Tag Archives: Follower

Sophomore Year Recap

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If someone would have told me that we would be living with the current circumstances, I never would have believe them. Although these circumstances are not ideal, I believe the outcome can still be extremely powerful. How we all choose the react and handle what is going on is completely up to us. With that being said, I understand that everyone’s situation and experience regarding COVID-19 is different, therefore, there is not a specific way that an individual or group of people can go about this situation. Clearly, we all come from different backgrounds which means that everything going on right now impact everyone differently. The hard reality is that for some, this has been much easier to cope and handle, (being able to work remotely, continuing to be paid, having a SAFE place to live and “quarantine,” etc.), while for others, it has resulted in much harder and more severe cases (unemployment, inability to receive unemployment, mental health illness increase, diagnosis with nowhere safe to quarantine from others, death of a love one, etc.). It is very simplistic to say that we can all make light of this situation and it can be handled by taking very simple precautions. However, we do not live in a simplistic world. These matters are very complex and require folks to understand that their way of life is different from many, many others. This is what sophomore year has been teaching me.

Before coming into sophomore year, I was very ignorant to a lot of the topics that we have discussed in courses like PHL 118, COM 461, HST 221, CGL 145, and CGL 445. These courses have educated me on very important issues in our world, how to discuss them with others, and most importantly, how to take action in battling these issues (solidarity). I have never felt so educated, yet uneducated in my life. I’m learning so much and it makes me realize how much I do not know, and I love it. I can honestly say that I have never felt so passionate about education in my life after working with instructors like dr. jared halter, Dr. Elizabeth Carlson, Andy Blom, Shannon Jolliff, and others. These gritty dialogues, discussions, and sessions have turned into a burning passion of mine. I have fallen in love with not only fighting against the forms of oppression that I possess but also for other target/marginalized groups. The fight for others, in my opinion, is so empowering and humbling at the same time. But it’s not about me, it’s about them. I’ve grown such a passion for this work that I applied and been accepted to be a facilitator for CGL 145 and could not be more excited.

Coming into this year I was excited to be mentoring two fine young men!;) One of which I knew well from competing in track and field with since we were in the same conference and then also being able to come in a mentor someone completely knew that I had never met before! After working for a mentorship program over the summer and being absolutely humbled by the experience, I was very excited to continue in the role for others. My mentees are two awesome guys that I’ve loved getting to know and that I am very grateful for. Jackson and Luke have made my sophomore year very special and I am very excited to see how to these two grow over time and through their experiences at CMU!

This year I also experience a lot of changes on the track that have started to shape more of who I am. At the end of last year, I lost my event coach and it was very hard for our group to adjust to going into championship season. This year, having a new coach was a blessing. My coach is perfect for our group as a whole and myself individually. I am very grateful to him and our program for bringing in who I believe is one of the best coaches in the country. It has been amazing to have a coach who I can talk to about real things that don’t only consist of track but real life issues. (I’m just going to end it there on him because I could talk about my experiences with him for days).

This year I have faced many struggles of my own this year regarding mental health issues. I’m very grateful to my coach, RHD, and Tracy Castellon for assisting me through this time and getting me set up with the resources that I have. Through this, we decided the best course was to take on counseling and having me get set up with a service dog. So I now have a 4 month old service dog in-training that my sister, who trains military dogs (her foundation is 1 of 9 of the US Military’s vendors for dogs), police dogs, service dogs, therapy dogs, and normal house dogs, and I are working on training his together.

I am very grateful for what sophomore year has taught me and I am ready to take on the future.:))

Adaptation

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Adaptive leadership is something that leaders use to motivate their followers. This model of leadership focuses on helping and motivating others to complete what they need to do versus doing it for them. Adaptive leadership is based off how people change and adjust their actions to new situations that arise. These types of leaders have specific behaviors that they possess and are able to apply to their everyday lives. The first behavior is they navigate a perspective and see the bigger picture of the situation (getting on the balcony). They can see that there is a greater purpose to what is happening. The second behavior is identifying adaptive challenges. This means that these leaders identify, analyze and diagnose each situation and emphasize on adaptivity. Regulating distress is the third behavior that these leaders portray. They provide methods to keep consistency by providing direction, protection, orientation, etc. Maintaining disciplined attention is the fourth behavior. This motivates people to focus on the tough work and how to positively confront change. The fifth is for the leaders to give the work back to the people. The leaders must be aware of how they impact the people they are working with and know when they should step back and let the followers to discover their own potential and how to handle situations. The final behavior is protecting leadership voices from below. These leaders must carefully listen to everyone. Overall, it is very important for these leaders to identify, analyze, motivate others to adjust, step back and listen.  

