Leadership Reflection #2 Mary Kate Feaster

Family Leader My role as a leader in our family began when I was just 14 months old and my sister was born. My responsibility as a leader grew as my three brothers were born. Being the oldest of five children, I learned many leadership skills in my home. I look at my role in our family as a middle management position. My parents still had authority over myself as well as my siblings, but often times I was able to help reinforce their teachings and instructions while working alongside them. It required me to have the technical skill of knowing the chore assigned by my parents, the human skill to keep my siblings motivated to complete the chore, and the conceptual skills to ensure that the chores were completed efficiently and logically based on each siblings’ capability.

Teaching Elementary Sunday School During my sixth grade year, I was challenged by my parents to volunteer at our church in one of the ministries. Since i enjoy working with children, and my brothers were part of the children’s ministry, I immediately signed up to work in the elementary Sunday school classes. The first couple of weeks that I volunteered were really challenging because I really just wanted to play with the kids and make it fun, so I was counterproductive with the structure the other teacher was trying to create in the classroom. The other teacher and I ended up discussing what was going on and she helped me to learn how to create a structured and productive environment for the children while also keeping the class fun and engaging.

Providence House Youth Advisory Council My junior year of high school I applied for and was appointed to the youth advisory council for a local homeless shelter and organization called Providence House. Our purpose and mission was to inform students and the general public of the problem of homelessness in our area particularly with families, raising unrestricted funds, and to volunteer alongside the staff at Providence House. My experience junior year was very impactful, we were very hands-on with the residents at the shelter and very involved in creating fundraisers as well as assisting with projects that the main council designed, however my senior year, only three members returned, our staff representative changed, as did our participation and commitment to our. Towards the end of my time on the council I came to realize that the reason the council felt so apathetic that year was that much of the passion on the council from the last year was removed with the change in our staff member and losing many of the members from that council. If I had been more committed to the goal and purpose of the council my senior year, it would have made a bigger impact on all of the new members and encouraged them to adopt the mission and passion also.

Student Council I first took part in student council as a class senator my eighth grade year. I continued to be a class senator or vice president through my senior year. Specifically in high school student council, I had the opportunity to see the difference in leadership and member exchanges. I worked four different teacher sponsors and had times of being in the “in-group” and times when I was in the “out-group.” During both my junior and senior year, I spent a lot of time with the teacher sponsor and we had similar ideas and methods for accomplishing our plans. It probably also partnered with the fact that I was an upperclassman, however I still enjoyed those years more and was definitely more influential in decision making. As described on page 138 “Followers in the in group receive more information, influence, confidence, and concern from their leaders than out-group followers do.” Studying all of the results from being in the in and out groups, I wonder how much of a difference it would have made for my freshmen and sophomore years if I had been more intentional to find similarities with my teacher sponsors and make better connections with them in order to feel like I had a say in decisions that were made.

Softball Team Leader I was a member of my high school’s softball team for all four years, and each year our leadership team consisted of the seniors. I anxiously awaited my opportunity to be called a team leader and participate in the decision making with our coaches. Within my first week as a leader on the team I learned that our head coach lacked emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is defined on page 28 as, “the ability to perceive and express emotions, to use emotions to facilitate thinking, to understand and reason with emotions, and to effectively manage emotions with oneself and in relationships with others.” Our coach was often very blunt with our senior leaders about our own flaws, our teammates flaws, and his opinions about things. The team leaders before us had done an incredible job of sort of running interference between the information the coach told them and the way they phrased it for us. It was not until I was a leader that I understood the importance emotional intelligence, particularly in word choice had on the morale and receptiveness of the team. Myself and the other leaders very quickly learned how to strengthen our emotional intelligence when conversing with our coach and relating it to the team.

Still Growing Every leadership position I’ve taken has taught me a different aspect of leadership and made me more prepared for my next position. I still have a lot to learn, but studying all of the styles in this class has been beneficial for learning from others and not having to make all of the mistakes myself in order to improve.