When I accepted this job my expectations were that it would be just that, another job. I was excited to meet new people and perhaps establish some friendships that I otherwise would not have made. I was not really expecting a transformational experience. Now nearly three months in I realize that this experience has meant a lot more to me than just a job would have. It did not change me drastically though. I am not a completely different person from when I started, but I think that it has given me many new tools and a significantly altered perspective on myself.

This is the first position I have held, as opposed to simply working a job. I would define a position as a responsibility that does not stop when you leave the office or take off a uniform. One who holds a position is seen as an expert, someone of whom others may ask questions or, in simpler terms, a person who is a leader. Having had this experience, I feel more comfortable applying this mindset to the other activities and offices I am involved with on campus. The skills I have honed in OL training have given me confidence to be a better student leader for my student organization, Advocate, and a better employee for the Center for Experiential Learning. Specifically, I think I have a better understanding of how people work together. I feel more aware of different personal styles and leadership preferences and have a better grasp of when I need to step up in order to get things done.

In May when we began training and preparing for the seminar portion of the OTL experience, I was very skeptical of the idea that everyone was a leader. “The Jesuit vision that each person possesses untapped leadership potential” did not only “cut against the grain of the corporate top-down model” but also against my own personal beliefs on who could be a leader (Lowney, 2003, p. 16). I did not wholly believe that leaders had a set group of traits or that they had to come from a specific background, like some of the social researchers highlighted in the first few chapters of Northouse think. However, I did think that some people got what being a leader meant and others did not. If it had to be simplified to one word, it would have been vision. I thought that good leaders had to have vision and apply it to what they were doing. Vision to know what to do, how to do it and why they were doing it in the first place. There was not a lot of room for emotions or personal growth in my mental image of a leader, largely because I had just dealt with those aspects of my personality internally. Leaders were not bogged down with personal problems. They were movers who got measurable results.

As someone who likes to get things done and has no trouble planning ahead, others who are not so careful with their planning often frustrate me. This was my largest block to the Ignatian idea that we are all leaders. How could someone who lacks confidence in him or herself or someone without clear goals ever become a leader? I saw this personal uncertainty as a somewhat fixed trait, something that some people would never realize about themselves. However, some of the leadership theories that we looked at for class began to change my opinions on this topic. I began to pay more attention to something I must have always known but had chosen to ignore - the fact that leaders are people who develop over time just as we all do. Earlier this summer, I read a biography about Bayard Rustin, a great leader in the civil rights movement, and as I read I realized I did not like him. I actually began to hate him because he did not have all the answers. He waded through the same questions I had to wade through and was making many of the same mistakes I had made. He was human. In my head I had idealized the leader label and made it into someone that just naturally gets results and was born that way, but this does not happen in the real world. Leaders make mistakes and occasionally lack confidence. Occasionally, as they develop, they flounder on how to achieve their vision.

One of the specific theories that allowed me to realize that leadership was primarily a development of the person was Situational Leadership. These ideas particularly struck me because they were still largely practical and not simply based on a large graph with spaces for dozens of adjectives. The simplicity of the idea that “leaders match their style to the competence and commitment of their subordinates” makes sense to me (Northouse, 2010, p. 89). The chart that was involved with this theory was not just jargon but was directional. It very easily told you how to address different situations in the most appropriate way. This theory was also easily relatable because it was the one I saw play out most often during orientations. The graduate assistants and OPAs would approach tasks in different ways based on which Orientation Leaders they were working. A group of returners were treated differently than a group of new OLs because they had different experiences, expectations and skills.

Once I began to pay attention to Situational Leadership, I realized how it connected to the development of the leader as well. The four leadership styles that the theory utilizes are not simply ways to deal with subordinates but are rather tools to help them progress as leaders while the task is being accomplished. Both the leader and the followers benefit as they move from levels D1 to D4. Through behaving in a certain way the leader cultivates skills and understanding in those he or she is leading. He or she gives them the vision necessary to be a good leader and builds up their confidence so in the near future they can have a comfortable certainty about their decisions. I think that everyone on staff saw this process unfold as returners gave us new OLs the tools to do our job well. At the beginning of the summer I remember many Orientation Leaders having to be coached through how to deal with problem students and parents, but by the end of the summer nearly everyone was sharing stories of how they effectively worked towards resolving potentially damaging conflicts.

For example, I dreaded having to help students register for classes because it is normally such a high-stress situation. The memories of my own stress over registering freshmen year were still very fresh and I assumed that most of my students would have a similar experience. This reservation coincided with having to be directed on how to help students by my supervising advisor, but as we went through several DLs my feelings started to evolve. Ben, my assigned advisor, began to trust me more and delegate to me more than direct me. I was able to give input during registration and actually began preparing my own sheet on registration recommendations. Registration became the time when I was most useful to students and as a result I began to personally enjoy it.

Today, I still hold a largely practical view of leadership. I think that the task determines what type of leader is necessary and that a wise leader chooses what tasks they are going to tackle based on how well they know themselves. However, I recognize that leadership is not always just hard and dry practicalities. Not everyone deals with their emotions through internalizing them and some people need help from others to process mental challenges, emotions and intellectual problems. It is a leaders responsibility to help followers through these periods, if they need that type of support. If a leader is incapable of helping a subordinate emotionally, or unwilling to do so, they jeopardize the task at hand and also prevent that person from realizing potential in themselves.

I now also believe that leadership qualities are much more flexible and more like skills, things that people can develop over time. The world is not divided into people who get things done and those who are incapable. What divides people is their awareness of themselves or their ability to self-reflect. What I have gathered from the Ignatian belief that we are all leaders is the idea that even if we claim no other responsibility, we are all the leaders of our own lives. It is up to us to realize that we shape and steer our own paths and that unless we reflect, grow, change and ultimately set a destination we will remain largely ignorant of our own beings and the world around us. I also think that instilling that insight in the first-year students is one of the major goals of our orientation program. We are trying to show them that they call the shots in their lives now, and they need to begin drafting the narrative for the next four years and beyond. Not many of the students who come to us have this fully figured out and that is why it is important to have their peers in positions, not just jobs, where they can serve as role models and leaders who will help them develop the skills needed to accept that personal responsibility.