Lunch Buddies is an organization that needs leaders who are adaptive and can apply this model to it. This organization is a mentoring program that Central Michigan University uses to provide elementary students with a mentor who helps motivate them with school, nutritional choices, physical activity and as a role model.  

This program is wonderful is doing great things for the elementary students of the Central Michigan community. As far as problems go, I am not able to identify one. The way that I would apply this model to this program is by educating the mentors of this organization. This model can be used and applied to anyone, hence why it is known as adaptive. Mentors should be educated how to motivate young students and teaching them how to be adaptive. They need to be aware of this because the students they are working with at one point or another will be in a situation where they will need someone to motivate them, guide them and educate them in a way where the student can better handle the situation on their own. 

Mentors should be required to undergo a day long training session (similar to those of other leadership trainings like Spark, Rise or Purpose.) Here they will be educated on how to apply this model of leadership. They will learn the six behaviors of an adaptive leader, the strengths and weaknesses and an overview of why this is the necessary approach they are using. The reason this approach is best is because it allows the mentors to have a relationship with their followers (students), to motivate them but also provide them with guidance to handle situations on their own because the mentor will not be there to provide for them in situations that occur outside of their meeting times. This is the one and only step that I would change about the Lunch Buddies process. 

Adaptive leadership is a very valuable model to use. It allows a relation between the leader and the follower to develop, education for both the leader and follower takes place, the leader is able to provide direction but ultimately the follower is given the opportunity to decide what to do.  

Collaborative Leadership

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There are many ways to view the relationship between leadership and followership. The two share many of the same characteristics that indicate that they are closely related, and one desires the presence of the other. Leadership and followership are like one another but are not the same thing, although they do work in collaboration with one another.

There is an immense amount of power in both leadership and followership and they work together in a coercive manner but, again, they are not the same. Leaders and followers collaborate to get different tasks accomplished but it is not always as simple as the leader leading and the follower following. It is a relationship in which the two people learn from each other, teach each other different things, guide one another, and build each other up. It is not a one-way relationship in which the leader does all these things and the follower listens and does them. They merge in this way but ultimately the leader is the person who is deemed to carry more wisdom, passion, and power, but must also remain open-minded to what their followers have to offer them. To assist in proving that these two ideas utilize one another and are very similar. The following will be used to do so: the article “The Leader-Follower Partnership: It’s a New Day,” and the two leadership models/theories, Blake and Moutons’ Managerial Grid/Leadership Grid, which doesn’t effectively describe followers and Situational Leadership Model which limits followers and leaders to be one of four ways.

As stated before, this bond between leader and follower is very close-knit and reciprocated. One does not work without the other. They have very similar characteristics. According to the article, “The Leader-Follower Partnership: It’s a New Day,” there are five dimensions of courageous followership. These elements apply not only to followers but are very important to leaders as well. The five dimensions are as followed: (1) “the courage to assume responsibility-” both leaders and followers assume and pick up responsibility for others who do not, the difference is that followers do not receive as much credit for doing these things. (2) “The courage to serve-” the leader and follower coincide to serve one another just for different reasons: the leader to motivate and the follower to make sure the leader will accomplish their goals. (3) “The courage to challenge-” the leader challenges their followers to make them grow as individuals, while the follower uses their voice to challenge the direction of leader and to voice opinions. (4) “The courage to participate in transformation-” leader change in order to encourage their followers and teach/learn from them the best way possible and the follower transforms to assist the leader and build them up and teach/learn as well. (5) “The courage to take morale action-” both the leader and the follower take stand when something is not morally correct that the other is doing. Although the reasons might be different behind why they do what they do, but leaders and followers do very similar things. After analyzing these characteristics, it is evident that followers and leaders are not the same because they have different purposes for doing what they do but they do a lot of the same things.

There have been methods that have been developed to declare good leaders and the relationship between leader and follower. However, these assume that a leader is only used to direct and tell their followers what to do. For example, Blake and Moutons’ Managerial/Leadership grid doesn’t even take followers into account. It only discusses the benefits of different leadership styles, tasks, and behaviors. Since leaders and followers possess similar characteristics, it is safe to assume that followers do a lot of these things as well. This is not a great use to measure leadership because it uses terms that are exclusive, doesn’t say anything about followers or situations, and grades and suggest that certain types of leadership are not acceptable, but again never takes situations into account. On the other hand, the Situational Theory is also very inaccurate by implying that leaders are only used to teach followers and followers are only there to do what they’re told to and by way of saying that there’s only one possible method to handle a situation. Neither of these charts suggest the greater meaning behind the leadership and followership relationship and what they both have to offer one another and how they are very similar.

Through cooperation leadership and followership work together and are very similar but not the same. These people generally do a lot of the same actions but have different reasons on why they do them. Leaders and followers must understand that they are here to serve one another in very similar ways and no person is better or higher up than the other.