The Habits of a Leader

Hi!  My name is Danny and I am going into my junior year at the University of Minnesota, and my second year with the UY.  I want to share an experience that gave me the opportunity to learn what it means to be a true leader.  The summer before my sophomore year in high school, I was invited to attend a leadership summit at the University of California, Los Angeles.  The summit was created by the People to People International & Ambassadors Program, a non-profit organization that aims to bridge cultural and political borders through education and exchange.  At this summit, I met individuals from countries including England, China, and India.  It was an eye-opener to see such a great diversity of people coming together to learn the insights of true leadership.

One of the events that was set up by the leadership summit was a workshop called Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens.  The purpose of the workshop was to help teenagers learn more about being an effective leader.  The Seven Habits were: 1) Be Proactive 2) Begin with the End in Mind 3) Put First things First 4) Think Win-Win 5) Seek to Understand First, then to be Understood 6) Synergize 7) Sharpen the Saw.  I want to go in depth on a few of the seven habits, mainly my top three that I feel are the most important. 

The first habit I want to discuss is Be Proactive.  Everyone knows that being proactive means taking initiative, but the workshop taught me that it is more than that.  Being proactive also means being able to accept responsibilities for your own behavior and making decisions with certain values in mind, rather than using your emotions.  A takeaway from this habit is that effective leaders will accept what they did wrong and take on any consequences that comes with it.  The second habit is Sharpen the Saw.  This habit is about constantly reflecting on the four basic areas of life: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.  For effective leaders, it is necessary to constantly think about how they can better those areas.  Leaders need to understand how to run their own lives first before running a team.  The third habit is Seek to Understand First, then to be Understood.  What this habit taught me is that listening to what others have to say is a priority over expressing what you have to say.  For effective leaders, they listen to their team’s ideas before replying with their own.  This allows true communication and relationship building within the team and the leader. 

The Seven Habits workshop was just one of the many events that the summit included which allowed me to learn more about being a true leader.  Before I attended the summit, I had a very simplistic view of leadership.  Leaders are people who come up with all of the ideas for their teams, and the teams help the leaders complete that idea.  They always have the last say on things, and their decisions are final.  After the summit, I learned that true leaders do more than that.  True leaders not only lead a team, but they can also take a seat and allow one of their team members to take control.  True leaders are always seeking to learn from others, and not just think that they know it all. 

The leadership summit at UCLA has helped me progress to become the leader that I want to be.  I thought that it was a valuable experience that I would do all over again.  I used the knowledge I learned at this summit to be proactive about looking for a job, and end up at the UY. This has opened the door to even more leadership opportunities for me. Now that I have shared my experience, what is your experience with leadership?  Do you feel that you are a better leader because of that experience?  Share it below!

What are the Characteristics of a Good Leader?

 

Recently a U. of Minn alumnus, a former member of the U-YMCA and long-time friend, told me about a blog the U-Y had started. He added that Jenny Collins, the U-Y’s current director, was interested in having a U-Y alumnus participate, too. The two asked if was interested.

 

I was intrigued, certainly, but wondered . . .  why an alumnus? After all, this was the students’ blog!  As I thought more about the idea, however, I realized that perhaps the perspective I have today on my experience at the U-Y could act as a kind of “book-end”  to today’s students’ experience. While current U-Y members’ blog contributions seem to reflect what their time at the U-Y means to them today, and particularly as it relates to leadership, I hope my thoughts offer a glimpse of how the skills learned and perspectives gained at the U-Y can be valuable throughout one’s life. That said, just contemplating contributing to the blog has also prompted me to again examine the U-Y’s impact on my life. . . . and frankly, I’m already quite surprised at how profound it was!  

 

To be a good leader doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be an outgoing, gregarious extrovert, it took me a number of years to realize that, especially because I’d always been quite shy! I still clearly remember seeing people – fellow students and adults – who were seemingly comfortable in front of groups and/or leading others and thinking that I could never be like them, yet today I am also a leader with my own style.

