Monday, February 7, 2011
Week 2 Blog
If you look at great leaders through history you seldom find one without gray hair or baldness. Being a leader takes a toll on you which is why it is important for leaders to have the six major leadership traits. These include intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability. Most leaders exhibit all of these traits. For example most of our presidents have intelligence because they are lawyers and went to law school. They need to be smart in order to make good decisions for our country. I guess, now a days though you could have people think for you as long as you are strong in all the other areas. All are self-confident because if you don’t believe in yourself than who is going to follow you. They all showed determination to make a change or a difference in our nation or in the world. However the trait that is most lacking in our presidents is integrity. For example, Nixon tried to spy on his opponents during the watergate scandal. Bill Clinton cheated on HIllary with Monica Lewinsky. Our presidents are suppose to uphold a certain moral code because we the people are following them. When a leader does something that is morally wrong no one will want to follow them. The final leadership trait our presidents possessed was sociability. In another word they were popular. They are great with people and everyone loves to be around them. People aren’t going to vote for you to be president if they don’t like you. Almost everyone liked Reagan because he was such a likable guy. He made people laugh and was a former favorite movie star. Popularity goes a long way when it comes time to vote. This is where a person’s personality is important. The big five personality factors include neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Neuroticism is one of the worse traits because nobody wants an insecure leader that is depressed. We want people who will take charge of the situation head on and find a solution. Extraversion is important because it helps the people around you to do a better job. Leaders need to be assertive because persistency gets results. Nothing is ever handed to you in life, you have to work for it and that is where extraversion comes in handy in a leader. Openness is also important because its important for a leader to listen to new ideas that might make things easier or better. If you have a close minded leader than they just might turn into a dictator. Agreeableness is important because you need to trust the people around you and in a time of crisis you need to be nurturing the nation like Franklin D. Roosevelt during WWII. Finally conscientiousness is important because if a leader is not organized than you can’t get anything done.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Week 3 Blog
ReplyDeleteA Situational Theory for leadership is very important because every different situation requires a different leader. From teaching kids how to do algebra to starting a revolution to trying to win a basketball game. Whatever the situation is you need a different type of leader. Some leaders are paid to do this job like football or basketball coaches who motivate their players to do the best they can. Other leaders need to step back if the person knows what they are doing and direction just makes the job more tedious. When looking at the four categories of leadership through the Situational Theory I think I am better at coaching and supporting and would not be a very good at directing or delegating. I would be good at coaching because I care about the individual and their needs and can motivate them to work for my needs. I care about how everybody feels and genuinely care about how I can make a situation better, however at the end of the day I can still motivate them to do what I want them to do in order to become better athletes, ect. I know I am a great supporter. I love to cheer for my teams on to victory in every sport. I treat every game I watch like its a football game and get everyone pumped up and get the confidence they need in order to find the strength and skills necessary to win. I have had people come up to me in the middle of a match and tell me that I am a great motivator. However being a great supporter also means getting on the nerves of an opponent, which I am not afraid to do. Granted I have made some rivals through my four years of high school. My senior year my coach gave me a great partner, but she got down easily when she didn’t play as well as she hoped which would lead to her playing worse. One of the main reasons I was her partner was because I could support her on the court so she would bounce back from bad shots and continue to play her best which led us to win All-Conference and be the best double team in our league. I do not think I would be a good directing because it requires little support and as viewed in the examples above, I am all about support. This also means that I would not be the greatest delegate leader, but being a delegate leader would be even worse for me because I do not direct people as much and let them do their own thing. I love telling people what to do which would make this job hard for me.
