Leadership in the Helping Profession
Leadership In the Helping Profession
Victoria Duncan
Special Topics
Chief Ledford
My Current Leadership State
For the leadership assessment that I took I had to answer questions and checkboxes based off of statements that have been said, and according to this leadership assessment my leadership style realized heavily in the empathy section. Relying in the empathy section means that I am more likely to take people’s statements at face value, build off of other ideas, be very supportive of my colleagues and peers, and be more open to my coworkers. This type of leadership this estimate also comes with downsides like not being able to say no, internalizing blame, focusing on the now of the company compared to the future, and over compromising to avoid conflict. I sent out the survey in asked people I’ve worked with to give feedback of what it was like when working with me. The first person I chose to get feedback from was my superior from when I was working summer school, I think that her response was very accurate compared to the leadership assessment that I took. She stated that I was a very caring person who cared for the students and what they did but I was also strict enough and was trying to teach them the best way of going about things. The second person that I sent the survey to was an old coworker of mine, I was the oldest coworker there at the time besides the managers. She stated ‘’ you stood up for us whenever we thought something was going wrong even if it’s going to put you in a compromising situation”. She also stated that I was very well at listening to others’ problems even if they weren’t work related. The last person that I chose to send this assessment to is my current boss, I currently work for Gaston County schools as a virtual teacher assistant, and I work under assistant principal. Some of the things she said were “from what we’ve seen so far I think that Victoria has a very strong leadership ability and that she will eventually be able to do whatever she wants to do in life, she’s very caring but very focused in her work”. I think from these surveys across the board that my leadership assessment coincides with these results from the survey. All three of the people I sent the survey to have something to say about my empathy or my willingness to want to take care of others.
While going through this class I think that my top five leadership strengths were empathy, problem solving, critical thinking, creativity and communication. The reason that I chose empathy is because I think I’m a very emphatic person and I really do care about what other people think or are feeling. For problem solving I really enjoy trying to figure things out and I don’t think I’m that bad at it, I think it’s one of my stronger strengths when looking at all of them. Critical thinking, I think goes along with problem solving as you sometimes have to think outside of the box, I’ve been known to try to fix problems with new ideas are new things that have not been thought of before. Creativity is next I think that my creativity is shown in my work when I was working at the boutique, I was the person that was always supposed to change the mannequins and choose outfits for people, but I think this goes further than just working at the boutique. I think that my creativity comes across in many different parts of my life including my work life. My last leadership strength that I think I came into the class with is communication. I think that I’m very well at communicating what is needed and why and I think that this is shown by that survey that I gave out and my coworker responding to it saying that I was the one that would step up and say if something needed changing.
I think while being in this class I’ve had growth in very many areas of leadership some of those are delegation, collaboration, decision making, confidence, and conflict resolution. I think the first three go very well with each other as I used to want to do everything on my own so I could know that it was being done right and I didn’t like having input from other people and would immediately shut it down. As I’ve gone through this class, I definitely have realized the importance of working with other people making sure that everyone has enough work to do amongst everyone and just being able to work together with other people. Confidence I think is something that also came with this class as a has helped me be more outspoken and more confident in the job that I have now. Conflict resolution is also something that I think have become better at as I used to just go along with whatever people said to make sure that there was no conflict no actually try to figure out a solution for the problem so that way the problem can be solved, and everyone will be kept happy instead of just giving in to someone to make the conflict go away.
When looking at my self-stir feedback I was able to determine that I was correct on most of my self-assessment. When looking at the self-stir feedback critical thinking was not as high as I thought it was going to be. I thought there was a very strong critical thinker but after taking this survey I can see that it’s something that I need to work on more. Other than that, I would say that most of what I’ve said has been correct. When looking at the things that I could be better at I have improved from where I feel like I would be standing at the beginning of the semester but I’m still not where I would like to be with them. I was correct in that empathy and problem solving were very high on the list of strengths. Those were my two highest strengths out of all the strengths. I think that taking the survey was very helpful and it showed me that there are some things that I still need to work on where I thought that they were better than they were and things that maybe I can relax about and not overthink as much in the future. When looking back at all the presentations throughout this semester I think that something that has helped me really prove that empathy is something that I'm very good at is the set the example slides. This is because they really continuously state that setting an example is going to be the best way to have a healthy work environment amongst employees. I think that if the leader is able to set the desired why did they want people to treat each other it will result in a healthier work environment and setting the example is a perfect way to do that.
