So the last blog post that I wrote was a review on a book about management. I want to piggyback off of that and talk about my own experiences with leadership. My whole life I have considered myself a leader. In high school I started a club and served as president of two organizations. This year I serve as president for a non-profit on my college campus. Above all, all of my experiences have helped me learn how to work with people from different backgrounds. I’m trying to take what I have learned from the past and Martha Finney’s book to bring the most out of my fellow members. The trouble that I’ve been having is trying to get the whole group on the same page.
This year was full of changes. The club got new officers, established new positions, developed higher expectations and received less money. In the mist of facing all of these challenges we have also been trying to set and obtain new goals, branch out to new publics and explore new media outlets. The other co-president and I have tried several leadership tactics. We started off by meeting with the entire group and communicating our vision for the year with them, and we listened to their ideas and feedback. We then made sure that everyone understood exactly what they are responsible for and what we would take care of. We thought that we were off to a great start because everyone was excited and ready to work at the beginning of the year, but we didn’t realize that just because to two of us were on the same page it didn’t mean that the other leaders were as well.
We failed to communicate exactly how much time we expected everyone to commit to the organization per week, nor did we establish who was responsible for picking up the slack when one leader was having a tough week. The problem was that the other co-president and I took on so many responsibilities as PR co-chairs the year before that we didn’t how to change our positions. People recognized that we took on more responsibilities but they did not realize that we changed our responsibilities.
I’m still in the process of learning how to effectively lead a group and with every experience that I have I am able to grow from it. Right now I am challenged by trying to overcome so many obstacles at one time and trying to bring the most out of the members. It’s my job to help them form solid relationships not only with myself, but with one another as well. We have to rely on each other to build each other up and be responsible for one another. We have to all be willing to lend a helping hand and not just assume that someone else will take care of it. We have to all get on the same page and I’m going to do my best to help make that happen.