 

The metamorphosis began for me thanks to a U-Y program –– a week-long stint in the BWCA through YMCA Camp Menogyn. My week in the BWCA wilderness was, in retrospect, a fundamentally life-changing event for many reasons that I may expand on in a future post. For now, I’ll just focus on one. Our guide, Paul, was, in my view, the antithesis of a wilderness guide. In stark contrast to the brawny outgoing “woodsman” I’d expected, he was a somewhat quiet and slim fellow. Although not always the best communicator, he still always had a sense of how each of us was doing. He was encouraging and supportive, and somehow able to convince each of us that we could manage the portages, bugs, muscle pain and exhaustion while still finding the fun and humor in our trip! Still a “city boy” at the time, I couldn’t figure out why he or anyone would want to spend a whole summer like that! As I’ve often found, you never know what  lies around life’s next corner. As a result of that  one trip, I went on to guide canoe and backpacking trips for Menogyn campers for the following six or seven summers!

 

I’m quite sure Paul had no idea of the extent of the impact he and that trip had on me and on my future! It was through this experience that I realized that being a leader wasn’t always about being or acting “in charge,” or even just about what you say. It’s also about who you are as a person. It’s about being able to open up, to connect with others, and to listen. My experience with the U-Y changed the arc of my life in many positive ways, and for that I am always grateful.

 

Have you had an experience that changed the way you think about leadership. …and  if so, how did that happen?

 

Joe Moriarity

Leadership After the UY

After 4 (and a half, but who’s counting) years mentoring within UY cause-driven programs, it should come as no surprise that I continued down the youth outreach and mentoring path, bringing my experience to the Girl Scouts of MN & WI Valleys. Besides having the honor of working with an INCREDIBLE group of young middle- and high-school ladies, my new position within the Girl Scouts ConnectZ program also allows me to seek out and attend awesome college-and career-related events.

 

One of these such events just so happened to hit the “leadership” nail on the head. This past Friday I attended a Women in Careers leadership conference with 23 ambitious, thoughtful, 21st century-skilled high school girls. The main draw of this annual conference sponsored by the Girl Scouts of MN and WI River Valleys is a series of panels where girls get to interact with professional women from a variety of fields and at varying stages in their career. The panel I attended included women from the fields of social work, education, non-profit business management, and public activism. Although I am not debating which college I want to go to or which career path I should take, hearing from these strong female leaders helped remind me that leadership is a process of learning of growing. It’s ok if you haven’t read all the books on leadership, and you have to cut back on the number of extracurriculars (quality over quantity, right?) and it’s ok if you forget your “meaningful” and “life changing” lesson plan in the printer…I think you get the point.

 

So out of the many insightful nuggets of advice, here are my five favorite takeaways from the panel—agreed upon by each panelist, ages 22-54:

 

1. Leadership skills develop over time—you live and you learn, that’s how life works. If you aren’t trying new things and goofing up, you aren't learning.
2. The leader in a group is the person who will take on the extra work to make sure everything is completed. Leadership doesn’t just happen, it is intentional.
3. Involve yourself with people who mean well for you and will take interest in you. As one of the panelists said, “You always need at least one person in your corner.”
4. With that, this person can be someone older or younger than you, so don’t burn bridges and always be open to opportunities.
5. Lastly, but in my opinion the most important advice to carry with you everyday: Be aware that you ARE affecting those around you. Don’t be concerned about IF you are affecting others, but rather HOW. You affect others in even the smallest interactions and many times you will not know the affect you have had on someone. So be genuine. Be positive. Be that person others want in their corner.

 

Keep on keeping on!

Leah

Paths of the UY

               

My name is Jenny Talen. I came to the University YMCA (UY) as an AmeriCorps VISTA through the College Health Corps in June 2012. I am now serving my second term at the UY (which is coming to a close in June) and the experience has been life-changing. The community that is the UY is truly remarkable—people with passion, people with drive and people with the desire to create social change in every aspect of life.

My role these past two years has been to help support, build capacity and sustainability for two after school mentoring initiatives; Y Mentors Literacy Matters and Y Healthy Kids Matter. Together, these two programs serve close to 100 college students who serve over 120 youth in the Twin Cities. At each after-school site, college student mentors invest in young people, building meaningful and positive relationships. As these relationships solidify, Y Mentors engage with their mentees to build a positive view of the young person’s personal future and instill assets in each individual’s life. As an outsider looking in, it has been inspiring watching these programs and college students transform the lives of young people.

