Week 3 ISLE

Overall, I think the Iowa State Leadership Experience was very beneficial. It made me think about a lot of the little things that could impact my leadership role that I would not usually think about. The sessions I attended composed of content about diversifying your leadership style and making sure our meetings measure up.
The diversifying your leadership style session discussed good practices to improve our leadership roles. Some of these practices include exploring personal values and goals, recognizing sources of empowerment and encouragement, better understanding of ones "self", and recognizing how leadership fits into our daily lives. They also discussed leaders that were not practicing good leadership skills, and described these leaders as sometimes self absorbed, not going out of their comfort zone, and at times seem to be burnt out.
The next session I attended was "Do your meetings measure up? A recipe for success." This session discussed a lot about goals and how to construct "SMART" goals, making sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. We also came to an agreement that a goal is a subdivision of an outcome. This session also went into detail about agendas and how to construct a good one.
I thought these sessions were very beneficial, and have given me more to go off of in guiding my leadership experience. The sessions were very informative and I liked how they enabled us to share our own opinions on topics, so we were not just sitting and listening the entire time.
I learned that there is a lot more to think about when taking this role, it is not just being there, it is a lot more planning and thinking involved then one might initially assume.
One question I am not left with is what can I do to personalize and enhance this experience to make it more beneficial for both myself and other students I will be mentoring. I think the information I gained in these sessions will be able to guide me in the right direction towards achieving this goal.