During my time in the Impact Leadership Village, I have watched myself grow and apply specific elements of the Relational Leadership Model into my experience this semester and hopefully will implement these into the second half of the year. As one of my main areas of growth, I have seen myself open up to new people and events. I have begun speaking up rather than hiding in my shell and instead began talking to others in the Impact Leadership Village on the second floor, since I know that our floors have tended to stay segregated throughout this semester. During the spring semester, I plan to continue spending time with the second floor and maybe suggesting that the second and third floors begin to spend time together as well. Additionally, Roshni, who lives on the second floor of Bowen, reached out to me after I presented my Service Action Proposal about working together to create a service trip for the Village to take part in, since we both had proposals related to food. After she reached out to me, I gained some confidence in wanting to work with her on her proposal for us, as well as confidence to reach out to others about their Service Action Proposals that I believed were very influential. As I have grown in the area, it has allowed me to gain strength in my inclusivity and how I am reaching out to others that I would normally not feel comfortable doing so. I still feel as if I could continue to reach out and be more open to talking to new people, but I also believe that I have been making attempts to do so within the Impact Leadership Village.
As one of my main strengths that I contain, I have been a very process-oriented student during my first semester at North Carolina State University. After reading about what makes up the Relational Leadership Model, I did not really understand why process was one of the factors that makes up a successful leader, although I kept it in mind. In my Spanish class, we do many group projects and take on tasks that include working with others, so I began thinking about how I could apply the Relational Leadership Model while in these groups. The first project we did was create a slideshow presenting a reading that we did, although I was placed in a group with students that were very unmotivated and did not care as much as I did about completing the project. In fact, I became so worried about finishing the project, since the other group members were not doing their parts, I began rushing to finish the presentation. When we finally managed to pull it together at the last minute, I read through the slideshow the morning of our presentation and realized how rushed it seemed, since my goal with it ended up being to just finish it, although some of the information was off and there were many grammar mistakes. I then realized how if I focused on the process of how we would work on the slideshow, my group would have created a well-crafted presentation. For the next presentation I was assigned, I took initiative and gave everyone in the group a section of our reading to re-read and learn, so that we would actually be understanding the information even before we put it into a slideshow. After implementing this into our process, we were able to complete the presentation on time, with little errors, and with a good amount of thought that went in behind it. I now use my strength of keeping process in mind while demonstrating my relational leadership skills in group projects.
The Impact Leadership Village improved my leadership philosophy by also demonstrating how relational leadership includes openness to failure. At the beginning of the year, my leadership philosophy was how being a leader is not necessarily taking on the role of being a boss, but serving as an inspiration for others to admire your qualities and gain motivation to help get a task completed. There should be no titles assigned or hierarchy established in a group, but instead a collaboration of multiple people sharing their diverse skills to all work on the issue at hand. Although, reflecting on how successfully this can be proved to be difficult. How can someone attempt to become a leader like this in one try? There must be attempts at gaining experience in developing into a successful relational leader. Throughout the year, I have encountered situations where students attempting to apply the relational leadership model to their ways while working in a group but have run into problems. This is completely reasonable, since I have seen these students learn from their mistakes, later recognizing what they did that could be improved in order to eventually complete the task at hand.
I plan on getting proactive during the spring semester in order to continue developing my leadership in the form that I want it to take in the future. Firstly, I plan on going to the Student Involvement Center in Talley Student Union to speak to someone about starting the Photography Club back up again, since I contacted the students who ran it last year, although they graduated and no one took on their role as leaders of the club. So, I am deciding to take initiative and find out how I can get involve by regenerating the club and empowering others that I know and those who I do not to join the club and participate in a hobby that I have a lot of passion in. Secondly, I feel very strongly about putting my Service Action Proposal to use and work towards doing something with the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. I really want to get involved and actually volunteer with them, since writing seven pages about what they do really inspired me to want to participate in their good cause. Additionally, I want the Impact Leadership Village to join me in volunteering there. Within their organization are various areas where everyone in the village can find an area that interests them and can find pleasure in volunteering in it.
The Impact Leadership Village provides me with the people, resources, and connections that will allow me to achieve the goals that I have set for myself. Firstly, after I start getting involved with photography next semester, I can inform the Impact Leadership Village of something new that they could try out and get involved with. I also want to continue to volunteer and participate in more philanthropy in the future, and I know that the Village knows of local organizations that I can devote some of my time to helping out at.