Overcoming Leadership Challenges | Calecormaneyleadersh

The following artifacts and accompanying information demonstrate my mastery

of leadership theories and concepts in context.

Artifact: Leadership Experience Essay
- LDRS 650: Principles of Organizational Leadership
- The Leadership Experience Essay assigned in the LDRS 650 course: Principles of Organizational Leadership allowed me to directly tie together the leadership experiences and growth that I have been exposed to within my academic coursework, my professional experiences, and my athletic experiences over the last five years. As a result, I was given the opportunity to reflect on how my ability to successfully master the concept of Overcoming Leadership Challenges has evolved with time, education, opportunity, and maturity.

Overcoming Leadership Challenges in my academic coursework was

both educational and humbling. I came into this major with a feeling

that my "vast experience" with leadership would make these classes

relatively easy. However, it quickly became clear that it was this

pre-conceived notion that I was already a good leader that would be

the most difficult reality to swallow. The coursework I have had the

opportunity to learn from, while studying in the Organizational

Leadership program, has allowed me to redefine who I am as a leader

and has provided me with the skills to master the concept of

Overcoming Leadership Challenges.

In my professional environment, I found the tools I was given via my

Organizational Leadership courses were beneficial and gave me a

chance to be a better employee. I was able to review my role as a

leader at my place of work and evaluate my contribution to the

mission and the vision of the organization and my superiors. In this

environment, my leadership challenges were to shift to more of a

servant leader in order to model the behaviors that I was expecting

from those I worked with and to add efficacy to my words by

ensuring that my actions matched my message.

As a collegiate athlete, my leadership challenges included scenarios

that forced me to be more flexible to the needs of all of my teammates

and coaches AND more reflective to ensure that I was effectively

evaluating my role as an authentic leader. Ironically, it is within this

world that I had the least amount of leadership challenges to

overcome. This allowed me to refine the leadership strategies that I am

the most comfortable with.

The mastery of the Overcoming Leadership Challenge concept is both

the most challenging and the most important for a leader to be

successful.

Artifact: Motivation Model and Reflection
- LDRS 450: Advanced Leadership Behaviors
- This reflection assessment that was used for the Advanced Leadership Behaviors course was an impactful reflection used in the LDRS 450 course. Being asked to complete this reflection allowed me to understand the impact of the two theories that I have selected as inspiration for the creation of my own leadership theory via the Organizational Leadership Program at Fort Hays State University. The reflection allows me to evaluate my personal theory in motivating others and focus on my continued growth in the Overcoming Leadership Challenges outcome by forcing me to truly evaluate the effectiveness of my change theory and develop it throughout this program.

The Motivation Model and Reflection document allowed me to review the two theories I use as inspiration to motivate others-

Goal Theory and Expectancy Theory and allowed me to expand

on my original theory by adding some additional functions that I

was exposed to throughout this program. Here are the elements of

MY motivational theory:

- The individual must identify one specific goal.

- The individual must be able to clearly express the foundation

of the goal and reflect on why they want to accomplish it.

- The individual must understand the steps need to achieve the

goal.

- The individual must understand the importance of the overall

support shown as they endure the trials and tribulations of

meeting their goal.

- The individual must put in the effort required to meet the goal!

- The individual must ultimately achieve the goal they set.

The importance of the Overcoming Leadership Challenges concept

cannot be overstated. Regardless of the success or failures of the

other concepts outlined throughout the Organizational Leadership

program at FHSU, if a leader is unable to effectively master the

challenges that will continuously present itself to him/her, that

leader will never be viewed as truly effective or truly successful.

Without the mastery of this concept, a leader can never be a true

leader.