Week Four

 

This week was an interesting one and I cannot believe that we are nearly halfway through.  This entire course thus far has changed my perspective of things at work.  At times I catch myself thinking things like “Yes, my manager right now is really showing true leadership” and at other times, I commend myself for going the extra mile for customers using my personal and the company’s “values.” 

During this week, we discussed company’s purpose values and operating principles.  I could not imagine working for a company that had different values and visions as I do.  Working for a company where you have to memorize their values on a daily in order to successfully complete your work would be a difficult task.  Whereas working here at Comcast, our main goal is to provide exceptional services.  In doing so we have to be punctual, polite and all around willing to help.  This is easy for me because even outside of work I live by these same values.  The monthly training sessions held by the general manager help us all with a shared vison.  These meeting are very interesting and discussing the forthcoming products really excites me.  I find myself eager to go out in the field to install and explain these new features.  Ultimately, I enjoy my job and I enjoy putting smiles on people’s face by providing them with services.

We also had to choose a leadership model and write an essay about it, I chose the servant leadership model.  During my research I was about to find some interesting things for example companies that makes use of the leadership approach and some famous leaders like Dr Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and so on.  These people believe in putting the needs of their followers before theirs. I find out that not many organizations make use of the followers first approach they rather use the dictatorship approach because they think it is more effective.  I personally think the servant first approach is very effective than the leader first approach because you can learn more about your followers and you can help them grow to become their own leader.

Blog Entry 2

This week I learned a lot in my leadership class.  We did an essay on differentiating between leaders and managers.  I use to think that they were the same but after this week I have a clear understanding of the difference.  Management is more of using power to control their workers to accomplish a set goal; while leaders serve as a mentor to their employees.  A Leader motivates their followers to become leaders. Leaders are always open for suggestions compared to managers who have already came up with the plan and have the employees work towards the goal.

We also discussed two types of leadership, which are transformational and transactional.  Transformational are leaders who “transform” their employees and transactional leadership are leaders who reward their employees based on their transactions with the employee.  We discussed the five main practices of exemplary leaders from chapter 1.  The first, model the way, which I think is the most important of all the five.  This practice is basically the leader leading by examples.  The second is, inspire a shared vision; in this practice the leader shows his followers the vision of making the organization better by setting goals and a plan to achieving them. Challenge the process, which is the stage where the leader has to be prepared for any changes that the organization might face.  The leader has to trust his followers by enabling others to act. During a project the leader has to let the followers make suggestions and make decisions. The last practice is for the leader to encourage the heart whether it’s during a project or at the end of the project.  A simple encouragement or acknowledgement can go a long way. An exemplary leader can write a note that says “thank you” or an email that shows appreciation is always a good idea.

I will say that this course is much more interactive than other online courses.  I learned a lot this week and I am excited about next week when we have to choose a topic to write about for our academic essay. 

In a sense I've always considered myself a good leader and going into this course my expectations were how complicated could a Leadership course be? but after viewing the requirements and assignments I can see that this is an intense course but it will ultimately prepare me to be an outstanding and successful leader.  I am especially excited and interested in the LPI portion of the class and being able to share the assessment with my colleagues.  Discovering my personal leadership style will definitely prep me in the field of Business. I am looking forward to utilizing the different concepts of leadership in my current position with the hopes of getting recognized and generously compensated.

Im also looking forward to working with and learning from my fellow classmates. the group project is another aspect of the class that i am excited about, I've already thought about which movie to watch and write about even though I've already seen almost all of the movies on the list.