Running head: LEADERSHIP GROWTH PLAN LEADERSHIP GROWTH PLAN12

Amy BergstromSADL 5120Dr. Maylon HanoldMarch 15, 2015Leadership Growth Plan

I love leadership education, both for myself and for sharing with the students I work with. I have never been one who enjoys being in the spotlight, and one of the great things leadership education has taught me is that leadership can manifest itself in a lot of different ways. As I continue to grow as a leader, I am guided by my values of joy and community, and I work with my strengths in enacting creative change, empathy, and commitment to growth. I view leadership as a process of moving toward a vision for change, and I continue to seek to grow as a leader in both formal and informal ways in order to serve my community and profession in the best ways possible. Personal ValuesI have worked at a lot of jobs I have not loved. It took several tries in different positions at different companies for me to decide to focus on a different field. But at every job, I also had people I loved tremendously, both at my workplace and in the life I built around my work. I realized that I certainly want to find work that I love, but no matter what, my work will only feel meaningful if I am connecting with my coworkers. As I move into working in higher education, that will also include connecting with students. This realization relates to what I have come to understand is one of my core values: community. I choose the word community to encompass other things I value, such as empathy, friendship, laughter, engagement, and justice. All of those require community, being together with others in some capacity. Even love cannot exist without community. I find community at many levels, in small groups of friends and in my neighborhood and city. I am personally a big Seahawks fan, but one of my favorite things about their success the last couple of years has been the way the entire city has rallied together as a community in support of the team. I strive to foster community in the spaces I inhabit and to think about the impact of my actions on the people around me.Another of my core values is joy. I choose joy not because it comes easily to me but because it does not. People may be surprised by that, because I am outwardly a happy person. To me, though, joy is deeper than happiness. Being happy is a response to circumstances; when things go well, I am happy. Joy is finding peace, gratitude, and purpose in all circumstances. In all of those jobs that I did not love, I worked to find purpose in why I was there, and that helped me to experience joy in those places. To be guided by joy, I have to be aware of my need for it. Valuing joy requires me to pay attention, especially to when I am not joyful, and to work through the struggle to find that joyful place again. Choosing joy also helps me to encourage others to choose joy. That is part of what helps me to build community, and I believe it makes me a positive force in others lives.Strengths as a LeaderThree of my biggest strengths as a leader are my ability to enact creative change, my empathy with others, and my commitment to growth in others. The ability to enact creative change is tied to the concept of challenging the process, one of Kouzes and Posners (2009) practices for exemplary leadership. This means a leader is always looking for opportunities to improve how things are done and fostering experimentation and innovation. I am good at managing processes; for example, my work involves detailed tracking of students service-learning in a database. However, I am always looking for better ways to do the processes I manage. With service-learning, our online system broke down during my first quarter, and I have spent the last four quarters experimenting with different systems to find one that will be easier for the variety of parties involved with it.Enacting creative change also relates to a specific element of vision that Palmero and Li (2015) outline, stewardship, which is making decisions based on helping your organization be its best and reach its goals. My work to find solutions and challenge the process is always in the spirit of discovering how to accomplish things better, in pursuit of efficiency and excellence for my organization. When I worked as a sports Web producer, I researched and proposed several projects that could streamline our systems, such as developing an interactive timetable readers could use for following sports on TV and the radio. This project would not only save staff time, but I also believed it would be a better user experience, helping to keep readers engaged on our website, which was one of the companys goals.On a more interpersonal level, another of my strengths is my empathy. Empathy is sharing in anothers feelings and experiences, taking someone elses perspective and communicating that you recognize the emotions (The RSA, 2013). Empathy is largely demonstrated through non-verbal cues (Hanold, 2011), a point that I find interesting because I have often been told that my facial expressions communicate a lot. This can be a problem, because it is harder for me to hide certain feelings such as skepticism, but I think it is helpful for empathy, because my face is able to show that I am feeling with another person. Empathy is an important part of emotional intelligence, which is crucial to leader performance (Galli, n.d.). In a field like student development, empathy is particularly important as professionals balance task management with care for students. I worked with a student last summer who came to meet with me for a project, but immediately before our meeting, she found out her father had a heart attack. She still came to the meeting, but my empathy allowed me to perceive right away that something was wrong, and I supported her rather than focusing on the original purpose of the meeting.Finally, I am also very committed to growth in others. There are many elements from the leadership literature that relate to this strength. Providing followers with an identity is an