Exploring Citizen Leadership – Communities of Praxis
This second semester of Citizen Leadership found me surrounded by the same friends and professor I had met in the previous Leadership course. We met less often to discuss readings from the night before and how they applied to our lives, but that gave more room for the group project we worked on throughout the semester. The point of the course was to focus on the action of being a leader rather than lingering on the theory we had spent the last semester on. Following up on what we had learned before created a great way to make the most of learning from our time with the project.
The project was our avenue to exploring how we could work in teams to aid a local group with a project. My group aided an organization called Beacon of Hope, which worked with Lynchburg schools to encourage those students to pursue a college-level education. They wanted us to plan and execute an open house day where students from their middle schools could come and learn about the lives of college students. We were fortunate to have a large group to divide tasks, allowing us to split people to match their strengths. Some of us stuck to planning the event, while others could shine by directing the students day of. At the time of planning this event, I had not worked in a group before and felt like I had such little influence, so I was constantly worried that we were not doing enough to reach our goals. It turned out that I was not that powerless, and had nothing to fear, as the event went smoothly. I recorded my lessons learned about teamwork and general observations of the project’s end in a reflection paper, which is attached to this post.
I think, overall, the project taught me many things about working within a group, especially a group full of leaders. It was interesting to see how people’s different ideas came together and created conflict – or an extraordinary result. It really emphasized how one could still lead, even if they are not the formal leader in the setting too. It was helpful that as we worked on the project, we regularly reflected and tied our observations back to the many theories we had studied the semester before. At the time we were also learning about the Social Change Model and the 7 Cs of Leadership, and once again relating these back to our previous experiences as leaders.
Through this class I was able to get a different experience of working with others towards a goal than what I was used to. The experience working on that group project taught me that it is okay to not always be the driving force for change within a group: it is okay to be a supporter and work with others to achieve their goals too. I’m sure my past self would have found that easy to see on paper, but I found that much harder to do in practice! In terms of my leadership values, while I was exposed to other’s values and was expected to consider other perspectives, I felt my core beliefs did not change very much, but I did see how I could improve using the Social Change Model to better guide my values in the future. I saw how others approached the project and often disagreed with their approaches to leadership, instead reinforcing my own ideas. In the end, however, I learned to allow others to do things their own way and trust them. It takes all types to get things done, and this exercise in trust will go far as I rely on my teammates in the future.
Artifacts of this class can be found in the files below:
Joe Downey's Leadership Blog 