Julia Monasterio Leadership Thoughts

J. Monasterio - LDR 4204

Introduction

My name is Julia Monasterio and I am a sophomore student at The University of South Florida majoring in Biomedical Sciences. For my spring semester of sophomore year, I decided to take the Fundamentals of Leadership course provided by USF. First day of class was the first time I got asked to describe my philosophy of leadership. Now, I can affirm my philosophy as being a broad range from being a leader of a group or a member of a group. I still believe that leadership is a responsibility that a person has when one’s actions are used to inspire others for different purposes. Leadership is any act that contributes to social change whether its shared with twenty people or just one. This responsibility requires engagement with others and applying your strengths and beliefs. When an individual undergoes leadership, he or she may be contributing to different people, could be a small group or as large as a community or even bigger.

Values

One of my three core values include family, my belief that family is of fundamental importance. My experience of being raised by a single mother shaped my worldview a great deal. This experience shaped me as a caring and responsible person. Helping my mother with tasks some other children might have not need to experience, does change my perspective on things I do in my daily life. This experience had great weight on my worldviews of independence. My second core value is loving because I believe I also shaped other’s experience of/with me because I believe this experience shaped my identity as a caring and loving person. Therefore, everyone I meet I try to show how much I appreciate them and the time spent with them. My friendship bonds also have been shaped from being raised this way because I tend to create long-lasting friends and true friendships. Being raised this way has shaped me as a person that realizes how much relationships with other people matter in your life and the importance of it. Finally, my third core value is being open-minded I interact with individuals from different backgrounds hence this will avoid any conflict. I believe one must accept different ideas and know that these different perspectives all bring a different aspect of the communication between them and lead to successful outcomes. As a Hispanic race and coming to the US for college, I had experiences cross-cultural interactions daily and noticed that as an open-minded individual, I can successfully interact and communicate without any problems.

Ethical component in the Relational Leadership Model (Aha moment)

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This was my aha moment in the course. Probably one of the first aha moments because I was very unclear and confused as to how to define this component. As the class discussion evolved, I notices that a lot of tension arose. At first, I thought this component was not that relevant to the Relational Leadership Model but by the end of the class I notices that it actually was since I had just experience a situation of caos only by discussing about it. By the end, I learned that ethics are very different from morals and there are many different factors that may cause this component to differ from leadership styles. The most strong influential factor is the cultural environment in which the leadership is happening.

The Fair Process Leadership Cycle – Engaging, Exploring, Explaining, Executing, Evaluating

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This cycle caught my attention when I read it in the book and I really enjoyed having a discussion about it in class. I believe it is a very organized cycle and well-thought because it plans out a clean way of undergoing leadership. I totally agree with this cycle and I believe it has stuck with me because I learned to perform active listening and engaging before taking any rapid action.

Multifactor Change Agents – Manage, Engage, Drive, Lead

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These factors are certainly what define changing leaders. When discussing about this topic during class, I related a couple of leaders and all of these components made sense. In a personal level, I believe I should develop the drive factor of a leader and I am motivated to work towards it. That is the main reason why I chose these multifactor change agents as one of my takeaways of this course.

Change Leadership – Stage of denial

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This takeaway related to my individual experience because I moved to a different culture for college. I believe this type of leadership resembles with me since my change has been drastic and I had to adapt to a new culture and I am still adapting as I learn new things every day. The stage of denial caught my attention because I believe I did not experience it since I came to the US with an open-mind and a set mind to accept this change and put all my effort to learn from those changes.

The Change cycle – categories include individual, group, and societal values – includes components for each value

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These values are very important in individual's interaction and I chose this takeaway because I believe that this is the only way to get through in order for people from different cultures to interact. I can totally relate to this cycle because I experienced a drastic change at an early age which I believe will shape who I will become in the future and I hope I look at it in an excellent way when I am older.

Conclusion

My experience in this course has been outstanding. When I first registered for this course, I never thought I would learn so many aspects in leadership that would make me a more motivated individual and believe that I lead in many ways. As my future career goals involve leadership, I was always unclear as to if I was going to be able to achieve that successful leadership path. As a pre-med student, I believe I still have time to develop my leadership skills for when I go into med school. After this course, I am motivated and committed to get involved more on campus in order to develop my leadership skills and play the role as a leader in a different aspect I have not before. Being a doctor is a defined leadership position and my passion towards achieving that goal motivates me to move forward and give my best effort always. In the future, I want others to see me as a leader that stands to my core values and reflect them through my leadership style. I expect to be a successful surgeon in the future that can resonate love and respect to everyone I interact with and show my leadership style.