To be a leader you must be humble, you must be willing to take risks, and you must be able to realize that you cannot be a leader all on your own. I offer one of my favorite quotes about leadership: 

“The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.” 
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

This definition of leaders has always stood out to me. You picture a leader as someone who stands up when no one else will, someone who is cut throat and willing to do whatever to get the job done. However, this definition offers a better definition of a leader in my eyes. I love that he says, "they were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results. The parallel between ordinay and extraordinary leaves me with one thought: anyone can be a leader if they set their mind to it. 

I have identified with two leadership theories found in Exploring Leadership, Chapter 2: transforming leadership theory and adaptive leadership theory. According to James MacGregor Burns, the transforming leadership theory is defined as a "process where leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation" (Exploring Leadership, 18). The second leadership theory, adaptive leadership theory, is defined as "an interactive event in which knowledge, action preferences, and behaviors change, thereby provoking an organization to become more adaptive" (Exploring Leadership, 74). These leadership theories are a combination of how I resonate as a leader. I believe that it takes adaptability to over come obstacles as well as a transformative and open mind to induce the leadership and produce new strong leaders from the bunch! 

Loyola’s mission of, “We are Chicago's Jesuit Catholic university- a diverse community seeking God in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.” has helped me come to terms with the person I aim to be once I graduate and walk through those green doors one last time. Our Jesuit values has made me appreciate the world that we live in so much more. It has produced knowledge, insight, justice, friends, love, within myself all through the ability to serve the community pizza from our student-run pizzeria, Felice's Kitchen. I always take pride in going to a Jesuit University and I cannot wait to go forth and set the world on fire! 

The Clifton Strengths Report revealed to me the strengths I didn't know I exuded. It was helpful to see how my strengths compared to that of my classmates as well. Everyone has established their own personal form of leadership style and these strengths contribute to that specific style.  

My top five strengths, as assigned by the Clifton Strengths Assessment, are context, activator, achiever, responsibility, and woo. I think that all of these strengths accurately represent me not only as an individual, but as a leader, a sister, a friend, a daughter, a student, and etc. Most of the strengths, like, context, achiever, activator, and responsibility definitely made sense to me in the grand scheme of this test. However, I was actually surprised that the Clifton Strengths Assessment used the word "woo" to describe a strength. Upon further understanding of the strength, though, I can see exactly how it relates to my personality and character. I am very much a people-person and getting someone to "like me" is definitely a goal I put in the back of my mind. I don't mean this in the sense of personal gratification, but in the sense of building a connection with someone and then further building upon that connection to better understand the other person. 

Within my internship, or more specifically, being President of Felice's Kitchen, I have implemented nearly all of these strengths within my daily routine. The first strength, context, describes being able to make knowledgeable decisions and formulate reachable goals based off of past empirical data or situational precedence. That is exactly what my job entails. In my position of leadership, I need to be able to make evidence-based financial decisions for my restaurant and formulate long-term strategic goals based off of what has worked in the past and what has failed. As an activator, I need to be able to motivate a team and a staff to excel at their job within their positions as well as encourage creative thinking and growth. Because I have an exceptional need for achievement in all that I do, I continuously find myself accepting new responsibilities at my internship. I take on new and stimulating tasks in order to learn and excel in my position. I think it is of the utmost importance to challenge yourself in all that you aim to accomplish. For me, that is where the gratification comes in; knowing that I put 110% into my goals and tasks as a boss, but also as a student and peer. I tend to not like to use the term boss or superior, because I feel as though the hierarchy within a business takes away from the productivity and willingness for people to share new ideas. Instead, I make it a goal to refer to my staff as a team. However, I still encourage a mutual respect and understanding for the different levels of responsibility and leadership everyone at Felice's takes on. I think this is where the achiever part of my strengths assessment comes into play. All of these strengths most definitely can be applied to what I hope to accomplish with the few months I have left at Felice's Kitchen. 

For my future profession, I hope to become a Physician's Assistant one day. I would like to specialize in Pediatrics as well. I think the two most obvious strengths I would use in this profession are responsibility and achiever. Obviously, I would like to stand out as a Physician, to attract more patients and bond with my colleagues. In order to do so, I need to learn through taking on more responsibilities and setting goals for myself, no matter how big or how small. It is also important to recognize the woo strength, too. This strength could easily be equated to exhibiting proper bedside manner when dealing with patients. Without a doubt you want patients to like you, however, there is still a professional line that needs to be observed when dealing with them. 

As a Rambler, I take pride in the Jesuit values we instill in ourselves through our course work and participation in being part of a collegiate community. We aim to "go forth and set the world on fire!" In order to do so, we need to have a deeper sense of who we want to be as an individual and how we want to use our abilities to help others, which is why these strengths, context, activator, achiever, responsibility, and woo, are important in guiding us through the journey of life. In combining both of those aspects I have great hopes that I can positively impact someone's life for the better in the same way Loyola University has done for me in building upon these strengths.

Photos on Leadership: 

This is a photo of a loyal customer of Felice's. She came into the store quite often and I got to talking to her and encouraged her to apply as we were hiring. She was hired and instantly became one of the most valuable employees at Felice's. Now, she is Vice President of Operations at Felice's. She inspired me in so many ways and has made me a very proud leader in the sense that my encouragement and recognition of her hard work pushed her to take on new responsibilities and transform herself into a leader as well. 

I chose this artifact in relation to leadership to exemplify the upward climb necessary to become a great leader. One must over come many challenges in order to reach a goal and, in a sense, another rung on the ladder of becoming a great leader. 

Cajita of Leadership Photos: 

The Cajita of Leadership project forced me to think outside of the box on what actually constitutes a leader in my eyes. In my cajita, I included a picture that my seven year old sister drew me because I see myself a a role model and an effectual leader to her in many ways. I also included some of my favorite quotes from the book, Good to Great, that was passed down to me from my predecessor at Felice's Kitchen before I started my year as President. 

This is an example of a goals sheet I would create to hold myself and my team accountable for staying on track towards reaching our goals. I think this is a great example of collaborative leadership.