Reflective Paper

Concrete Experience:

Recall two leaders you have worked with over a period of time. Identify one leader with who you feel you had a high-quality relationship, and one with whom you had a low-quality relationship. Describe the experience: Who was involved? What happened? Where did this take place? When did the incident take place, etc.? Throughout my life, I've known plenty of people who demonstrated high qualities of a leader; meanwhile I've also known plenty who demonstrate the opposite. A leader should be one who puts the interests of everyone before their personal interests; they should be honest and confident. They should be open to others suggestions and have a sense of dedication towards their motive. While the situations were obviously different, there was a distinct difference in how I felt with each type of leader. Both experiences go back to my teenage years, the feelings were too different to even compare in some aspects. My first major experience of high quality leadership occurred during my high school years while participating in sports. During the whole season, we've been missing a clear-cut leader, each of us seniors taking the position here and there. It wasn't until our playoff push that our leader stepped forward and set an example for us all. Highly respected by us all, we had no issues with him as we let him guide the team. Our issue was that we would get too cocky early on and let that affect our mindset, which resulting in us being unable to finish strong and lose multiple games in a row. Coach was continuously drilling the fact that we needed to finish strong and never be content with how we start a game, but it never drilled into our heads until it came from our teammate. A feeling of ease overcame my teammates and I, when a mistake occurred, we would start to cheer our teammate on instead of yell at them. The emergence of our teammate as a leader lead me to wanting to improve even more and become someone as vocal for the best interest of the team.

Reflective Observation:
Looking back at the experience, Why did the people involved behave as they did? Do you have a better understanding of their perspectives now? Years prior, I experienced what was probably a situation where I witnessed a low-quality leader, back when I was around 12-13 years old. As part of a class trip, our grade would go on a 3 day, 2 night camping trip to the Poconos. On the first day, we were split up into groups of about 12; each had different activities to attend. My group had orientation in the wild, which required us to roam around identifying symbols nailed onto trees. From the group of 12, we were divided into groups of 3; each group was given a map and compass and sent on their way. During this time, I wasn't vocal at all so, I took back seat as someone else lead the way. The primary issues were that he was stubborn and clueless. Since I was shy, I didn't really want to take control so I had to adapt to the situation. A feeling of nervousness overtook me as I was becoming uncertain about what could happen, we could’ve ended up roaming for a while. It wasn't until we found another group close by that the feeling