10. Examples of self-care

In my church there is a lady named Rose who exhibits very little self-care. She is a woman dedicated to the needs of others, has an extremely compassionate heart, and has difficulty saying no. Due to her inability to establish strong boundaries, she is a woman who is often misunderstood and therefore used by others. Because she seems to rarely directly confront, she gets into many frustrating circumstances and is forced to either take care of far more than an average volunteer should have to, or has to bow out of duties, therefore letting some down.  I have learned from Rose to be very direct in what I actually want to do and what I don’t.  Otherwise, people take advantage of statements which are open for debate.  Therefore, if I want to avoid feeling used, I need to emphasize clarity in communication and lay appropriate boundaries.

A good example of self-care is another woman who is close to me named Roberta. Roberta has a very solid relationship with God and tries to pray about everything before she commits to it. She is also very straightforward in her communication; there is no questioning what her intent was. She sets solid boundaries and confronts if she thinks it is necessary. These things help protect her from burnout and preserve self-care.  I can learn how to say no, set up boundaries, clearly communicate, and seek God in all I do from her example.

9. From elementary school until now

My idea of leadership in elementary school comes down to one word: dominance; Dominance by teachers, parents, friends’ parents, older classmates, siblings, and authoritative peers. During the ages of elementary school, there is little freedom from any authority figure- you do as you are told, or you get in trouble. The authority figure, or leader, has all the control in the relationship and there are consequences if you do not bow to their authority. For example, if you disobey your parents as a kid, you are punished; if you do not do as the leader in your group of friends wishes you to do, you are ostracized.

This view on leadership has definitely changed since then. Now I see an effective leader as someone who works with the group’s best intentions in mind. This is harder to see as a child but has become clearer to me as I grow older. An effective leader is respected, not because of their dominance but because of their caring authority, wisdom, and respect of their followers.

The shift in my views began in 5^th grade. I had a Sunday school teacher who told us if we wanted to draw or whisper in class, we could; I was absolutely dumbfounded at his permission and I rarely did either of those during his class because I wanted to please him. I had other church teachers on Wednesday nights who would spend a lot of the time listening to us girls talk- talk about everything. They rarely offered their opinions or judgments and it was a very safe place to share. At that point in life, almost no one else was allowing those same freedoms, I was still dominated over by peers and authority figures, yet those three teachers showed me how you can respect a leader and be respected by a leader. They made all the difference.

8. My Personal Values

It was difficult to take my whole life and sum it up into three personal values I try to live by- it seems like there need to be at least ten to accurately cover everything! However, after reflecting for a time, I realized these three were the most frequently used by me and were the ones I looked for the most in others as well.

1. Faith. While this may seem obvious as a student at a Christian college, it is more than just a shallow value for me. In addition to my faith in basic Christian principles, it extends deeper in my everyday such as living with few worries by relying on God instead, or trusting that God's promises are true.

2. Honesty. I believe without honesty, there is no possible way to have a solid and healthy relationship with anyone else. Without honesty, there is no trust, and without trust there is no foundation for a relationship. Lying is also something which I believe can be easily avoided, so there is no reason for it.

3. Appropriate vulnerability. I believe it is important to open in relationships and willing to admit it when you are wrong or when you have an issue. However, I threw appropriate in there because there are some people who over-share with everyone and are so vulnerable and needy that their relationships quickly become unhealthy.

7. Discussion Questions

1. Why is disagreement so important to committment to a goal?
2. Does consensus voting ever work for reaching a decision in a group setting?
3. Can a group survive if there is never any arguing or disagreement?
4. What are some boundaries for effective arguing?
5. When is it not appropriate to debate decisions in a team setting?

6. Communication

As I read the text and reflected on the listening self-evaluation, I had the realization that communication, while being regularly engaged in, is not something we normally think about. So in response to the question of my communication style, after mulling over it, I came to the conclusion that a singular communication style was not possible for me to settle on. Therefore, I am a self-proclaimed unassertive/assertive communicator. While my communication almost never falls into the aggressive style and mostly stays within the assertive area, there are times where I find myself being unassertive. For example, if someone asks me to take a shift at work I only feel comfortable saying no if there is a definite reason for me to do so. Otherwise, I remain avoidant of them, say yes when I really don’t want to work for them, and am completely uncomfortable until I tell them no.

