By: Rhoda Elizabeth King
This week was a super packed one but very resourceful and refreshing too, it taught me different adaptive and engagement skills, starting with the concept of adaptive and technical leadership challenges, transitioning to the top 5 leadership practices that lead to a successful organization Takeaways:
1. Concept of adaptive and technical leadership challenge • I learned that Adaptive challenge deals with the changing of the hearts and minds of people. You have to understand what the people are saying and what they are not saying to engage them to help and support your idea. In doing this you have to court the uncommitted, cook the conflict and restrain your desire for control and need for importance • Technical leadership challenge- deal with gathering resources and funds • One of my favorite part of this class and session of the week was the peer consulting case exercise which allows us fellows to discuss challenges we are faced with in our various organizations and then help us brainstorm ideas to solve those problems in small groups, which was very fruitful.
2. From Dr. Brandy Walkers session I learned through brainstorming activities with other fellows the top 5 leadership practices that a leader needs to become successful in his/ her work includes:
•Modeling the way-which is been clear on your personal and professional values and beliefs through practical actions, that set the example for others to follow and set small wins. •Inspiring a shared vision – learn from the past, envision the future and enlist others to follow you in that vision through a persuasive means. •Encouraging heart-recognizing contributions and celebrating accomplishments. •Challenging the process – search for opportunities and experiment through collaborative ideas and innovations •And lastly enabling people by strengthening others and fostering collaborations
3. Two key things I learned from Dr. Raye Rawls session on Reflective structure dialogue were:
• Succumbing to modern violence-which is allowing yourself to be carried away by the rush and pressure of modern life, as well as the multitude of conflicting concerns in the world, surrendering yourself to too many demands and being committed to many projects and wanting to help everyone in everything at the same time is self-violence. This can cause you to not function properly by killing your wisdom and comprehension, at the end results destroys the fruitfulness of the work or problem you are trying to solve. Instead commit yourself to one societal problem, focus on it and find solutions to it, instead of doing multiple things at the same time that will not be done well, and will steal your rest, focus and break you down. • Innovative/ practical conversational structure and communication agreements which allow everyone to participate and feel engaged in solving a particular problem for the betterment of a particular locality.
4. The panel discussion helped me to identify great collaborators that impacted me with lots of creative or innovative ways of engaging youth people and minimizing societal program which relates to my work back home.
5. The Mandela Day of volunteering made me reflect on the work Mandela did that lead me to become a Mandela Washington fellow today, which challenged me to keep his legacy on by being an agent of change.
6. A visit to the extra special people organization taught me how to care for those with disabilities. Being disabled does not make you irrelevant to society, you also need to be treated with care and love. After a long week of intensive training we had a refreshing time in Atlanta Georgia at the baseball game which was a new and exciting time for me. Thanks to the UGA team for a job well done.
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