in making the proposal, I gained strength in the relational leadership areas of purpose and ethics. However, going forward, I feel that I will need to step up my game in empowerment. My proposal included the empowerment of my organization, Total Life and other senior resource centers to get the funding they need. This idea is great, but that also means I will need to develop as a leader in order to empower these organizations to take action and choose to participate in my Senior Craft Fair/ Advocacy event. I will also need to empower different senior centers to send in crafts and be willing to staff the event. Lastly, I will need to empower different volunteers to help run the event. As a leader, I need to work on my social skills enough to feel confident and to be the driving force that sets this project in motion. That is something that is rather scary to me. However, from what I learned in class, a strong leader will need to take charge, but also help to motivate others to take action. This project is entirely possible, I just need to maintain my drive and willingness to actually take that charge.
The SLC class was a great introduction to relational leadership and connecting it to being a better leader and making decisions. In my case, I feel a “How to Empower Others 101” would be really helpful. I feel like we talk about some of the pieces in what makes a good and strong leader, but I still am not confident in my ability to actually execute any of those tips. Besides something to learn, I will need as much staff as possible, so ILV villagers could help the staff my event. At this time, I am not sure the size of the event, but I do know that it would be a lot easier to work with volunteers that I know and trust. In which case, I would also need to be able to empower them to help at my event. With all of this empowering, I truly think I would need a class seminar or CL event to empower me on how to empower everyone else.
My top three strengths are Achiever, Harmony, and Input. I feel like my latter two strengths of Harmony and Input will best relate to my struggle with empowerment. I am constantly trying to find ways to bring people together and I want people to get along. This will likely drive my decision on which additional senior organizations I want to approach. Additionally, my strength as input will likely motivate me to do a lot of research on each organization before executing anything. I am a very cautious person. In a way, I can see how this can be beneficial to helping me empower others since I will need to know the specifics and what’s going on in order to direct others. However, I also feel this strength could actually be a downfall to the project. I have a tendency to gather a lot of information, but also to overthink. This could lead to me overcomplicating even simple details.
My next steps for my own leadership development would be contacting Anna to discuss potential CL programs or seminars/ speaker series that could help. This also means filling out the Fall First year survey for ILV. Giving feedback would be the best way for Anna and the CL’s to know what I need, and other villagers need in terms of leadership development. Secondly, I feel that if the village cannot help me with my desire for empowerment skills, I could go to the Office of Leadership and Civic Engagement. This is a great resource because they have a plethora of one-time workshops targeting different skills necessary to a successful leader. A past workshop was entitled “Working with Difficult People.” If I would have known about these workshops sooner, I obviously would have been better off, but now that I am informed, I will be on the lookout for upcoming workshops that can help me to attain my development goals.
I feel my leadership philosophy has stayed about the same throughout the project. I am a very planned and organized person. I like to be well informed before taking risks. At the beginning of the project I contacted several people in an attempt to find the right community partner. I could have done my interview sooner, but I chose to take the time to think through my questions and plan out how I wanted the conversation to go. When I called, my planned questions led to a successful conversation so that when I went to plan out my Service Action Proposal video, I had all my information. I wrote a transcript and bullet points to outline my reflection and proposal. Each step of the planning and executing process, I had a plan. Going forward with this proposal, I fully intend to keep forward thinking and planning. However, after having spent half of this paper discussing my issues with empowerment, I plan on seeking advice and counsel on the best ways to get sponsors and organizations on board, then I plan to act. This is the only minor change I feel is necessary to the project, just to increase my chances of gaining support.
Overall, I am pleased with how my proposal turned out and my goals to implementing the project. I do have some things I need to work on, but I am confident that with some help, this project can be a success that will help elderly people throughout my community.