As far as listening communication goes, I scored above average in listening; however, I am aware that this is a self-evaluation and I may be biased. While I scored myself highly in most areas, there were a few distinct points where I saw a need of improvement in. One of these is something I began to recognize earlier this year and this is my poor habit of interrupting. I get so excited with a thought that I feel the need to jump in with my idea! However, this is an area I am going to work on improving by being aware of the issue. Another listening area I am weak in is that I tend to give advice when someone confides in me, whether it was asked for or not. In the future I plan on holding back in this area or at least asking if they want my advice.

Unintentionally related to communication is the ethical dilemma I encountered. While counseling at a Bible camp one summer, a co-counselor and friend of mine had a camper who told her something in confidence. The secret ended up being about a terrible situation of abuse that this young person had endured; my friend was left wondering whether she needed to report this situation or whether she should keep it a secret, given that she had been told on the condition that she never tell anyone. My friend eventually decided along the lines of care-based thinking, where she reported the situation, although it the girl may not have wanted her to at the time, because it was for her greatest good and was something my friend would have wanted done for her if she in that situation.

5. Ethnicity

While gender and race play nominal roles in my leadership development and values, ethnicity plays a slightly greater role and the harder and longer I look, the more I realize its impact. In my previous blog, I stated that my foundational values were: faith, hard work, generosity, compassion, and humility; when I look at where I was raised and my ethnicity, I realize how much influence these have on my values. For starters, my mother is full-blooded Norwegian and my dad is full-blooded German. Both were born and raised in small towns of rural Minnesota- my dad in central Minnesota and my mom in western Minnesota. They raised me and my siblings in a small town in Northern Minnesota. Both my hometown and the communities where they were raised value hard work. It was expected in their rural sub-cultures and now my sub-culture that you work to earn what own.

As far as other values go, something that comes from living in small towns is the generosity and compassion. Since you know the situations of many individuals and families living around you, many lend helping hands when someone is in a rough time of life.

Faith plays a huge role in the ethnicities and traditions of my parents. My dad grew up in a primarily German community and was therefore, unsurprisingly, raised Catholic. It was part of every dynamic of life for him growing up. My mom, raised in a primarily Scandinavian community was raised Lutheran, which is also not surprising.

As far as leadership goes, I don’t think my ethnicity plays much of a role. While I may, unfortunately, have more opportunities for leadership because of being a middle-class Caucasian woman, I do think this influences the way I lead; I try to follow the examples of solid leaders who have gone before me.

4. Values

As I sat down to think over who has influenced my values, I realized I first had to identify what those values are; which is something I do not frequently consider. So after some thought, I compiled this short list:

·         Faith

·         Hard work

·         Compassion

·         Humility

·         Generosity

While this is obviously not a complete list of everything I value, these are definitely foundational truths to my life.  The biggest influence to these values was and is my family. While this may come as no surprise to most since the family is a primary tool for socialization, it kind of surprised me- mostly because I had not thought about it before.

Faith is truly a product of my upbringing. My parents are wonderful Christians who love God and love me. They installed many of the beliefs about following Christ that I hold to this day. While my faith is now my own, it is still something which came from my parents.

When I think of nearly every individual within my family, hard work is prominent descriptor. Both of my parents and most of my siblings have worked so hard to get to where they are in life now.  I have learned the value of earning what you get and loving what you do. Along with hard work in my family comes generosity. My parents are giving people- especially to their kids, but it is expected that we will work hard for it. For example, my parents help pay for some of my college tuition; however, it is expected that I will work to earn the remainder of what they don’t pay for.

Finally, compassion and humility were instilled in me by my mother especially. First, to love and help those who need it and second, to do so without ever thinking I am better than them. My mother’s favorite saying is, “Pride comes before the fall!” and it is something she quotes often, especially when she thinks one of her children or my dad are getting a little too prideful about what we have accomplished.