My Desired Leadership State
Three things I think I need to work on to be a better leader by looking at the feedback that others gave me and looking at my feedback were building effective teams, influence without authority, and openness. This was something that across the board that I myself and the people I asked to complete this survey I'll agreed on that I need to work on more. I think for building effective teams I need to have a better understanding about the relationships amongst people that I'm working with, and I will be in charge of. For influence without authority, I think this is something that I struggle on a lot, and I think others can take notice very easily. When getting an assignment, I want the instructions to be very detailed down to the fine print I don't like to have to be able to make decisions without an authority figure involved. I think that this is something I need to work on and get better at as they will always be an authority figure to look up to and get all the answers from. The last thing that I need to work on is openness in the feedback part of the survey the majority of the people that I gave the survey to said that they felt very open with me but that I was not very open with them back and that it caused a little bit of tension because they felt that I was not being as truthful with them as they were with me. I think that this is something that I can work on and get better at as I get older, I think overall I'm just someone that likes to keep everything to myself in that talking with people and having more open discussions with them will make them feel like they can trust me more.
My leadership philosophy statement is I believe that respect and honesty is needed to have a great team. Mutual respect for anyone and everyone makes us oh work in harmony better together. Honesty is a big component of the everyday work environment as it's what will keep us going when times get tough. With all of this we can get through anything. I think that this is a very powerful leadership statement because it addresses the top factors that I believe will make our work environment be better. My top five leadership values are dependable, friendly, helpful, caring, and trustworthy. To figure this out I first pulled from a worksheet my top 10 most important values I then rank them one to 10 and these were my top five. I think that being dependable is important when being a leader as you never know when someone would need your help and being able to be dependable and they'll know that you can make a really big improvement on the work environment. Being friendly is also important to me as I believe having a normal and fun banter amongst coworkers and teammates can improve the work environment. Being helpful is also really important when being a leader as your subordinates count on you to be able to help them when they're in need and if you're not able to do that and you always brush them off then you're not being helpful and you're not supporting their needs which can cause a bad work environment. I believe that being caring is also very important, I know many of my friends that have had to go into work Just the day after having a parent pass away I understand that it can be hard for a manager to try to find someone to cover but I think being caring enough to understand that they're going through something traumatic it should be important to you to be able to find a way to give them the days off that they need. And finally being trustworthy, being trustworthy kind of goes with being dependable you want people to be able to rely on you and to be able to come to you if something is wrong and I think that's a big part of being a leader you want people to come to you and something is wrong you don't want them to just suffer through it or try to figure it out on their own.
My Leadership Plans For The Future
Three goals that I have for my future development or to be able to start taking feedback better, build a dynamic team that works together cohesively, and to be better at conflict resolution. I've made smart goals for each of my future development of being a leader. The first one is conflict resolution. S- become better at not giving in to someone whenever they are upset and it but work together and find a common solution, M- I know that this will be solved whenever I'm able to confidently solve conflicts and not give in to whatever the other person wants, A- this will be an attainable goal as I'm currently working as a teacher assistant in Gaston County Schools for the alternative school there will be a lot of conflict that I will not be able to give in to and so this will help me reach my goal, R- this does align with my goals as it will help me to eventually be a better leader and a better teacher, T- I hope that I'm able to do this within the next seven months as that's how many months left of school there is for Gaston County Schools. The next thing that I want to work on is taking the feedback better. S-taking better feedback, M-I will know when I have achieved this goal when I'm able to take feedback without feeling bad and I'm able to apply it to what I'm currently doing in life, A- this is something that I think will be achievable but it will take some working at on my part as I tend to take most things to heart even when people don't expect for me to, R- this will help me as there will always be someone over me or below me that will have ways that I can improve and I need to be able to take that improvement without taking it to heart and feeling like I've done something wrong, T- I'm hoping to achieve this by the end of the school period for Gaston County Schools. The last thing that I would like to be better at is building a dynamic team. S- learn how to build a dynamic team, M-I don't know that I achieved this goal whenever I'm able to give people a task and they are able to do them without a big struggle and they were able to do them working in a team, A- I believe that this is a possible task it will just take longer as you have to learn and build relationships with people to be able to do this, R- this will help grow whoever I'm working for at the time and it will be able to help me grow and building relationships better with coworkers, T- I'm hoping to achieve this in seven months as I'm hoping to improve on this having to work with multiple students constantly.
I am hoping to have all of these done within seven months as that's the end of this year at Gaston County schools. I think that's a very obtainable time period as it gives me plenty of time to work on all of these and figure out what works and what does not work. I am hoping that within the next seven months I will get better at these, and we'll even be able to add on more goals that I want to be able to accomplish and be able to improve on more things that I've stated in this paper that I believe I can work on.
Cite
The leadership Compass Self-assessment - be the change consulting. (n.d.). https://www.bethechangeconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Leadership-compass-self-assessment.pdf
SelfStir 360-degree feedback and Leadership Development Software. SelfStir. (n.d.). http://www.selfstir.com/
Ledford, Tim. “Set the Example” Leadership, Special Topics. Week Three PowerPoint. Gardner-Webb University