In addition to making an impact on youth in the community, the UY makes an incredible impact on University of Minnesota students as well. College students can become part of a safe and welcoming environment dedicated to building cause-driven leaders and creating a community of intercultural competence and acceptance. It has been an absolute joy watching the college students I work with grow as leaders and as individuals. I have made relationships with so many of these students and I am humbled by their strength, resiliency and ability to create social change.

I don’t know where my journey will lead me after my time at the UY concludes, but I look forward to continuing those relationships I’ve fostered and translating the skills I’ve gained at the UY to wherever my path leads me.

Jenny Talen
Americorps VISTA

I Am Because We Are

                         

                                                           Sonia Paredes

My first big project as a social change intern was to lead two seminars for Y Mentors. Through creative thinking, and with Patti Neiman’s help, I was able to put together a meaningful and reflective seminar. The seminars consisted of activities that I experienced in a social change study abroad program to Cape Town, South Africa.

My trip taught me the concept of Ubuntu, “I am who I am because of who we all are.” I translate that to mean that we are more alike than we are different and therefore we need to work together and learn from one another in order to build a strong, authentic community. I incorporated the power of Ubuntu in my seminar because I wanted the Y Mentors to share their voices by motivating and inspiring one another to continue to be a positive role model to their "Mentee’s".

Leading the Y Mentors seminar was definitely an unforgettable experience because it enabled me to step out of my comfort zone and share my voice. My experience helped me realize that leadership is not about leading, it is about hearing and learning from others. When you lead you can choose to overpower everyone, but when I led, I chose to give everyone the power to share their voice.

I believe that I am who I am today because of the empowering individuals that are in my life and when we all work together we form a strong, diverse and equal community.

“Like peace, justice, love, freedom, and order, authentic community is forever an incomplete unfinished process, but always full of possibility.” (Juan Moreno).

What is your definition of an authentic community? 

What does leadership mean to you? 

Fireside Reflections

The University of Minnesota was a cold, cold place this winter. Day after day with below-zero wind chills, our students would make their way into the University YMCA after trekking across campus through predatory winds.

The fireplace in the lobby became a gathering place for students and staff relieved to have survived their journey to the UY. We held our first “Warm Up Wednesday,” where students and staff gathered in the afternoon to drink hot chocolate and wonder why we choose to live in this state. Soon staff began to regularly bring their laptops down to sit by the fire together and work side by side, chatting with the students coming in and out.

As the winter wore on, conversations soon shifted from the weather to equally pressing topics for today’s young adults. Conversations about the children the college students are mentoring in schools surrounding campus. Discussions of the crime alerts on campus and whether or not race should be included in the descriptions. A brainstorm session about which Guinness Book of World Records record we could break at the UY.

Sometimes I joined the students and staff by the fire; other times I overheard them from my nearby office. Once or twice I wheeled out on my office chair to chime in, then scooted back to my desk. All winter, I found myself grateful for the conversations sparked by our simple gas fireplace.

As the new Executive Director of the University YMCA, my first winter on campus has me reflecting on the topic of leadership. Leadership is about bringing people together around the fireplace. It is about building relationships, stimulating conversations, and developing a collective vision or purpose. It is about creating the opportunity for someone’s voice to emerge.

This blog has been created to bring people together around a key aspect of the University Y—leadership. We intend to invite students, staff, alumni, and partners to submit posts that will hopefully generate an ongoing conversation on leadership. Bloggers will be asked to reflect on an experience that informs how they think about leadership, in 500 words or less. This could be an experience through the UY, or outside of the UY, with reflective leadership as the common thread. We hope you will consider participating by reading, commenting, and even possibly writing as a guest blogger.

On the Thursday before Spring Break, the temperature rose above 50 degrees. With it came packs of students walking by in shorts, music blasting from our neighboring fraternities, and the look of joy on the faces of people who believe the worst of the winter might just be behind them. The sudden energy of spring on campus reminded me of something else that is critical for leaders. Hope. So it is with great hope that we launch this blog and invite you to join our UY community in a conversation on leadership.

                                                       Jenny Wright Collins

                                                         Executive Director