When looking at the characteristics of real change leaders I realized that I have some of the characteristics, but not all. I feel I have commitment to a better way, motivation, caring about how other people are treated, and humor. I feel like I don’t have courage to challenge existing norms, staying undercover, and initiative to go beyond boundaries. I do show commitment to a better way. When I do tasks I look for ways to make them easier or more productive. People’s ideas and inventiveness have helped our world to do things faster and easier. I’m not an inventor, but I have plenty of good ideas. Through out my life I have shown a ton of motivation. I can motivate myself to stay up all night studying to ensure an A. I can motivate myself to work as hard as I can to do the best I can. I am also good at motivating other people. I am great at boosting people’s confidence and morals. I truly do care about how people are treated. My brother has autism and it hurts when people don’t invite your family to parties because your kid is annoying but can’t help it. I know how important it is to be inclusive and I try to include everyone who wants to be included. I deeply care about the elderly mostly because I love my grandparents so much and ageism just makes me sick. I don’t understand how some people despise old people. I think surgery and medicine is just as important for them like it is for children because they deserve to live.
ReplyDeleteI lack courage to challenge existing norms not because I lack the courage, but because I don’t know of any bad norms that I would like to change. I fear a lot, but I am not normally afraid because I feel that I would be the last person anyone would attack because I am bigger than most people and can defend myself well. I lack initiative to go beyond boundaries because I know I wouldn’t do anything that would put me in jail and if challenging a norm required breaking a law I don’t know if I could do it. I also don’t think I would be good at staying undercover because I stand out so much. I am 6 foot with red hair. I physically can’t blend in where ever I go. I also wouldn’t dye my hair brown or blonde to better blend in because I love my red hair so much. I would consider wearing a wig, but that doesn’t help my height or the fact that I have freckles and blue eyes. However if it wasn’t anything public I feel I could stay undercover better. I am excellent at keeping secrets and organizing things and could delegate things well.
Followers are very important in any society. They are the fundamental backbone of society. Without followers nothing gets done and life is at a standstill. Followers are often over looked, but without them where would we be today. There are five types of followers and each one can make or break the leaders idea. There are isolate followers, bystander followers, participant followers, activist followers, and diehard followers.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up my dad always told me to “never be a sheeple.” In case you couldn’t guess thats people that act like sheep and follow mindlessly. My dad always tries to find a new way to school or a new door to exit from. Regardless, if the crowds were going this way my family would go that way. This one reason alone could be why I strive to be a leader, because I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing. However there are many settings where I am not in charge and need to follow someone else effectively in order for my goal to be accomplished.
I am not an isolate follower because they only care about themselves and are the lazy people who don’t want to get involved and may even deny that they are in the group if questioned. These followers can break the system because if they are not doing anything to help like vote for their candidate than they might as well not even be for them. Bystanders like their name just stand and watch what happens. They care because they want to do what everyone else is doing to blend in and go unnoticed. Like the isolate followers the bystanders also hurt their group by not being involved. In some groups I am a participant because I care about the group and want to help but don’t want to invest all the free time necessary. For example one of my friend’s dad ran for office in our city and I went to the poll and voted for him and got my mom to vote for him, but I wasn’t going door to door asking other people to vote for him. In some of my groups I am an activist because I actively participate to help my leaders work get done. For example last spring I volunteered for Adapted Bicycle Camp in my city and the leader put me in charge of budgeting to get lunch for the volunteers and trophies for the participants, along with checking all of them in. I did all of this with a smile because I knew I was helping kids with disabilities and what my leader was doing was right and I wanted to help him the best I could. I am not a diehard follower because my life wouldn’t be incomplete if one of my groups failed. However you could argue that I am a diehard Notre Dame follower because I watch every game and wear their logos, along with getting in arguments with other team’s fans over who is better.
Blog # 7 Toxic Leadership
ReplyDeleteI think a toxic leader is one of the scariest things in the world because you do not realize they are a toxic leader until it is too late. By the time you realize your leader is trouble it is too late to do anything to change it because they are so powerful. Toxic leaders scare me because for the most part they only care about themselves and do not care what happens to their followers. However there are the toxic leaders that are just incapable of the job being asked of them or they do something without researching the effects of their actions which in my mind just makes the leader a dumb leader.
