A500.4.3.CM Intellectual Traits Concept Map

How I found the Standards in my Life

I had standards by which I lived my life before I could explicitly identify them. I found that not every choice I made brought me closer to the person I wanted to be. I make decisions every day that bring me joy, sadness, fulfillment, and yearning for more. In an effort to understand how I make these decisions, and to be more intentional, I recently started a journey to reflect on my own core values. I have made many moves in my life and I wanted to better understand how I can make decisions that align with my core values. To facilitate this introspection I asked myself the questions below. In reflecting on these questions I found patterns. Patterns of behaviors and ways of being that helped me understand how I have lived in and out of alignment with my core values. Now that I am aware of them, and have them written out, these are my standards for decision making. These are the ways of being that help ensure I am living the life I want to live. Questions I asked myself What am I doing ...

My Role(s) in a Team

Teamwork is a common thread throughout life. Growing up with parents and a sibling, working at my first job at McDonald's, and my marriage and current household all provide me with an opportunity to practice teamwork. Most, if not all, of the engagements in my life involve interacting and cooperating with others, so this exploration into how teams form and are led is an interesting practice of reviewing literature and reflecting on how I engage in my day-to-date life. As a part of a team, I tend to take leadership roles quite naturally. Whetten & Cameron (2011) describe several roles of embers within a team: task-facilitating, relationship-building, and blocking roles. I believe that I have played each role at some point. I feel most at home when I play a task-facilitation role, but I also make time and space for relationship-building. Teamwork is all about getting individual contributors to work together toward a common goal, so ensuring that the relationships among team membe...

Constraints on Creative Problem Solving

Creative problem-solving requires a great deal of flexibility, and acceptance of risk which can be difficult for businesses who are generally risk averse to embrace. Many constraints also exist in our individual thinking which limit our capacity to think and problem-solve creatively (Whetten & Cameron, 2016). In my own experience in the nonprofit and social service industries I have seen these constraints hold back otherwise successful individuals. “Well, this is how we’ve always done it” I’m sure you’ve heard this common refrain from supervisors and teammates in the past. Generally, we hear this when someone questions an existing policy, procedure, or process. The inquiry is not personal, but this knee-jerk response is a clear indicator that the individuals are experiencing some conceptual blocks to creative problem solving. Complacency is a major impediment to thinking differently, in fact, complacency may mean that the people in question are not thinking at all. When we avo...

Master of Science in Leadership

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