important piece of vision (Palmero & Li, 2015), and this involves being a mentor to followers and influencing their development, as they influence mine. Commitment to followers growth is also a driving factor in motivation (Palmero & Li, 2015). Related to motivation, self-determination theory (Stone, Deci, & Ryan, 2009) involves the core psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. I particularly appreciate this theory and try to incorporate all three of those needs in motivating followers as my commitment to their growth.I am aware of this with the group of student leaders I advise. In our weekly meetings, there is space for relationship-building, as well as discussion of their relationships at their service sites. Our trainings focus on helping them to feel confident in their roles and to develop autonomy. Those two needs have been an interesting balance, as the students have often wanted less autonomy (more direction) in order to feel more competent, so my supervisor and I have had to experiment. For example, the students each have to facilitate a meeting, a preparation process we have left to them to encourage autonomy, but they have not been confident in their competence to lead the meeting. Next quarter, we are going to spend one of our meetings as a planning session for the students. They will still have the autonomy to plan their own agendas, but they will build competence as they feel more supported in the process.All of my strengths are tied closely to my core values. Enacting creative change is one way I find joy in my responsibilities. It gives me joy to do a job the best way I can, and it is exciting to me to be able to envision new ways of doing things. It is also part of my dedication to the community of the organization, because I am invested in the organization being the best it can be. Empathy and commitment to growth are both important parts of community for me. Empathy is essential to being able to build relationships with the people I interact with. Commitment to growth is because of my commitment to community. As I am committed to others in a spirit of community, it is important to me that I can encourage them and help them grow. Being a mentor to followers is an aspect of my role in community.Definition of LeadershipI think Kanes (2015) definition of leadership is useful, but I do not fully agree with it. He states, Leadership is an influence relationship aimed at moving organizations or groups of people toward an imagined future that depends upon alignment of values and establishment of mutual purposes (p. 4). With my alterations, based in part on previous work I have done on leadership (Bergstrom, 2014), I define leadership as a process of collaboration and motivation of a group toward a vision in order to create change. Defining leadership as a process rather than a relationship is a contrast to Kanes (2015) definition. He argues that defining leadership as a process loses the human element of leadership. I appreciate his focus on human connection, but I think that this element is represented in other ways through the concept of a process. To me, leadership as a relationship creates an implied hierarchy between leader and followers. It invokes an image to me of a single leader in this relationship as the only one influencing others.Leadership as a process keeps the focus on how the group as a whole is relating and functioning in order to move toward their vision. A process leaves room for the leaders of a group to be fluid. There may be positional leaders who have legitimate power (French & Raven, 1959, as cited in Mind Tools, n.d.a) to direct the group. However, there are also likely other leaders who have expert and referent power and are influencing the leadership process. Their work together is all important to the process. I believe strongly that anyone can be a leader, that anyone can work effectively with others to accomplish change from any place in the organization (Komives, Longerbeam, Owen, Mainella, & Osteen, 2006, p. 405). Leadership as a process does not focus on who the leader is but on how the group is working together to reach their goals.Relationship is also embedded in my definition of leadership because I base leadership in a group that is collaborating with and motivating each other. A group, of course, implies several people who are in relationship with one another in some capacity. And that relationship is one focused on collaboration and motivation, so these are not merely individuals working parallel to one another. Motivation, whether based in McClellands (1961, as cited in Mind Tools, n.d.b) human motivation theory around the needs of achievement, affiliation, and power or self-determination theorys (Stone, Deci, & Ryan, 2009) needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy, moves the individuals in the group to be their best as well as to create a cohesive best for the group, in particular through affiliation and relatedness. The members of the group, whether positional leaders or not, are all able to take part in motivating one another.The last aspect that is important to my definition of leadership is that it is about moving toward a vision in order to create change. Vision is key to most perspectives on leadership (see Gerzon, 2006; Hanold, 2015; Kouzes & Posner, 2009; Palmero & Li, 2015). It is one of the factors that distinguish leadership from management (Hanold, 2015). Without a vision for the future, the process is instead about managing the status quo. Creating change is also related to vision; the vision of a group cannot be to stay the same. Organizations need to adapt in order to survive and grow (Welty Peachey & Wells, 2015). I do not believe that change needs to be grand. A vision for change can be as simple as a sales teams vision to increase their sales. Movement toward that vision for change is also necessary, because it keeps the vision from merely being an intellectual exercise. Leadership involves taking steps to realize the vision.My definition of leadership is closely