I am a very independent person and normally do not rely on someone else for help unless it is my parents. However my necessities are always met so I have no reason to worry. If I did not know where my next meal was coming from this would be a different story. Maybe I would follow a toxic leader if they could provide me with the necessities I needed to survive. However this is risky because at the end of the day they only care about themselves and could care less what would happen to me. Toxic leaders also lead by fear and tell you how impossible it would be to try to overthrow him to the point where you believe him. I am afraid of breaking the law now for fear of getting a ticket or go to jail. I do not know what I would do if my life were on the line. I might be the follower I have tried to avoid and focus on protecting myself, family, and friends.
Toxic leadership is different in the workplace. Since I am not worried about my life or basic necessities I would be more likely to tell my boss what they were doing wrong. In order to do this though I would have to do it very carefully. For example I would talk to my boss when they were in a good mood and less likely to get upset. I would try to tell my boss very calmly what he was doing wrong or what my idea for the project would be. If they were already upset I would try to calm them down and talk to them another day. Before I talked to my boss I would also try to look at the situation through their eyes and see how I would react to the situation or what I believe an appropriate response would be. Often times toxic leaders are stressed and do not know how to appropriately relieve their stress. I might invite them to the gym or tell them to exercise to relieve stress that way. Toxic leaders scare me because they are unpredictable and you never know how they will react. Unless my life was on the line I would always try to reason with them to find a solution.
Jessica Ferlmann
ReplyDeleteBlog 8
I feel like a vision is really like a set of goals you make for yourself. You have a list on what you want to do or achieve in the next five years and you do it. For example if I want to be promoted in my job or want to take a vacation to Disney World I would work harder and save my money. When I look at my goals now they are to train Canine Companions for Independence, become a physical therapist, have a strong faith life, and graduate college and get into physical therapy school and get my doctorate. On the way I want to meet my future husband and have kids. These are my goals for the next five years and also my vision. I can achieve this by raising a puppy for Santa Rosa, study in school to get good grades to graduate and to get into graduate school, go to mass on Sundays, and date different guys to see which one is the right one for me and would be the best father to my future kids. However a Vision is more like what I want to contribute to the world. One way to help me write my vision statement is to figure out my mission in life. The best way to start is to look at my values. I try to be honest, cheerful, happy, kind, helpful, friendly, caring, optimistic, spontaneous, assertive, persistent, respectful, and understanding. In class we looked at different company’s mission statement’s and if we thought they were following them. I felt like some of the mission statement’s given were like beauty pageant answers. Half of them all wanted world peace. This is all well and good, but unless you truly intend to do everything to achieve peace you failed your mission statement. I feel like a mission statement should be something achievable or you could work at to make it better. I know that it is very competitive to get a job in the world, but if I was an employer and someone told me they wanted world peace I feel like I would hire someone else. I feel like you can get a good job based on good grades, good social skills, and experience. However if people wrote a realistic mission statement like they want to help the company expand in profit by cutting down in costs than I would feel like they have an excellent addition to their resume and probably hire them. Visions are all well and good, but people need to worry about changing themselves, their neighborhood, and their cities before they can focus on changing the world that we live in.
Blog - Groups- Jessica Ferlmann
ReplyDeleteAs a people person I naturally like to work in groups better than working alone. I am a people person and my creativity grows when its being fed by others people’s ideas. I love talking to people and hate being alone. After learning about groups I realized that in some of my groups I am on an individual level and on other groups I am on a group level. For example, if I am doing a project with my friends than I am more lenient to goofing off and not getting as much done because I like being with that person so much. Where if I am placed in a group and do not choose my partners than I am more likely on a group level. I want to get a good grade in the class so I do my part and let people in my group do what they are good at. For example some of my friends are really quite and they don’t like public speaking so I am normally the person that presents the project to the class because I love presenting. I am not computer savvy so I would let the quiet people in my group type up our ideas or format it. I am okay at organizing things and normally do, but I would like to get better at it and be more efficient. I tend to get sidetracked really easily so it takes me longer to accomplish things. This is why I wait until midnight to do my homework because I cannot focus during the day with all of the distractions everywhere. When I played on my high school golf team we all had collective efficacy. We could beat anyone as long as we practiced and played our best and kept our attitude in check. Golf was more of a group level too because I respected everyone’s ability to play golf and to help our team win. However when I played basketball in my junior year my team lacked group cohesion and it was more of an individual level. The seniors would only pass it to the seniors, and the juniors would only pass it to the juniors. Nobody felt like they belonged and half the team quit. During the following year no one wanted to play on the basketball team because of all the drama. This hurt our group dynamic and the team. If we respected each other as teammates this whole mess would have been avoided. However I can see where the Individual level could be bad because when my dad was in high school he was the President of his class and was kicked off because he missed a meeting because he went to mass. Everyone who was under him quit too and the class lost great leadership skills.
