Leadership In A New Light

Over the past few weeks while in Mr. Monaco's leadership class, my views on leadership have been extremly altered. One thing that has changed for me on my view of leadership is that all the leaders that we have talked to have talked about how listening is an important componet to leadership. While i knew it was in there, I had no idea that it was just as important as to listen to the group and hear there ideas as it was to try to get the group to follow you. Another thing I learned is that the tough leader is hardly ever successful. Growing up I always believed that leaders were the men who got on to there group and directed everyone by force. As I have learned though, this method doesn't work very much unless you have the ability to control the groups future. I look at myself differently because I now see that I have the traits needed to be an effective leader in my community. I have always thought of myself as a follower, but now have realized that I have most to all the qualities that a good leader must have in order to be effective. I also look at those around me more differently because the group of people I hang out with doesn't really have a leader. We all feed off eachothers ideas and I always considered us just a bunch of followers, but now I realize that we all are leaders in are own way. Some decide what we should do for the night, others decide what we eat, some decide to drive, and the others make sure that the entire group is having fun. This is how my view of leadership has changed over the past few weeks.