A Student Leader’s Reflection of Leadership Styles
In my years of life, I have been in multiple organizations, organizing committees, class projects and volunteering events. All of it has one similarity: teamwork. I got to work in a team to reach the project’s goals. In most cases of a team, there is a leader. The exception would be when the team has similar positions, in which case everybody is their own leader.
Now, the leader is essential to the team’s environment and for achieving goals. But there are many kinds of leaders, as leaders are humans too, with different kind of personalities. Here I would like to share my experiences with different kinds of leader, and my analysis and/or reflection on them. Note that these are all my own experiences, so I would not share a leadership style that I have not experienced.
Paternalistic Leadership
I remember once I had the opportunity to volunteer in an organizing committee for an IT event. I was under one Person in Charge, let’s call them James. James is my senior and he had experience in the previous IT event. Now, looking back, he is the one who inspired me the most in being a leader. The team knows we all have certain job roles to fulfill. But, in delegating jobs to his members, James always asked first ‘Are you busy?’. If we are busy, he will then say, ‘Oh, that’s alright. I was just gonna ask you this. We could postpone it till next week.’
His manner in giving out jobs makes me feel nurtured, and it shows that he respects my time. He also fosters my growth, as he is very open to sharing his experiences and giving help in me and the team’s academic assignments. In return, he very much expects loyalty, as later on he asked me to join his team in an organization. Sadly, at the time, I had other goals and so I told him. The way he answered was ‘Okay. Then I have no expectations on you for being in my team.’ I feel like I was letting him down, so I assured him I will help in any way I can for his organization.
Paternalistic works best for people who need understanding.
My personal analysis to this type of leadership is Paternalistic works best to nurture younger people. At the time, I was a student (still am). I have goals, I have ambitions, but I would like to help. It is also important to note that I was still in transition from a teen to a young adult. As a college student who is going through many kinds of transition, I need understanding. When given, I would be achieving the best I could.
Paternalistic also works when leading a team with diverse backgrounds. Each of the people might need the leader to give understanding, that the leader understands they are different and treats them all accordingly.
Transformational Leadership
In current time, I am working in several organizations and communities. All volunteer. I had a project in my organization where I was led by a Transformational leader. She is driven by change, she drives her team to make impacts. Let’s call her Sarah. Sarah was older than me. I considered her my older sister, and call her ‘Kak’. She inspires me too, because she has work experiences that I am pursuing. We had an organization, we have a purpose, and we have her, pushing us to make impacts.
It was very stressful. I remember initially I had a lot to adapt to her. She expects her team to be of high quality, including me. Meanwhile, the organization was not my only activity. I had tight schedule, and she pushed me to do best. At this point, I was falling. It took a lot of courage to communicate to her and speak about my difficulties.
Yet, as time goes by, I adapted to her. I managed my time, seek methods of time management. I asked Sarah about her expectations to me. She is also open to me sharing my expectations on her. Our team was a powerhouse. We bring change to the organization, through our period. I get to know Sarah as an amazing leader. She planned things, like, 3 months before the preparation. Even the preparation for any event starts 1 month before! She has amazing critical thinking skills. She has a lot of achievements. It is no wonder that she drives our team to do our best, because she always pushed herself to do her best.
Transformational works best for highly driven people.
My personal analysis to this type of leadership is Transformational works best to bring change with high impact. At the time, the organization was also new. There was no system whatsoever. The previous period was the first working one, then we came and smash with a blast. I mean, the change in management was so unreal. The administration was organized, the meetings run accordingly, and the impacts were really high, way higher than the year before.
Transformational would be the kind of leadership I should expect in a startup. Each person has to give their best, and drive themselves. I should be fully committed if I would like to be in team with a Transformational leader.
Democratic Leadership
I had experience working in a team of students where the main focus would be politics. We were expected to give recommendations as a faculty representative to university-level organization. As expected in politics, there would definitely be discussion, because everyone in our group has not got the same politic ideology. I mean, yeah, there are similar ones, but everybody could have different arguments on one opinion. The leader was a student too, he was interested in politics and had experience in the same team. Let’s call him Matt.
In the very first meeting, I remember Matt saying ‘I know you all have different politic views, so I would be Democratic and have you all contribute to the discussion.’ I did not know what it meant to be Democratic, so I just went with the flow. It turns out, for every discussion, we were expected to contribute. Which means we have to read through the political issue and give our personal opinion. I was very busy with other activities and academics, I couldn’t have the time to think it through!
As time goes by, I was super stressed. The democratic was nice, but I didn’t know anything about politics. Add that to the list of things I have to learn about Computer Science (I had no basic programming knowledge). I was losing my mind, because at the time, the political condition in Indonesia was very volatile. New issue coming every month, and we were expected to response to it. For your information, college students in Indonesia were used to organize marches to give our opinion. College students are the agents to change, and we were expected to give an opinion representing the people, should there be a policy that is not siding with the people.
Our team did not fulfill the end goal. Mostly because we are all students with other time commitments, we cannot expect our time to be spent in discussing things and come up with one consensus.
Democratic leadership works best for people to come up with a consensus.
Democratic leadership is best used in the ideal case, which should be us fully committed to learning politics and able to form a consensus. But when it comes to the reality, there are other factors that were not accounted, like time commitments, limited knowledge, and tight deadlines. We come from CS major, we did not expect to delve into politics that deep. I, myself, has no further interests to politics, limiting myself to pay attention to current national/global issue.
Democratic is used in legislative organizations. DPR Indonesia, DPRD would use it. There’s a senate too in my university that would have used it. Each person must have knowledge to contribute to the team.
My Experience in Being A Leader
For me, being a leader does not mean I have to get a role as a leader. I do not think I should be President of organization, to be a leader in that organization. I would still consider me as a leader, even in just one job I am leading. Since leading means ‘to lead something/someone’, I would be a leader, if I lead myself to do one job.
As it happens, I got an opportunity in being a Vice Person in Charge for a division in an IT event. I tried to implement what James does, as I nurtured them, I gently asked them to do jobs that needed to be done, even though we have established all of my team’s job roles. I also asked them about their activities outside of this event, whether I could help or not. I give suggestions when they ask for it, and ‘try’ to foster an open learning-as-we-work experience. This is where my weakness is.
As a person with many experiences, I know which methods to use best. Personally, I do not like to waste time, dilly-dallying when I (as a critical person) already knows what works best. So, I tend to focus on performance and not people in some cases, especially if it happened before. I do not want to give room for errors. Even though, error is a good thing! Error fosters learning, way better than success. By not letting them try and get errors, I hindered their growth. In this case, I implemented Transformational leader, even though unconsciously. Turns out, Sarah inspired me more than I realized.
Thankfully, I was covered by my Person in Charge. She is awesome, she is so understanding of our team. Even though she does not have many experiences/critical thinking, our team loved her and cherished her. In retrospect, she often asked me for advice/brainstorming session outside of meetings. I get to share my experience with the team implicitly, and she gets to foster their growth explicitly.
Being a leader with situational traits is good. But, try to understand your team too, not just the goals.
This experience has given me lots of insights. I learned that I try to be Maternalistic, even though I unconsciously insert Transformational leader traits. As I reflect back, I could see what I did was good, but I could do better. I mean, slightly better, not to put pressure on myself :D
Learning this theory of leadership style from XL Future Leaders is refreshing. I get to analyze myself as a leader and notice bits and pieces of my organization experiences. I learned a lot, reflect a lot, and comes out as a person with a plan. A plan for my own betterment. Hope this gives you insights!
This article was made for the reflection assignment for Workshop #4 XL Future Leaders Jakarta Batch 8.
