#9 - Reflection

I've gone through leadership training and personality testing almost yearly since I took my first leadership class in 7th grade, so when this class was offered as an elective I was really interested to see what more a structured course could bring me. Being on executive boards for student organizations and in Greek Life in college and having life experiences where leadership was necessary, I felt like I knew who I was as a leader even before coming to this class, but 14 weeks later I have a better grasp on who I am in leadership and follower roles. 

The first time I took StrengthsQuest as a sophomore, I completely agreed with my strengths (woo, futuristic, communicator, activator, adaptability) but when I got virtually the same response this year (woo, communicator, activator, adaptability, individualization) I thought it was very different than what I see in myself until I looked further into it. I love being a people-person an d but I don't want that to define me, and that's how I viewed my results from this assessment. Obviously being able to network and make connections with people is an extremely important part of being a professional and a person, so I value those strengths a lot, but I know I can't rely on my people skills to get me where I want to go. 

Talking about identities was really important because I know that my career is going to put me in situations where there will be be people from extremely different areas - geographically and personally. Understanding the privileges I have and the struggles others go through is only going to help me, as well as put my experiences into perspective. I know I have my own, but I also recognize how fortunate I am and a lot of the people I will work with are not as fortunate as I have been in my life. 

I really value the internal reflections we've done in class and through our assignments about our philosophies and plans, they've forced me to come to terms with the things I have to work on to become better but also how to use my strengths and do the things I'm good at and love to do. I'm really happy I took this class and will definitely use the things we've discussed and worked on in order to be a better leader as well as a better follower.