Course 1: Exploring Citizen Leadership (1016)
Exploring Citizen Leadership 1016 was the second part of a course that I took during the fall semester of my freshman year. This class discussed and studied leadership from an individual “inner” focus to an “outward” focus on how we work effectively in group leadership scenarios with others to achieve positive change. During the second section of this course, we had recitation groups that met weekly to focus on a community group or project. My group chose to focus on a community garden in Pulaski and we worked through ideas of how to enhance their garden to reach a larger number of people in the community. We were also expected to be very involved in the Leadership and Social Change Residential College activities. There were weekly speakers and discussions that were available to attend and community dinners for time with other students and faculty.
The leadership concepts discussed throughout this course were diversity and inclusion, which we discussed through talking about the concept of a “single story” and how those stories shape up but also can affect the way that others look at us. We talked about the Tuckman Model when discussing team leadership and collaboration and how building teams and going through the formation of that can be challenging but is well explained with this model. Some of the other topics that were discussed throughout this course were creating a constructive climate, overcoming obstacles, creating a common purpose, and leadership skills. Each of these topics covered included discussion posts from everyone in the class where we were able to see each other’s perspectives and learn from one another. This allowed us to have new ideas presented and could challenge our own thoughts and beliefs when a new way of thinking is introduced.
This class really helped me in growing in my individual values. Before coming to college, I had some experience in leadership through an old job and through volleyball, but I never had to really think about leadership styles and how to lead effectively. This course gave me more consciousness of self in a manner where I am now able to go into a group and figure out what form of leadership is needed to best tackle our common goal.
My first artifact from this class is my submission for the single story discussion post. My second artifact from this class is my submission for the team leadership and collaboration discussion post.
Course 2: The dynamics of leadership
The Dynamics of Leadership is a course that I took during the fall semester of my sophomore year. In this course, we focused a lot on current events and how they were handled and giving our input on how the leadership techniques were up to par or what we would have done differently to have made the situation better. The course was structured to have us look more closely at leadership in businesses and social organizations and by reading the book “Good to Great” by J.C. Collins, we learned how some of the biggest companies have gotten to where they are with good leadership techniques. Each of the current event reflections that we wrote had to relate back to the reading that we did that week.
During our class times in the course, we would spend most of our time in discussion about the topics that we had read in the book and the current events that we had written about for that week. About half way through the course, we were placed into teams and we had to do a case study of a social group or business in the area and relate it to “Good to Great” in the way that they lead. My group chose to do a fraternity at Virginia Tech that one of my group members was a part of. This particular fraternity was on hold from rushing due to code violations, so we talked about how their leadership had failed the fraternity and caused them to be in this position. We also discussed the importance of the new leaders that would be stepping into the open positions and how they would have to make decisions to turn around the fraternity and get them back on track.
Some of the main topics that we talked about from our readings were “First Who… Then What”, “A Culture of Discipline”, “Building an Adaptive Culture”, etc. Each of these topics allowed us to learn new leadership skills and our in class discussions allowed us to share our thoughts and learn even more from each other. When working on our case study, working with two upperclassmen who had some more experience in leadership than I had allowed me to learn from them. That was very important because most times it is easier for people to learn from those who are in a similar position as you. In my case, I was learning from college students who had just gone through many of the classes and experiences that I was going through at the time.
The first artifact that I have from this class is a diagram of The Hedgehog Concept. We spent a lot of time talking and reflecting on the Hedgehog Concept and applying it to our own lives and the past groups or teams that we had been in. The second artifact that I have is of the Flywheel Effect. This is another concept that we spend a lot of time discussing and applying to our own personal experiences.
Course 3: Elements of Team Leadership
The Elements of Team Leadership focused on developing effectiveness in leading, delegating, and communicating within team environments. A very important theme throughout this course of the concept of emotional intelligence in teams, team management, and effective team processes. This class was team based so we were placed into teams during the first week of class and stayed with that team for the whole semester. In these groups, we would discuss the topics of the books that we were reading for class (“The Emotionally Intelligent Team: Understanding and Developing the Behaviors of Success” and “Group Dynamics for Teams”), we would take group quizzes together in which we would be able to deliberate and discuss why we thought each answer was correct or incorrect, and we also started to plan a Service-Learning Project. One of my team members was involved with College Mentors for Kids, so we decided that we were going to work with them. Unfortunately, our time to plan and execute that was cut short due to COVID-19 and having to move classes online, but we still wrote a project plan for what we would have done with them given the opportunity. This project was very interesting because it allowed us to put our team leadership skills into effect to determine how to work as a team to guide another team in how to lead more efficiently.
I think this course has been my favorite and the most influential in my leadership studies during my time here at Virginia Tech. My team members impacted my views and perspectives on leadership. They helped me find more of my voice when it comes to group work because they were actually interested in what my thoughts were and asked to hear my opinion. I quickly became friends with those team members which allowed us to work together better than a group that can’t mesh well. We also quickly learned how to debate and come to a consensus on things that we might have disagreed on. While learning about team leadership, I was able to be immersed into a real situation where we had to go through so many of the things as a group that we had talked about in class.
The first artifact that I have from this class is a diagram of emotional intelligence. It was something that we discussed and focused on for the whole semester. The second artifact that I have is the Table of Contents from the Service-Learning Project that we worked on throughout the semester.
Course 4: Communicating Agriculture and Life Sciences in Speaking
Communicating Agriculture and Life Sciences in Speaking is a course that I took during the spring of my junior year. In this course, we learned how to communicate in the professional world. With several different types of presentations that we had to prepare and record, we learned the most effective way to grab your listeners/viewers attention to pull them in. Each presentation got more complex and longer in duration. While this communications course is not necessarily a leadership course, I believe that I learned leadership skills through the first presentation, which was a demonstration presentation. In this, we had to show the viewers how to do a task piece by piece. I was able to lead others in how to create something and I learned the most effective way to communicate the tasks. With each presentation, we watched the presentations of classmates to give them constructive feedback of how they lead and communicated well and how they can improve on those skills. Even though this class was taken online, it taught me how to be more comfortable talking in front of large groups of people and effectively get my point across.
This course impacted my confidence in a positive way and I now feel more prepared to step into the professional world. I will be able to now prepare for several different types of presentations that I might have to give in the future. If I work in a field where I need to sell my co-workers on something, I have done a persuasive presentation where I learned how to give information to pursue by not only using my personal opinions, but also by finding facts to back up those opinions. I also will be able to inform others on topics after having to do two different informational presentations.
The first artifact that I have from this class is a screenshot of one of the powerpoint slides from my first presentation. This one was the demonstration presentation where I taught my viewers how to make an iced latte. The second artifact that I have from this class is a screenshot of one of the powerpoint slides from one of my persuasive presentations where I talked about the importance of adopting animals instead of buying them from breeders.
Marley's Leadership Blog 