Leadership
| Resume | Leadership | Practical Experience and Service | Teaching and Training |
| Information Technology | Scholarly Argument | Professional Document | Miscellanea |
Contents
- Turning Vision Into Action
- The Youth Reach Out Center Library Project
- A Difficulty in Finalization
- Graduate and Professional Student Senate
- What I've Learned About Leadership
Turning Vision Into Action
The role of any leader is to provide the organization with a vision of what the future of the company will be in years to come. The challenge comes in directing the actions that lead the company toward that vision. This is a terribly tricky area, particularly when working with large groups of people. However, even small groups can be difficult to direct. My most valuable leadership experience during my time at the University of Washington has been my role as the student coordinator for the Union Gospel Mission (UGM) Youth Reach Out Center (YROC) Library Project.
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The Youth Reach Out Center Library Project
In the spring of my first year a "potential portfolio project" email came across a listserve. The grant writer for the Union Gospel Mission's Youth Reach Out Center was looking for students to help them out in fulfilling their wish to develop a library. I initiated a meeting with Ron Goodman, director of youth services at YROC, and over the course of three meetings I began to acquire a team of six people who were interested in working on the project in varying capacities. Beginning early in September 2001 the individuals on this team began to do research into different areas to assemble a collection development policy.
Assembling the information for the collection development project in itself was incredibly difficult. In part because all of the members in the student project team were full time masters students, as well as having part time jobs on the side. So, being able to set firm deadlines was almost impossible, because this project was perhaps the third or fourth priority for everyone involved.
Early in the fall quarter we began again, nearly from scratch. This time, we decided that there would be a firm deadline, and that there were specific areas of research for everyone involved. Everyone was to report back to the project leader and from that we would produce this collection development policy.
Deadlines came and went, and there were a few stragglers, but everyone was eventually able to contribute a portion to the final outcome. As I received the individual reports I came to realize that the scope of the project was grossly underestimated, and that the document that we needed to create had to be more than a collection development policy--it needed to be a full out master plan.
I spent the entire weekend compiling the results of the individual research, combining in factors discussed over email, adding a bit of my own flavor, and finally produced a master plan that I felt truly represented the needs of the community.
- Seattle's Union Gospel Mission YROC is under "Shelters and Programs"
- UGM YROC Library Master Plan
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A Difficulty in Finalization
One of the biggest tests of this project though came in the finalization of the master plan. Prior to submitting the master plan to the UGM administrators, the team decided to discuss the details of the entire document in a committee meeting on a Saturday. In that meeting one of the project team members expressed a concern that the focus of the mission statement was A) too close to the mission of the UGM YROC itself and that this similarity might be prove too restrictive, and B) that the religious orientation of the mission statement and subsequent goals and objectives outlined in the master plan would narrow the focus of the collection too much.
A counterargument was made by other members of the project team that A) as a subsidiary body serving the UGM YROC that it was necessary to have a similar mission statement in order that the library not deviate from the larger goals of the institution, and B) the religious orientation of the mission statement and all subsequent goals were written based on the goals of the larger institution of the YROC, and that the collection development statement did indeed provide for a well rounded collection. With the debators being strong on both sides of this issue, the discussion went on for over two hours. While each could all understand where the other side was coming from, neither wanted to give any ground. The lone dissenter agreed to maintaining the mission statement as is, and the three remaining team members agreed to overhaul the collection development statement.
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Graduate and Professional Student Senate
Near the end of my first year in the master's program, an opportunity came to run for a seat on the Graduate and Professional Student Senate. I was elected to serve, and participated in the senate until graduation. Although I did not introduce any resolutions into the gpss, I was an active participant and facilitated discussion in my program regarding the move to unionize graduate assistants, teaching assistant, research assistants, and graders. To provide the people in my department with the resources to make an informed decision regarding the unionization movement I pulled together a list of web resources on the labor debate from student perspectives to national labor leadership.
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What I've Learned About Leadership
- Having the vision is not enough. Even if you've got the best idea in the world, you've got to be able to get people to work toward turning that vision into a reality. That means hard work, dedication, and selling the vision over and over again. Everyone must be involved to the fullest extent that they can.
- Deadlines, regardless of additional prior commitments, must be met. No excuses. We are all busy, and if you have signed yourself on for a project (or you have been assigned a project), you must follow through. Otherwise you damage your credibility.
- Commitee Work should have a defined way of resolving disputes. Some organizations prefer having a sole voice of authority. Others would rather vote democratically. Any way you slice it, there will probably be someone who has a dissenting opinion. These concerns should be heard, and thoroughly debated, but there should be some way of resolving the dispute.
- Labor issues can be incredibly divisive during their implementation phase, and people in positions of peer governance should serve as a neutral body if their constituency is split in opinion.
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