Stephanie Metzger
Honor 401H essay #1
October 8, 2015
After two years in the Presidential Leadership Academy, it’s interesting to take the time to reflect on how I want others to describe me as a leader. When I started in the academy, I wouldn’t have had the ability to explain my leadership style. But, experience is the true teacher and as senior year begins to unfold, I’ve found that the experiences I’ve had with Penn State and outside of it, have helped me solidify the type of leader I want to be.
My hope is that others see me as a leader by example and by serving others. For me, Jesus Christ has always stood out as one of the greatest leaders because of his commitment and heart to serve others first. He was the clearest picture of servant leader, leading by example and in love. Instead of telling people what they should do when they were in trying times, he served them first seeking to care for the individual and build relationships with those he was trying to reach. In this way, I would hope that my life and leadership reflects Christ’s ministry in that people would describe me as a servant leader.
I’ve endeavored to embody this in the big and small situations. On the small scale, I want to be the first person to volunteer to clean, take out the trash, or any activities that we don’t want to rush to do. In these small moments I want to actively push myself to seek to serve. In larger ways, I hope to pursue opportunities that will allow me to serve others and put them before myself as I believe Christ has done for me. If I cannot be described as a servant leader, I feel that I have failed in putting myself in these kinds of positions to show others the love that has first been shown to me. Servant leadership is all about making sure other’s needs are being fulfilled, and that the person is well cared for, able to grow, and ultimately benefits from their interactions with them.
We’ve talked in class a bit about how some leadership structures are top down, and the hierarchy involved in that, but I think the power of servant leadership lies in the fact that the traditional hierarchy gets flipped upside down. This reshaping of power and leadership makes creates followers rather then commanding them. It’s natural to want to help others who help you when you see how deeply they care about you. You can’t fake servant leadership because it is so easy to tell when someone is doing something for you ingeniously. I hope in this respect it can be said of my leadership abilities that I always genuinely care about those I am working with, and I hope to develop more ways to embody that.
Taking the MBTI assessment was a fun way to provide insight into how I align with the goals I set for myself as a leader. In my internship this summer we spent the first week taking these assessments in order to better understand our team members and ourselves as different and unique leaders. Both times that I’ve taken this test I’ve been classified as an ENFP. While usually I don’t like personality tests, as I often find these tests to be self fulfilling in the fact that when you are told you are outgoing for example, you recall all the times you’ve been outgoing and you can limit yourself to this label. This is not always the case and these tests provide great insights to new team members and yourself, but generally if I’m seeking to improve upon my leadership abilities or learn more about myself I’ll ask those closets to me what my strengths and weaknesses are. Those who have worked with you, lived with you, and are your close friends know you best. I value my friends, co-workers, and family’s opinions on this because they can give me more specific feedback, and I can see how my own view of my leadership style aligns with what they see me actually doing. Regardless, I found the ENFP result to align fairly well with my personality, and it has helped me to recognize some strengths and weaknesses that I hadn’t previously spent much time considering.
To begin with, ENFP personalities are focused on connecting to others, which I would love to further strengthen in regards to servant leadership. One weakness that this personality test described was that I may be good at empowering and encouraging others, but I need to bring tough love into the equation in order to help them develop. I’m inclined to always want to encourage, when sometimes the best thing for someone’s development and success is tough love. Student teaching has clearly shown me this in that while I want to constantly show love to my students, clear boundaries, expectations, and rules must be in place for the classroom to be an environment where they can grow and learn, and where I can effectively lead and teach.
In short, I hope that those around me can describe me as a servant leader. Insights into my strengths and weakness with the personality tests allow me to reflect on where my weaknesses in being a servant leader are, and where my strengths are to improve upon. I want to continue learning and developing as a leader, as I take an example from Christ in how he genuinely loved others and sought to serve them first.