Leadership in Practice Class Facilitation (Spring 2014)
After spending a semester studying the components of adaptive leadership, my classmates and I were paired up and asked to facilitate a thirty-minute dialogue about the topic of our choice. My partner and I spent a lot of time and energy selecting a meaningful topic and preparing a framework of tools and powerful questions to help our peers explore the different elements of this adaptive challenge. Our plan going in to the facilitation was to begin by providing a shocking statistic (just the numbers without any other context) and having students visualize an initial gut reaction. We then planned to tell students that the ranking was earned by K-State in regards to the annual Fake Patty’s Day Celebration and discuss their reactions. On the day of our facilitation, my partner and I were the second group to go, and after hearing the feedback from the first group, something that became immediately clear to me was the need to engage students at the heart level. After we had invested so much in our plan, it was scary to think of deviating from it, but I knew we needed to create more space for people to have an emotional reaction. Before our facilitation began and drawing upon my experience as a class leader, I proposed to my partner that after the initial reveal of the ranking we should have students form a continuum in the room to take the temperate in a very visible way. The left wall would represent a strong negative reaction all the way to the right wall representing a strong positive reaction. By having students name their response AND give two to three reasons for why they made their decision I think we gave students a stake in the rest of the conversation because for some 1) they had a position to defend and 2) it created a natural curiosity in their peers’ differing reactions. If we had remained married to our original plan, we would have missed this opportunity to respond to feedback and meet students where they were.
Formatting the Facing Hunger Book (Fall 2014)
One of the most meaningful, yet most difficult components of piecing together the Facing Hunger book was simply the number of people involved in the process. In order to continue to make progress on the book, it was important for me to have a general timeline in place and to begin formatting the book without having all of the pieces or knowing what each component was going to look like. The thing about authority is that it is so efficient. If I am the one doing the work and making the decisions, it is easy to create exactly the product I want and to know what work needs to be done to make it happen. If however, I am striving to exercise leadership, to cast vision, and invite others to contribute their strengths to the work then the process involves much more time and give and take. The result, however, is a product beyond what I could individually conceive, plan, or achieve. One particular area of adaptability for the project was in the area of photography for the book. My supervisor and I determined that it would be really neat to invite another class of leadership studies students to read individual stories and then to go and attempt to artistically capture the story, its theme, or symbolism in the form of a picture. In order to fit this project into the timeline of the class, we set a deadline for the students that was only a week and a half before the deadline for our book for the publisher’s. Upon receiving the photographs, we soon realized that a vast majority of them were not of the quality or nature that we had hoped. My supervisor and I then had to consider the cost of including or not including these pictures, taking additional pictures, or formatting and printing the book without any pictures.
Everybody Counts Event (Fall 2014)
When I joined the Facing Hunger project as an intern, eighteen stories had already been recorded and written but they were all from individuals who used the same food pantry. My supervisor and I recognized this as a potential limitation to our work in that this would represent one demographic of the food insecure people in Manhattan, but that we might be missing other voices and perspectives. We learned about a community event at the beginning of August, called Everybody Counts, where social service provides would be gathered to provide information and resources to people including fresh produce, school supplies, clothes, and two hot meals that day. I contacted the individual who was planning and coordinating the event and asked if it would be possible for me to attend the event with the hopes of interviewing a few more people to potentially add their stories to our book. He agreed and I went to the event with high hopes of meeting people and adding stories to our collection. However, when I got to the event, it was much different than I expected. There wasn’t a great way to meet people or introduce the project and the event and there was a need for more help and volunteers just to keep the event running smoothly. I found myself helping out in a variety of capacities, none expected. I think it would have been really easy to be disappointed by the event, but instead I was able to adjust my vision for the event and my purpose for being there and in the end was able to help fill a need and interact with and learn more about some of the social service providers in the community.
mentally aware and thinks quickly while adjusting readily to different conditions