related to my value of community. It is because I value community that it is important for me to understand that anyone within the group involved in leadership can be a leader and have influence on the process. Community also relates to the collaboration and motivation aspects of my definition. Those two elements are woven into community. I connect joy with my definition through the vision for change. In my own leadership, joy needs to be integrated into that vision. In addition, having a vision for change helps bring me joy, in a world where I can see that so much change is needed.This is also why my definition of leadership helps me to be a leader for a just and humane world. I work to have a vision for how the world can be more just and humane, and I need joy in order to believe this change is possible. I also see my leadership as putting me sometimes into positions where I can have a greater influence for justice, such as when I led a group of students who were organizing service projects to engage their fellow students. But often, my influence for justice is not through positional leadership, and I need to be a leader wherever I find myself. That is why it is important for me to understand leadership as a process in which I as an individual citizen of the world can be involved with others as we work for change. I am part of the global community who is collaborating for a better world, and I need motivation from others to continue this work that can often seem fruitless. I benefit from the ideas of others, especially those with different identities and perspectives than me, and together we are leaders for a just and humane world.Future and DevelopmentAs I move to my last quarter of graduate school and prepare for my first professional job in student development, imagining the future is exciting but nerve-wracking. I see myself in the next five years working in a position where I am developing students as they understand themselves as leaders, both in positions on campus and throughout their lives. I will be advising student groups and developing and facilitating trainings in leadership and identity, helping students to find their own voices and understandings of themselves. All of these aspirations are based on what has been influential to me as I understand myself as a leader. Leadership workshops I have participated in have helped me to understand how my own inherent or socialized characteristics can be useful to me as a leader. For example, being an introvert is not commonly acknowledged as typical of leaders, but I have learned to appreciate that this aspect of my identity can help me as I empathize with others. As I support students in developing their own understandings, I will continue to learn about myself and from others so that I can continue to grow as an educator.I do not aspire to high positions in my professional work, as I want to always maintain direct interaction with students, but I can imagine myself as an assistant director of an office if my daily work can still be very much with students. I will continue to draw on my strengths of empathy and commitment to others growth, especially the growth of students, in all that I do. I will seek opportunities outside of my professional work to be engaged with community, locally, nationally, and globally, whether that is working with community-based nonprofits, involvement in professional associations, or connecting with people all over who share my passions and interests for changing the world.As I continue on in my professional life, I think my current leadership strengths will continue to serve me well, and I will also develop new strengths naturally through the individuals equivalent of developmental and transitional change (Welty Peachey & Wells, 2015). However, as I move into different types of positional leadership, I will need to grow in specific areas. It will be important for me to develop in my ability to form a vision and to communicate effectively in a crisis. Vision, as described earlier, is important for any leadership, and in my observation, positional leaders are particularly charged with articulating a vision for the group they are leading. I am definitely a detail and process person, and while I believe in the importance of vision for leadership, that is still an area for growth for me. When I was an undergrad, I led the planning of an award ceremony, and the parts I most enjoyed involved all of the details of the event. As the coordinator, though, I also needed to communicate an overall vision, to help my team understand how the details fit into what we were trying to accomplish. It was a challenge for me then, and it is still an area of growth for me.The other goal for my personal leadership development is to become more adept and prepared for communicating in a crisis. Not being prepared to deal with a crisis can be a disaster for an organization and its leaders (Schroeder, 2015). The main reason I think I need to grow in this area is simply that I have not had experience dealing with any major crises, and crisis management is particularly important in the field of student development (Nienow & Stringer, 2009). Some of this ability will come through facing crises, but I would also like to use the plans outlined by Schroeder (2015), such as creating a communication plan, to be prepared in my future roles. As a person dedicated to care for others, I cannot let others suffer in a crisis just because it is a learning experience for me.ConclusionLeadership is complicated, requiring many layers for individuals to successfully move as a group toward a vision for the future. As I continue to develop as a leader, I will draw on my values, especially those of joy and community, and build my strengths in order to collaborate with others to work for change in our world. I imagine myself as a leader who is invested in students as they learn to understand themselves as leaders, and together we will motivate each other to grow and change.

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