Leading Change

As a Junior in high school, I was required to read a book called "Who Moved My Cheese." This book was all about accepting change and and how to adapt to the changes that are thrown at us in life. I really liked this book and found that I am usually pretty accepting to change. This past week in our leadership class, we learned about leading change. It was interesting to look at change in the view point of someone who initiates change rather than just accepting it. There are situations where as a leader you need to be able to accept change but other times where as a leader you need to be the one who leads change.
All throughout life, we will be put into situations where things are not running well or something needs to be changed. A good leader will recognize this needed change and will take the necessary steps to fulfilling this needed change.
In my leadership role of Relief Society president, me and my counselors had the opportunity to see an issue and promote a desire to fix it. We had been having a hard time getting girls to report their visiting teaching to their supervisors and we were trying to fix the problem from the top down. With a little thoughtful actions and work, we found the basis of the problem and were able to solve this issue. This last month we had 99% Visiting Teaching. This initiation to lead change almost solved the problem completely!

GOOD... BETTER.... BEST!

This week's lecture was all focused around ethics. We did a whole bunch of scenarios where we had to decide to support one story or the other. What I found most interesting is that most of the options we had were not between good and bad but rather two decent options to choose from.
With General Conference right around the corner, this activity reminded me of the talk given a few years ago about "Good, Better, Best." Most of the decisions in life will not be one's where there is a clear line between what is good and what is bad. There will be a few but not many. And I believe that if we have prepared ourselves prior to this then those decisions will be really easy to make. The real challenge comes when trying to choose between something that is good and something that is better. When this happens, you really have to search into what your core ethics and values are. You have to know what you really want in the long run, not necessarily what is appealing for today.
As I apply this to my leadership role, it is very relevant. In Relief Society, there are many ways that we can go about helping the sisters in my ward. However, we need to take the time and find what way is BEST to help them become the BEST girls they can become. Each and every girl needs help in a different way and I need to search hard to find what is best for them.

As an update from previous weeks, our visiting teaching numbers were off the charts this month. I really think that working from the bottom up helped a lot and made it so we were more successful. There was only one companionship in our entire Relief Society that didn't get their VT done this month. YAY.. I am so proud of my girls. Well, that is all for this week. I'll keep you updated next week.

Situational Leadership

This week's lessons were highly informative. I learned some great things that will be very important to my leadership role now and in the future. We learned about situational leadership. On Monday we learned a few things that I really liked. First, when we are put in tough situations, never forget the divine. Never lose sight of what is truly important and what matters most. The other thing that I learned was that different situations demand different kinds of leadership. We have talked about many different typs of leadership this year and I have worked hard each week to acquire characteristics of those types each week but it wasn't until this week that I learned the importance of having a wide range of leadership skills. Depending on different situations, I will have to use different approaches to leading others.
This is highly important when applying it to my leadership role. As Relief Society president, every person that I serve and watch over is different. In my ward, there are varying people all with different concerns and needs. This requires me to be able to adapt to different situations easily and to have an open mind to the needs of the sisters.
This Sunday I am giving my last Relief Society lesson for the year and I plan to teach on carying out some of the things we have learned this year at BYU and keeping those things with us throughout the summer. There are many things that I think the sisters in my ward need to hear so I will try and pull as many of those ideas together to best fit everyone. I have loved getting to know the sisters in my ward and they have made me a better leader, friend, supporter, and overall just a better person. I will forever be grateful for this experience and the growth I have experienced from it!

Strategic Planning

This week we learned about strategic planning by using the model RACE! RACE stands for Research, Action Plan, Carry Out, and Evaluate. I really enjoyed being able to take a problem step by step to find the best solution to our problem. It was quite ironic because the problem our group was given was a ward problem that was to be discussed at ward council. I participate in ward council each month and we are often faced with problems similar to the one we worked through on Wednesday in class. 

As I attempt to cary some of the things that I learned on Wednesday into my leadership role, I found that it will be crucial to start at the foundation and work through PrOACT. PrOACT stands for problem, objectives, alternatives, consequences, and tradeoffs. It is crucial that you really find what the problem is before you try to work on solutions. In my calling, we have really been struggling with getting girls to report their visiting teaching. The district leaders have a hard time remembering to contact the girls that do not contact them and this makes it so my counselors have to call a lot of girls each week. For the past few weeks we have be trying to work from the top down and it REALLY has not worked at all. After much conversation, we decided that we needed to work from the bottom (foundation) up. We gathered all of our district supervisors and just let them know what our problem was and how they could help. I am hoping that this will help and that we will begin to see better results. This next Sunday I hope to see that from the bottom up, the girls have reported their information. I'll be sure to let you know if it works or if there are other adjustments we need to make! 

