Month: December 2018

LDR 101 : Leadership and Gender in the Young Adult Fantasy Novel is a course aimed to elicit an understanding of leadership, and one’s capacity to lead. This was done by examining how various books, and their accompanying films treat gender and leadership. Through this course, my understanding of leadership has expanded to incorporate critical thinking, writing, public speaking, digital literacy, and teamwork skills.

In the beginning of the course, participants had to define what type of qualities leadership consisted of. Each student had their own understanding. However, by utilizing real life examples we were soon able to formulate a widely accepted idea of what makes up a leader. We decided that leaders were not only authoritative, but also compassionate and empathic. Furthermore, it’s not enough to just possess these qualities, but you must put them into action for the betterment of others. Readings such as Cronon’s “Only Connect” helped solidify these ideas.

Cronon made it a point to emphasize that one must have multiple methods of inputting information, whether it be listening or reading. By being knowledgeable, one can utilize their critical thinking skills to “solve a wide variety of problems”. Furthermore, Cronon thought one should be able to  “write clearly, persuasively and movingly”, as a means to communicate effectively. I think that overall the leadership subconcepts of writing, public speaking and digital literacy all fall under this idea that you must let your voice be heard, whether the medium be on paper, making a speech or reaching the masses through the internet.

When writing an essay, I utilized my critical thinking skills to draw connects between the fiction writing and the scholarly articles. My favorite essay to write was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. This paper engaged with the topics of gender, classism and leadership. I enjoyed this paper because of the real life implications it held. I presented that leadership is controlled by those who were born into high class families, thus maintaining a classist society in which power is held by a small group of elite. However, leadership shouldn’t be this way because this aforementioned elite does not correctly assess the everyday needs of those in lower classes. It is reflected in our own government with family dynasty’s holding large amounts of power over generations, i.e the Bush’s and the Clinton’s. By placing this paper on my digital portfolio, I widened my audience and allowed others to read, comment and critique. Additionally, my public speaking skills improved due to the feedback I received from my peers when verbally presenting.

Cronon also stated that leadership should be utilized for the betterment of others. Typically, in order to make a large impact you can’t do things by yourself, but in solidarity with others. My teamwork skills were put to the test and strengthened  during my film group project. I learned the importance of utilizing different types of leadership depending on what the situation called for. In this course, we learned about two different types of leadership – interdependent and autonomous. Interdependent leaders are characterized as those who listen to others, and find the best solution by considering different opinions and perspectives on a situation. A quote from the article states “ You take bits and pieces of every idea and you incorporate it into one big idea that people can still recognize” (Gilligan, Lyons & Hanmer 186). Autonomous leaders are characterized by doing things on their own through the trust of their constituents. A quote from the article states a “leader  [as being] one who can ‘handle the responsibility’ but also, ‘delegate responsibility’”(Gilligan, Lyons & Hanmer 191). These two methods had an impact on how my group effectively accomplished our end goal. For example, during the treatment interdependent leadership is necessary so that everyone’s ideas are taken into consideration when making a decision. However, other parts of the project such as the storyboard or editing were delegated to those with the most experience. Therefore, in those situations autonomous leadership would be most appropriate.

In conclusion, this course presented ideas and concepts that challenged and shifted my understanding of leadership. Through my assignments and experiences in LDR 101 my perception of leadership has expanded to include critical thinking, writing, public speaking, digital literacy, and teamwork skills. But most importantly,  I learned about myself as a leader, and my own capacity to lead.

References

Cronon, W. (1998). Only Connect.. . : The Goals of a Liberal Education. The American Scholar

Gilligan, C., Lyons, N., & Hanmer, T. (Eds.) (1990). Making connections: The relational worlds of adolescent girls at Emma Willard School. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.