Blog # 10
ReplyDeleteJessica Ferlmann
Last week we read about leadership in culture. This made me think about my own culture and how it has impacted my life. I am American, but if my family was to celebrate any part of my heritage it would be our Irish heritage even though we are 1/16 of a percent. In my family you don’t wear orange because it is the color of Protestants who picked that color for Ireland’s flag because it was a polar opposite from Catholics. Being Catholic plays a major part in my life. It helps define who I am. I try to help others see Christ through me so I always try to treat others the way I would like to be treated. My life is very family oriented. I would rather hang out with my family over anyone in the world. This being said I get along with people who have strong family lives and values. This is almost counter cultural because most families don’t eat dinner together and do everything on an individual basis. Even though I am not Hispanic or Italian my family has one of the highest family values of people that I know. Growing up I ate dinner with my family every night and watched movies, played board games, or sports together.
Unlike African and Spanish heritages dancing isn’t a part of my family. In fact my whole family plays golf. Scotland was our neighbor. Golf is the main thing that brings my secondary family together. Every year my uncles who live in Illinois visit us in California and play golf. Likewise we have a family reunion every year called the McFerl Cup and the whole family goes and plays. However on my moms side what connects them is tennis. Tennis is another important part of my life. My grandpa has been in charge of the St. Jude’s Tennis Classic for over 20 years and when my grandma died they named it after her. Tennis connects my mom to her family. One great thing about tennis and golf is they are sports the whole family can play together and play when we are older.
Since my family is so sports and family oriented it is hard for us to get along with people who aren’t sports or family oriented. The cards game we played in class reminded me of my dad around wine connoisseurs. He has nothing to talk to them about and doesn’t understand their jargon. Since they came from different cultures and back rounds it was really hard for my dad to enjoy himself at the party. This shows how difficult it would be to go into a country with a different culture and try to fit in.
Jessica Ferlmann
ReplyDeleteBlog #11 (I think)
Compared to most women around the globe I feel like the United States gives females the most privileges. We can vote, run for president, drive, and get property by ourselves. My gender might hurt me in any other country, but in the United States it is a group of privilege. I am also white and middle class. I grew up going to a Catholic school all of my life. However this was more an act of faith on my parents part than an act of privilege. My grandparents were lower class and put their six kids through Catholic school so they could learn their faith and my dad wanted to do the same or else he said he would feel like a failure. Our Catholic faith is very important to my family and is what helps us get through the day, week, and year. When I go shopping I don’t have to worry about people thinking I might steal something. Actually if anything I’e been in stores were I felt my age hurt me and sales people were watching every move I made. I hated that feeling and couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to shop while black.
My brother has autism and looks completely normal but acts really weird so my family would always get dirty looks, like you can’t control your son. This finally stopped once MIchael got a service dog because then people knew something was wrong and he wasn’t just a misbehaved kid. We lived in Illinois but moved to California because people in Illinois didn’t know what autism was or how to handle it and California had the best autism services in the country. We put everything we owned into a 24ft U-Haul truck and came to Modesto, CA. My mom worked hard to learn Michael’s rights and privileges because he has a lot but they are hidden so you have to find them. Now when people have kids with autism they call my mom because she is the go to lady who knows how to do everything and use Michael’s rights. However it should not be this difficult. Kids with disabilities rights should be written out clearly somewhere that is easy to find. Not hidden so we can’t take advantage of them. Social Justice is important because we were all created equal in God’s eyes and should be treated equally. We all think, and feel equally so we should treat others with the respect they deserve. That is one thing I do not like about teenagers, is that they are rude to their parents. When I was 10 I knew I never wanted to be like that so I respected my mom and we never fought, and I rarely got punished.
