Leadership Reflection Paper

Reflecting on Leadership In the time that I have been a part of the Presidential Leadership Class, I have gained a lot of insight on how leadership is constructed and how it varies from leader to leader. Personally, what that strikes me as the most important aspect is genuineness by recognizing and following your values. This will set an example in a positive way to the rest of the members in a group. Being a genuine leader is something that I believe will lead to the greatest results and the best experiences as a whole. Genuine leadership means living out your beliefs and taking them into account before making any decisions when leading a group. Growing up with mentors that have similar values to me has helped me to constantly revisit those values when making decisions. For

Genuineness and trust go hand in hand. If I talk about how one of my ideals is everyone lifting each other up, I cannot go behind someone’s back and talk about how bad of a job they are doing. Even if that person never finds out what I said, the person that I said it to now sees that I did not stay true to that ideal and likely has lost trust in me as their leader. They may think that I will do the same thing behind their back or they will tell others about how I was acting against my values. As a leader of a specified group, I need to make sure that everyone’s values align with mine. While we are never going to have the same beliefs on everything, our core values need to be consistent. Deciding early what those values are is crucial to our success. If someone has a belief that is in contrast to the rest of the group’s, they will either be unhappy throughout the process or even test the strength of the group by pulling everyone in the opposite direction from where we were headed. They will cause the group to backtrack, causing a lot of likely precious time to be