Guest Speakers and KLM: Parts IV & V (Shannon)

As I have said before in my write-ups about our guest speakers, I really enjoy listening to the stories that these inspirational women tell about how they first became interested in their own leadership. Robin Gerber explained how she dropped out of college, started working, and soon discovered that “sexism was alive and well.” This experience got her interested in women’s organizations like NOW and YWCA, where she found a mentor who saw leadership potential in her that she didn’t see (something that Nance also talked about). Nance Lucas told us how she went to PennState for their pre-med program so that she could become a surgeon. She couldn’t see herself doing eight years of school and she ended up changing her major four times. In one of the courses she took about career planning, she was able to develop a mentoring relationship with a professor who recommended that she go into Higher Ed. Both of these guest speakers had the experience of people telling them that they would make good leaders—they didn’t necessarily see it for themselves.

Chapter 11 was focused on understanding how and why change happens, but it also incorporated many of the ideas that we talked about in class last week. The chapter emphasized the fact that you need to understand yourself and others before you can collectively work toward change, which relates back to the Relational Leadership Model. It seems like change is either something that people embrace or that they resist at all costs—but I’ve also noticed that a lot of times how people respond to change is very dependent on the situation at hand.

Chapter 12 introduced the Social Change Model of Leadership Development which describes the values that a leader must possess if she is to work toward successful change. After reading about each of the values, the diagram on page 360 really gave a nice visual representation of how the values are connected because of the way that they all affect each other. I was glad to see that the end of the chapter was about conflict. I am always looking for ways that I can deal with conflict because I tend to avoid it in any way that I can. KLM say that “dealing, or not dealing, with that conflict can determine the success of the change effort” (378). This is so true! It’s hard to give a successful group presentation when there is unresolved conflict among several members of the group…

Chapter 13 again stressed how important it is to learn about yourself and to know who you are before you can develop a leadership identity to lead others. Then chapter 14 explained how part of being a leader is being able to go through renewal so that you can reach your full potential. I liked when the authors wrote about the woman with the sign on her refrigerator that says: “Don’t should on yourself today” (417). The authors then encouraged us to think of all of the “should” messages that we give ourselves each day. I think that women probably have “should” thoughts more frequently than men, and I know that it is something I do to myself all the time. If I don’t get as much work done as I had hoped to do, I have thoughts like “I shouldn’t have taken that 20 minute break” or “I shouldn’t have gone out with my family/friends.” After reading this section though, I see that these thoughts are a bit unrealistic (and negative!) because those breaks that I take from my work allow me to find the mental energy that I need to come back and finish up whatever I was doing.