Have a great week!

Public Speaking

Well this week has been an eventful one to say the least. I learned how to speak in public and then I gave a presentation on an awesome book.
There was one thing that we learned on Monday in our group lecture that really stuck out to me about public speaking. It was that you first need to know your audience. And of course I already knew that but not to the extent that she took it.
I have personally experienced times when a guest speaker came to a class of mine and spoke on something at the time that was very difficult to hear. I have had some interesting/hard experiences in life. When I was nine my older brother and sister were taken in a car accident. A few months after, we moved from where we were living in Colorado to Spanish Fork, Utah. In my first few months of school, we had a lady come to our class and talk about drunk driving. At the time, this was a huge deal to me. As a little 9 year old, I could not hold back the tears and the class quickly became very awkward and I left in tears.
As she spoke to us on Monday, I realized how important it is to truly KNOW your audience. Of course, there was no way that this nice counselor could have known but now that I look back, I realize how helpful it would have been if I would have had a little heads up to the topic being discussed and if she would have known a little of my background.
As I apppy this to my current leadership role, it is a very prevelant topic. In Relief Society, we are there to help others draw closer to Christ and to help them strengthen their testimony. This week, my goal is is to get to know a few of the girls a little more. I will do visits one night this week and get to know a few girls a little deeper. Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) has a story. I want to know their story!

Its going to be a SPECTACULAR week!!!

Hold The ROPE!

I really loved this week's classes and the things we learned and the activities we did! For my entire life, I have always been a member of a team and to me there is nothing more fulfilling than being successful as a team.
In high school, I had the opportunity to play on many sports teams including soccer, basketball, and track! In basketball we were back-to-back state champions. The first year we won state, our theme of the tournament was "Hold the Rope." It was a story of trust, team work, and commitment. The story goes somewhat like this:
If you were dangling off a cliff and the only thing you had between you and death was a rope, who would you want holding on to the other end? You would want someone you trust. Someone you know would never let go and would do anything to make sure you made it to safety.
We then went on to compare this to our team and how we could trust anyone on our team to hold the end of the rope. How we knew that together we could do anything. That year we went undefeated and made friendships that will last a lifetime.

This experience has taught me a lot. I have learned the value of working together as a team and how everyone has to have a common goal in mind in order to be successful. As I try and apply these things I have learned from past experiences and also from the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, I think the one aspect I want to work hardest on is trust!
I strongly believe that trust is the foundation that every interaction is based on. If I can build the trust of the sisters in my ward, then maybe I can be able to better help them and their needs. This week I will look for little ways to serve the sisters in my ward and better build their trust!
HAVE A VERY HAPPY WEEK!!!!!

Me? Conflicts? Never!

First of all, just a quick update on my goal from last week! I had a chance to meet with a sister in my ward that had asked me a few questions and needed help with a few things. It was awesome. And in the long run, she ended up helping me find a few of my talents and she completely made my day. It is always amazing to me how serving others can bless my life so much.
So this week we talked about something that is a little hard for me and is something that I will work to improve: CONFLICT. First of all, when it comes to arguments, for the most part I am a very passive person. If it is not a topic I am extremely interested in, I would rather just let the other person be right. On Monday we discussed ways that we can solve conflict. I'm not going to lie, I am not very good at confronting people. I am way too afraid that I will hurt someone's feelings and I really don't like doing that.
On Wednesday we participated in little skits where we had a problem and then had to figure out how to solve it. I realized that in my leadership role as Relief Society president one of the problems that I often face is girls not wanting to do their Visiting Teaching. One thing I chose to do at the beginning of the semester (when the girls were getting new assignments) was to pair girls who didn't always do their VT with girls who had always been valiant in completing it. This is one approach to conflict resolution: fix the problem before it can even be started.
My goal for this next week is to find a girl who is not doing her VT and offer to do anything I can to help... even if it includes me going with her to get it done. That way they will see that I really do care about all of the sisters in my ward.
Well, I hope this week goes well and that I am able to solve a few problems. I will continue to work on being more confident in confronting people but always doing it in a kind way.