Blog # 12
ReplyDeleteJessica Ferlmann
Ethics is one of the most important things I think in being a leader. Ethics make the company or employees more personal to the business leader and if you care about the employees more they might have an invested interest in the company more. For some leaders it is easy to have invested interest, but for others it is harder. For example, I work for my dad so I have an invested interest that his company does well because if it fails it has a direct impact on my life. It’s hard to get that same invested interest in other employees my dad hires because the company’s success doesn’t affect them. It is a little easier now to get invested interest because of these hard economic times. If my dad doesn’t do well he might have to let someone go and it is more difficult to find a new job. I think the best way to get that invested interest is through ethics. If your employees see that you care about your company, they will care about the company. Similarly if they are treated with respect and the company acts ethically they are more likely to get that invested interest the company needs for success. Every time I think of ethics I think of an episode on The Office where Michael Scott sings a song that goes, “Let’s get ethical” instead of physical. I think I am a very ethical person and have high morals. Through my upbringing and my faith I feel like I have a strong moral compass. However even if you are an ethical person that doesn’t mean you will succeed. There is something to be said about luck. Being in the right place at the right time or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luck greatly affects a business and if it will succeed or fold in. When my dad left his old firm to start his new one the old firm offered to pay my dad’s secretary double what my dad was paying her. If she took back her old job my dad would have been in a world of hurt and probably wouldn’t have made it. But by God’s grace and good luck my dad’s secretary decided to stay with my dad and now this week my dad is buying his own office instead of sharing it with another lawyer in town. Slightly off topic but still applying to luck my friend’s mom was scheduled to be the flight attendant for one of the planes that crashed on 9/11, however she was switched to fly on a different plane last minute. If she was on that plane she would have died but luck had it that she lived. Unfortunately all people weren’t as lucky that day.
Jessica Ferlmann Blog 13
ReplyDeleteI feel like I am a very empowering person. In every group project I always empower my partners that I am excited to work with them because I know they will do a great job. One of the reasons I say this is so they try their hardest not to let the group down and to get a good grade. Empowering is an important part of life because if you tell other people they can do it enough, then they will believe that they can do it. This raises their self confidence and they produce something that they did not think they could do. Two people that always empowered me were my parents. In everything I did they always said I could do it if I put my mind to it and worked hard enough at it. Well, except for singing my parents said I would always fail at that. During my whole life I wanted to go to the University of Notre Dame for college and my parents always said I could if I worked hard in high school and got good grades. I always knew I was a bad tester and probably would not get in through my grades so I decided to play golf as a means to get into Notre Dame. My dad helped me every day with golf and I was good, but not great. However because my dad empowered me every day and pushed me to work harder I could have played golf at Holy Cross, St. Mary’s, or University of Portland and I would have gotten a quarter scholarship. In the end thats not what I decided to do, but because my mom and dad were supportive and empowered me to do my best I had doors open to me that before were closed. Today the one person that I try to empower the most is my younger sister. She hates school and wants nothing to do with it but loves tennis. I tell her that she can do well in school if she works at it. She has the drive for tennis, but not the drive for school. Another way I empower her is by showing her that I care about what she does. I go to all of her tennis matches and try to pump her up before a big match. When she used to play volleyball my whole family would go and support her and treat it like a football game. We would tailgate in the parking lot and cheer as loudly as we could so Katie and her team would preform their best. Empowerment is the best way to tell someone we care about them and that we believe in them and should be used in every aspect of our lives.
Your post is very well.You share the nice information about the Autism in ireland.You create the lifestyle luxury.
ReplyDeleteautism in ireland & HSE autism