3. Being left out

It is true that at some moment in life, every person has experienced being an “outsider.” For me, this happened in 7^th grade; I was homeschooled throughout elementary but decided to go to public school for a few classes in 7^th grade. I was in volleyball so I had made friends through that before school started and once school year began I quickly made friends with nearly everyone. I did have one specific group of girls whom I ate lunch with every day, but I wasn’t really part of their group. I learned my lesson that year that by being friends with everyone, you really aren’t friends with anyone. I didn’t have a group to hang out with on the weekends because everyone already had their set groups that they spent time with. As the year progressed I realized I wanted to become better friends with my lunch crew but they were a very tight-knit bunch with a charismatic leader and they weren’t really looking for another member to their group. I would hang out with them in school a lot but when it came to being outside of school, I was never invited.

This began to change slowly at the end of 7^th grade as some of the girls in the group began to hang out with me more in school but the most progress was made in 8^th grade when the group fell apart and suddenly all of them wanted to be friends with me. I guess in their minds being friends with me was better than being alone so my popularity greatly increased. In fact, I soon became best friends with that charismatic leader and we have remained best friends to this very day (so this angst-y teenage drama does have a happy ending!) However, it would have been a happier story if my best friend today would have been more welcoming at the time by inviting me to events or if one of the other girls in the group would have had the guts to invite me over to develop the friendship more.

2. Different aspects of leadership

One metaphor which strikes me while I think about leadership is a tree. In this metaphor, the leader is the trunk of the tree, the solid support system while followers, or collaborators, are the leaves who rely on the tree for support and guidance.  Another aspect of a tree is that it does not always have leaves on it which, in the leadership context, would mean that a leader is not always a leader in every situation. As a tree does not always have leaves on its branches to support; there will be times when a leader is a follower instead.

This metaphor is a fairly modern way of looking at leadership, which agrees with my views of contemporary emerging theories rather than the traditional roles of leadership. The newer views of leadership make more sense to me as a student leader rather than the traditional view that leaders control their followers to do whatever they command. I appreciate contemporary views which say that there is interaction between leaders and team members where they can influence one another towards their common goal; where ideas can be shared, critiqued, and used. This is how leadership should be.

A different part of leadership is looking at how the team functions. Being on the orientation leader team is both like a machine and a weather system. On one hand, the orientation leader organization is well ordered, with student directors guiding us orientation leaders, and with faculty members directing those student directors. There are guidelines, expectations, and regular communication to ensure that no one is left behind. However, this organization is also like a weather system because each of us orientation leaders manages our own teams, or labs, of students independently. Therefore, each lab will go differently as each leader chooses the activities that they see fit; but even in this there is some steering from our directors on how we should each lead our team of students.

1. Leaders and Collaborators

Previous to the reading, I would have described a leader solely as a person with a strong, charismatic, and influential personality who inspires others to follow them. I still think that this is somewhat true; however, I realize this is only part of the story. According to ideas written in chapter one of Exploring Leadership, people view leaders in many different ways: from the view I described above to the other far end of the spectrum in which a leader is not a recognized individual but rather a group of individuals working together toward a common goal, with each person contributing equally to the ideas and direction of the group. I think I am settling with a mash-up of both examples where there is a distinguished leader who contributes largely to the group yet receives much counsel and direction from the co-creators in the group.

These thoughts on leadership lead me to consider whether I consider myself a leader or not. Before attending North Central I would have easily responded, “Yes” to this question. Now, however, I am left wondering about this. If I am a leader, am I good leader? By all technical standards, yes, I am a leader. I am an Orientation Leader, a leader of the nursery at my church, a former worship leader, and a leader in friendships. Yet I have put so little thought into the effectiveness of my leadership and my leadership styles that I am left wondering if I am a good leader.

This brings me to realize a few things which I hope to learn through Leadership Development: how do I lead? What is the best method of leadership for me? In what situations is it better that I lead and when is best for me to be a collaborator instead? I know that through my experience of being an Orientation Leader I will be able to grow and hopefully test out new ideas which I learn through this class.