Blog 9 Leadership

Blog 9 Leadership

For blog nine I’ve chosen to answer reflection moment on page 192.  Have you used any of these skills? If so, where and when? How did that feel?  If not, where are there opportunities for you to observe someone model these skills?  Can you see yourself as a leader? 

I have used some of leadership skills as an academic counselor for the University of Phoenix Online.   As an academic counselor I saw a real need for career guidance for my students.  My case load was experiencing attrition, that is to say my students were dropping out of the program and I wanted to find out why.  I took it upon my self to report my findings to my manager.  The leadership skills I displayed were that of communicator and advocate.  Communicators inform all partners of various aspects of the education program (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012).  I communicated to my superior and explained many students were feeling unhappy with their major choice and needed career guidance that began with choosing a new major. The University of Phoenix did not offer any career guidance tools at the time so students were in my mind, under-served so I advocated for career tools.  My manager allowed me to create career tools and share the product with my team members.  By creating career guidance tools I possessed the leadership skill of resource provider.  Resource providers create and/ or integrate tools into the educational curriculum (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012).

My Academic Counselor Manager, Sarah modeled the leadership skills of designer, collaborator, and visionary.  Sarah was the type of manager that truly cared for her employees and the students we all served.  She was amazingly skilled at collaboration and communication.  Our team consistently had high retention numbers because she got us to buy into what we were doing, helping people changer their lives for the better.  She was a designer (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012)  because she used her employees’ ideas and creations to better serve the students and uphold the mission of the school. She was an architect (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012) because she helped me implement my plan and program.  Recently I saw and advertisement on TV for the University of Phoenix Online’s new career guidance tools and I just have to wonder if Sarah and I started that project back in 2008.  To this day when I think of the best boss I ever had, I think of Sarah and it was because of her leadership skills. 

I do indeed see myself as a leader.  I am very passionate about art therapy and school counseling and I had the chance to practice my passion and advocacy in the research paper I just completed.  I can see myself using my research paper in the future to advocate for the use of arts by school counselors.  I enjoy public speaking and I can bring the vision but having the facts if the challenging part.  Now I have the facts ready for when the time comes that I will need to step up. 

Dollarhide, C. T., & Saginak, K. A. (2012). Comprehensive School Counseling Programs.

             (2nd ed.). New York: Pearson, Inc.