Ch 7 Application – “Law of Respect”
- Take a look at the qualities that help a leader to gain respect. Rank yourself in each area on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high). One of the best ways to raise your “leadership level” is to improve in each area. In one sentence for each, write a practice, habit, or goal that will help you to improve in that area.
- Leadership ability (natural ability) (8) Observe the leaders around me and analyze what makes them successful.
- Respect for others (9) I believe my goal is to build people, but going out of my way to build relationships with every single teammate can improve my overall levels of respect.
- Courage (8)- Being a courageous player who runs through adversity must be as important of a goal for me as hitting .300.
- Success record (9)- My current success record is high. I’m shaping up to put up an all conference season statistically, which in turn has put me in a leadership role even as an athletic freshman. Sweat equity=success. I will continue to live by this.
- Faithfulness (8)- I tend to lose faith in myself easily, but this could be avoided by sticking to my process. If i have a process that grants me success, I shouldn’t have such a hard time with faithfulness because I can trust my process. Trusting my process will allow my trust in myself not to waver so heavily.
- Value-added to others – (9) I pride myself in being almost a player-coach to some teammates when it comes to hitting. I have respect in this area, and add value to some of my teammates who will work with me to develop their swing. Continuing to share the knowledge I’ve amassed will help me add value to others.
- Ask the 3 people closest to you what they respect most about you. And (if you are courageous enough, and they are honest enough), ask them to tell you in which areas you most need to grow. Once you have identified one area of growth, describe how you will set out to improve upon this area based on their honest feedback. The biggest area of growth for me would be how hard I am on myself. This was the common theme from the people I asked and it’s what I would have expected. It’s a positive and a negative, because being hard on myself pushes me to do everything in my power to succeed, but it crushes me in the sense that I can break down at times when I don’t meet the expectations I set for myself. I can be fixated on constant success and lose sight of the fact that the best players in baseball fail to record a hit 70% of the time.
Action – “Law of Respect”
Gather together at least 3-5 of your closest friends/family. Come up with at least 4 situations that you and your friends/family find yourself in as a group. (Example: planning a trip, entering a business venture, teaming up to play a sport, completing a project, going out to dinner). For each situation, have each person tell which person in the group they would most likely follow and why. List the situation you and your friends come up with below and list the names of who as mentioned as the leader of each situation.
| Names of friends/family: Justin, Aidan, Zach (my 3 roommates and teammates) | ||
| Situation | Leader | Why |
| Trouble with a household appliance, or issue/disaster in the apartment | Justin | Justin prides himself on his street smarts over his school smarts. He’s an incredibly problem solver. He has such a mature way of remaining calm and level headed while devising a solution and not letting the stress and frustration of the circumstance affect his thought process. |
| Rallying the troops after a tough loss | Eliot | We chose me because we believed I’d deliver the best motivational speech. We came to this conclusion because we felt I do a good job of holding people accountable while still being able to build and maintain their confidence. |
| Set up the wifi and handle any technical difficulties in the apartment | Aidan | Aidan is incredibly savvy with technology and has incredible patience with the difficulties that tech can bring us in this day and age. He also is great at learning on the fly when he’s presented with uncharted territory technologically. |
| Make sure everyone in the apartment is up and on time for the bus on a road series | Zach | Beyond just being a morning person, Zach is incredibly responsible with his time. He’ll never be up late doing homework, he’d never arrive to practice later than 20 minutes early. He is incredibly disciplined with his commitment to deadlines and attendance. He’s mature enough to get out of bed on his first alarm, while the rest of us hit snooze. |
Ch 8 Application and Apply – “Law of Intuition”
One of the most important abilities in leadership is reading people.
- How would you rate yourself in the area (reading people)? Can you tell what others are feeling? Can you sense when people are upset? Happy? Confused? Angry? Do you anticipate what others are thinking? 9/10. I believe I have a high capability for understanding other peoples thoughts. I’ve always considered myself to be an observant person when it comes to my surroundings, and I think this skill translates to reading people as well. From their tone, to their body language, I feel like I have a good sense when to ask someone what’s wrong.
- Let’s pretend this is NOT an area of strength for you. Complete the following task to practice gaining the skill of “reading people”:
- List at least 3 books you plan on reading (once you have time…hahaha) on relationships. “How to Win Friends and Influence Others.” “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect.” “The Confidence Game.”
- Engage more people in conversation by going up to a random person and start a conversation. Describe your experience here. Admittedly I somewhat prefaced the conversation with, “Hey this is kind of for a class but…” so as to avoid seeming bothersome and intrusive, however I was shocked to hear how open this individual was to share about how their day and week had gone. After we got through the small talk of “what’s your major?” and “Where are you from?” they actually shared with me how stressful being a bio major is and how they feel like they’re in a bit over their head. I was able to relate in this experience thanks to my single semester as a Kins major, and my time spent in Bio 206 Anatomy and Physiology.
Become a people watcher. Set out a time to “watch people.” Describe your experience here I noticed how everyone seems so deep in thought when they’re alone. You start trying to imagine their inner monologue and trying to see if their body language can tell you anything about their thoughts. I found that people’s posture as they sat in the student union probably said something about their engagement with their studies. I ran into the difficulty of many people being mindlessly engaged in their phones, which makes it a little difficult to surmise any of what could be on their mind.