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!!!