Man in the Mirror

This week we learned about some very valuable things to me! On Monday we were taught about how to find the best qualities we have as leaders and then to make the best out of those qualities. This is valuable because I think that many people focus too much on their faults. This benefits no one; it just brings others down. We also took a quiz on line that told us what personalities and traits we had. For the most part it was quite accurate.
One of the qualities it said was that I am like the "mother." This is so ironic because everywhere I have gone, people have pegged me to be a mother. On all of the sport teams I played on in high school, people always looked to me as mom.. I just really like to take care of others. When I arrived at BYU, after a few weeks of living with my new roommates, we all were given roles in the home. Yes, I was pegged as the mother of the apartment.
Back to the topic of finding our best qualities and then perfecting them, I found that this was a great tool that I can use in my leadership role. As Relief Society President, I often find myself and others comparing themselves to others. It is hard at BYU because everyone is the best at EVERYTHING! Everyone can sing, play 5 instruments, has a 4.0, can cook, and basically seems perfect. But in reality, no one is that good at everything. I need to work harder to find what I am good at and then expound on it. I think that when my ward starts to do this, we will become closer together and be very successful because we can build off of eachother.
This week, my goal is to find two people that look like they are having a hard day or are down on themselves and then go talk to them and help them find how talented they really are. All of the girls in my ward are beautiful inside and out. I think one of my talents is helping others to feel good about themselves. So as I try to strengthen my talent, I hopefully will be encouraging them to look at the "man in the mirror" and find the best of who they really are.
Its going to be a GREAT week! :)

Service

This week has been an especially wonderful one!!! Full of service and lots of smiles. I loved Monday's lecture where we were taught how to integrate leadership into all aspects of our lives. I learned a lot on how Divine-Centered leadership is not just for religious things in our life but EVERYTHING! Wednesday's class was by far my favorite so far. We had the opportunity to go out and serve people on campus for about 20 minutes and it was a blast!!! I love to see people smile.

This week in my RS calling, I plan to work harder on the simple acts of service. I learned that by just bringing a smile to someone's face we are doing an act of service. If nothing else, I hope to be able to bring smiles to all around me. That is my goal for this week!

Divine

So this past week we were introduced to Divine-Centered Leadership! It is such a great way to look at leadership. I learned so much and I am excited to include some of these characteristics in my own leadership position. One point that I especially liked was under Motive. It was the step of "DO." We start off with a desire, and then we seek, and then we come to know, and then we finish by DOING! I learned that I can have all of these great ideas and goals to reach as a Relief Society but it is not until we actually take action that the things we are striving for actually come to fruition. I am going to try and integrate this quality of DOING into my calling this week. I want to actually visit some sisters and let them know that I am thinking of them. So for this week I will work on that goal, and next week I'll have a new goal!

A History of LIFE

This week we learned about historical leaders throughout history. It was really cool to look at some of the traits that have made these leaders last through time. They were influential and had a group of people that wanted to follow them. It was interesting to see that not all leaders did good things but all found a group of people that would follow them and then influenced them to do what they wanted. Some gave great speaches and others led with love.
As I apply some of the qualities that great leaders had in the past to my current role, I realize that I work on some of these daily. I know that I probably won't ever become a famous person but there is one thing that I know for sure... the leadership qualities I am working to acquire now will last forever. No matter where I go and what I become, I am going to influence people around me. Right now as I work at becoming a better Relief Society President, I hope that I can be a leader that influences people to reach their full potential. I hope that something I do will benefit some of the girls in my ward. Through all of this I have learned that we all grow from each other and I hope to be an example to all around me.

Knowledge of the week

Today we were asked to blog about what we learned from lecture on Monday and how to apply it. I think the lesson that I learned most was that there are so many qualities that a leader can have. Sometimes it is a bit overwhelming. I came to realize that it would be extremely difficult to have all of those different qualities. This is why we work in groups... sometimes others can do something that I can't. Leting someone else lead is part of becoming a good leader. As I work on my new leadership role, I plan to try and incorporate more of these qualities into my work. I hope to be able to take the iniative when it seems like everything is a jumbled mess. I also hope to become more supportive of others ideas. Communication is key. Without it everything else falls apart. These are just a few of my goals to start the semester off. I obviously don't have all of the qualities of a good leader but that doesn't mean I can't work on attaining more.

Day TWO: Lead... Life... Love

My first assignment in my Leadership class is to declare a leadership role that I will focus on during the entire semester. I have chosen to use Relief Society President as my leadership role (pretty leadership intensive if you ask me). LEAD: My calling as RS Pres. has taught me how to become a more effective leader and how to influence people to become the best they can become. I hope that through this I will become a better Leader by gaining the trust of the sisters in my ward and becoming closer to them. LIFE: I hope to make this calling (and leadership role) a part of my everyday life. Truly effective leaders are people who are constantly thinking about those they serve. LOVE: I want to love those I serve. Service does not sound like leading but I think that leaders can learn better qualities by serving others. Leaders don't always have to "lead" sometimes taking a step back and letting others take charge can result in a better outcome. 

Quote of the day: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - Martin Luther King Jr.

DAY ONE

Wow, I truly thought/promised myself that this day would never come. And here it is. My resolve crumbled. My leadership class requires this and I had a grand time coming up with a name so... here I am. BLOGGING! YAY! A new journey awaits me! hehe