Blog Page – My blog

Final Leadership Reflection

December 7, 2020 / Idaly

Throughout this course, I have seen my public speaking, teamwork skills, and critical thinking develop from what they were when I first started the course in August. This course has allowed me to further develop my critical thinking skills through the readings that were assigned. Through these readings, I further developed my ability to read between the lines of an article and extract the information needed. I had to think critically about what the readings were talking about and how it related to leadership overall. The readings had a lot to do with leadership so I was able to see that leadership comes in many different forms and that there isn’t a single right way to lead. My critical thinking has also developed through the reflections that I had to write about various topics. Since a lot of the topics that I had to write about were fairly new to me and I had never written about them before or even thought deeply about them, it was necessary to think critically about the prompts given to be able to write the reflection. Having to write reflections about leadership, women in STEM, science and ethics, and women and ethics made me think about how they could all be connected and how they all had an impact on leadership. Thinking and reflecting on these topics has allowed me to have a better understanding of leadership and just how different it can be for everyone and how there are some difficulties for women in leadership, and even more specifically in STEM. Along with the development of my critical thinking skills, this course has also promoted the growth of my public speaking and teamwork skills.

Both my public speaking and teamwork skills were improved through the debate on whether parents should digitally track their children. This debate was not only the first real debate that I had, but it was also the first time that I have worked with strangers who I knew little to nothing about. Before this course, I had little experience of how an actual debate worked and how work was divided among the team. After the debate and the course, I saw that I had become more comfortable with speaking to not only strangers but also speaking in front of the rest of the class. Since public speaking has always been a problem, it was great to see progress with how comfortable I am getting with public speaking. I also developed my teamwork skills by learning to work with others that were not in the same time zone as me and who I no previous knowledge of. This debate made me realize that it is difficult being a leader especially when it comes to working with people you don’t know.

Overall this course helped me develop my public speaking skills, critical thinking, and teamwork skills with the various assignments that allowed me to develop these skills. The course has also helped me better understand leadership and in what ways I am capable of leading. I know now that it is not easy for women to lead and especially in STEM but it does not mean that I have to give up just because it is difficult. This class has taught me that there are many different ways to be a leader and that it isn’t just one way like I previously thought.

StrengthsFinder Reflection

October 6, 2020 / Idaly

StrengthsQuest is a test that lets you see what your strengths are in a group setting. My top five StrengthQuest themes were restorative, deliberative, realtor, individualization, and harmony.

Of my top five strengths, I would like people to look at the deliberative strength, which is described as being serious and careful when it comes to making decisions and dealing with problems. To me, this means that I like to assess something before I attempt to resolve it. Personally, I also see this theme in the way I interact with others, and that way that I choose friends. I find it hard to interact with people that I haven’t known for a while, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t try to interact with them. This affects the way that I work in a group since I like to think a lot about things before I say or do anything that will affect the group or the work being done. By assessing something for a while, I am able to determine the best way to go about work in a way that is best for the team and not just for me.

Reflection

September 10, 2020 / Idaly

Over the past few weeks of being in a leadership class, I have learned that getting to a leadership position, especially in STEM, and even more, for women, can come with lots of obstacles. There are obstacles like bias hiring and discrimination, among other things, can prevent women, and more specifically in STEM, from joining the career in the first place, much less getting a leadership position. Many women join specific STEM careers but are not equally represented in engineering, physics, or computer science. This lack of representation in these STEM careers leads to a lack of role models for younger girls that want to do STEM. Without a role model in these leadership positions, they don’t get the chance to see that they are more than capable of also leading. Not having role models in STEM for young girls, I feel, can create a loop where young women now don’t do STEM because they themselves didn’t have a female role model to look up to when they were younger. Even though many women are in STEM nowadays, they still go through obstacles to get a leadership position and be seen as equal to their male colleagues. Despite this, women in STEM are still able to get higher up positions, but it is not always on there own.

I learned that many women who are now in leadership positions initially did not think that they were qualified for leadership positions, but were encouraged to do so by their male coworkers. This encouragement, to me, is something that should be happening throughout the STEM careers. It is crucial for male coworkers to support their female coworkers through the obstacles in STEM that are more prevalent for women. Of course, these positions should go to the person that is the most qualified to do the job and can lead people. Qualities for leadership can vary, as can the definition, from person to person. My personal definition of leadership is a person that can organize a group of people and make it possible that they all reach their final goal. The qualities that I think are necessary for a leader are communication, empathy, patience, and honesty. There are a lot more qualities found in leaders, but to me, these are the some that I hope to see in a leader and myself.

Overall, many different obstacles make it difficult for women to have a leadership position in STEM: the lack of role models, workplace discrimination, and bias hiring. I believe that the lack of research into the shortage of women in leadership positions can also affect the percentage of women going into STEM. Women aren’t able to see that many people like them want to join STEM but are not encouraged or confident. In my opinion, further research would inform women that leadership opportunities are available to them and help future women realize the same.

Even though there are already many women in STEM, there are still young girls who think that ceratin careers are for boys and that they aren’t allowed to do the same. Though there is still work to do to increase the women in STEM, there has been an increase in women in STEM that hopefully continues to grow.