In the second assignment, which involved community volunteer work, I learnt about the importance communication in leadership, teamwork and professional competence. In the library, I noticed that the leader had proper communication skills, especially while handling the student who disobey the library rules. Additionally, the leader properly welcomed us into the library and had a good understanding. Concerning teamwork, I notice that the library had few workers who could not do all the required work in it. However, when we joined hands and worked as a team, we achieved better results and ensured that everything worked in order. I have learnt from this experience that teamwork is key to success. Finally, on professional competence, the library leader did her work professionally, which helped her to control the activities in the library. Additionally, as students, everyone chose to perform the duties that they were sure they were professionally competent. Therefore, we achieved our goals through giving every individual the duty they felt they could perform best (Connaughton, Shuffler, & Goodwin 2011).
In my opinion, if I would take this course again, I would mobilize other students to visit a challenging environment of leadership as opposed to organized places such as the library. I think this would help us understand the conflicts arising in organizations about leadership. For instance, we would identify a government owned organization that has been faced with leadership challenges and conduct a study on the organization before volunteering in their operations. This organization could be a community-based organization that deals with the provision of health services. The thing that I would have wished done differently is the study on the two women leaders. I think it would have been better if we compared at least a male leader against a female leader in different countries. In my opinion, this would indicate how the community perceives male and female leaders and their impacts on the society.
References
Connaughton, S., Shuffler, M., & Goodwin, G. F. (2011). Leading Distributed Teams: The Communicative Constitution of Leadership. Military Psychology, 23(5), 502-527. doi:10.1080/08995605.2011.600147
Hawken, J., Lee-Wright, R., & Walsh, S. (2012). Creating an environment of shared leadership. British Journal of Healthcare Management, 18(8), 426-428.
